Page 158 of Cruel When He Smiles

“I was,” he insists. “I just didn’t admit it first. You, on the other hand—” He gestures vaguely at me. “—are a mess.”

“Fuck you.”

“I mean, I get it,” Sage continues, ignoring me. “Liam is hot in a scary way. If I weren’t already stuck with my own six-foot-three nightmare, I’d probably be into it too.”

I glare at him. “Don’t talk about him like that,” I warn. “He’ll sense it.”

He tilts his head, smirking. “What, your mate?”

I groan. “I hate you.”

“No, you don’t. You hate how right I am,” Sage says, leaning back in his chair. “And I am right. You’re completely gone for him.”

I exhale, my shoulders slumping. “Yeah. I am.” I sigh again, feeling the weight of this entire fucking situation settle in my chest. “It’s bad, isn’t it?”

Sage just looks at me. “Nate. Babe. You’re bad. He’s worse. This is a disaster.”

“Shut the fuck up and help me make club bylaws,” I say.

Liam

Igettothecafé ten minutes early. Not because I’m trying to make a good impression on Nate’s mother—god knows that ship sailed before it even reached the dock—but because I hate giving her any advantage over me.

I pick a table in the corner with the best view of the entrance, the kind of spot that lets me see her before she sees me. The barista brings over a black coffee, and I sit there with my hands around the cup, feeling the heat seep into my palms as I go over the last conversation I had with Killian.

He hadn’t liked this idea from the second I mentioned it.

“You’re not going to meet that woman alone,” he’d said, leaning against my desk, arms folded in that way that meant his mind was already made up. “She’s manipulative, Liam. Your bitch of a mother was her hero, for fuck’s sake.”

“She’s not going to show up with a sniper rifle, Killian,” I’d replied, annoyed more at the implication that I couldn’t handleher than at the warning itself. “I’m not walking into a trap. I just want to hear what she has to say.”

“She doesn’t want to say anything to you unless it benefits her,” he’d shot back. “And when it stops benefiting her, she’ll turn it into something that hurts you. Or worse, hurts him.”

That had been the point where my jaw clenched hard enough to ache. “She already hurts him. I’m trying to change that.”

Killian had pushed off the desk, getting right in my space. “You’re not invincible, little brother. You think you’re immune to people like her because you grew up with your mother, but that’s exactly why you’re not. You walk in there thinking you’re two moves ahead, she’ll put you in checkmate before you even see it coming.”

We’d stared at each other for a long second, neither of us blinking. Then I’d said, “I’m going alone.”

He’d said, “You’re a fucking idiot,” and walked out of my room.

That had been the end of it.

Now, I’m sitting here, with a coffee cooling, keeping my eyes on the door. Every time it opens, I scan the face, but it’s never hers.

Ten minutes past the time we were supposed to meet, I still told myself she was just running late. Fifteen minutes past, I started to feel the prickling edge of suspicion. After twenty minutes, I know.

She’s not coming.

I don’t need proof. I don’t need a text or phone call, or some vague excuse about a last-minute emergency. The no-show isn’t an accident—it’s a move. And I can feel in my chest that it’s not just a move aimed at me.

I take my phone out and open the tracker I installed on Nate’s without him knowing because I don’t trust the world aroundhim. The little dot that marks his location pulses on the map, and my stomach tightens when I see where it is.

The stadium.

He has no reason to be there right now. No practice. No game. No meeting with the team. I stare at the screen for maybe three seconds before I’m out of my chair, leaving the coffee behind. I’m already dialing him as I push through the café doors.

It rings. Once. Twice. Three times. No answer. I try again while I’m crossing the parking lot. Still nothing.