Page 172 of Cruel When He Smiles

“Nathaniel,” she breathes, trying to soften her voice. “Baby, I don’t know what this is—what they’ve told you. You’ve always been dramatic, sweetheart, and I understand. You’ve been sick for a long time.”

I tilt my head. She hasn’t seen the knife in my hand yet, or noticed that I’m no longer shaking when she speaks.

“That boy has poisoned you,” she hisses, her eyes cutting to Liam. “He’s sunk his claws in and filled your head with delusions. You’re not well, Nathaniel, you know that. You know how bad it gets. You don’t have to—”

“I’m not sick.” My voice doesn’t sound like it’s mine. It sounds strong and confident, steady in a way it’s never been when she’s in front of me.

But it stops her. Her lips press together in a tight, calculating line, and I watch the moment she realizes the tone isn’t what she expected. There’s no panic in my eyes and no begging. She looks at Liam again, and her mask drops just enough for the sneer to rise through. “You undid all my work!”

It’s almost funny, hearing her talk about me like I’m one of her projects instead of her son. She calls it work—not motherhood or even love and sacrifice. Just… work. Like she molded me out of clay in some clinical lab, another project to tinker with, polish, and then abandon when it didn’t gleam the way she wanted.

Liam slides his arms around my waist from behind, his mouth grazing the shell of my ear when he speaks, it’s the tone he always uses when he’s guiding me back from the edge.

“Oh, I know exactly what I’m doing to him,” he says, and there’s that faint curl of a smirk in his tone, the kind that makes people’s skin crawl if they’re smart enough to hear it.

I lean back just a little, enough to let him know I’m still here, still with him, and I feel the way his fingers tighten slightly against my stomach.

My mother’s eyes narrow. “You think this is strength?” she hisses. “Leaning on him like that? You think he’s your savior? He’s a virus. A parasite. He’s using you—”

“Funny,” Liam cuts in, voice still soft, still smooth, but there’s an edge to it now, the glint of something surgical. “You’re not wrong—I am a virus. But unlike you, I don’t delete what I love; I just rewrite it.”

Her mouth opens, then closes, and she falters. But the confusion doesn’t last long. Her attention sharpens into fury, and she zeroes in on him like she’s trying to carve a hole through his chest with her stare alone. “You did this,” she spits again.

Liam’s chin nudges against the side of my head like he’s making sure I’m listening, like he’s reminding me this next part is for me. “Of course I did. I’ve spent months erasing every single line of code you infected him with. And you know what’s funny?”

He leans in closer, brushing a kiss to my temple, not out of affection but ownership. I can feel the smile in his words, the weight of the truth he’s about to lay bare like it’s just another bedtime story.

“I practiced on my parents first.”

That makes her blink. For the first time since she woke, she hesitates. Her brows draw together, a small flicker of uncertainty breaking through the cold confidence in her expression.

“You’re lying,” she says, but it doesn’t have the weight it should.

Liam’s hand drags up my chest until it’s flat against my heart, his fingertips pressing in enough to ground me. “I was ten the first time my mother locked me in a freezer,” he says, and this time, there’s a hush in the room. His tone doesn’t change, but the chill in it goes marrow-deep. “Twelve when I started keeping journals of her patterns. Thirteen when I realized my father only hit me when she made him feel inadequate.”

His thumb strokes against the middle of my chest once. “I waited until I was seventeen,” Liam continues, voice low and laced with something far too calm to be called fury. “Got them to fight in public, planted the triggers, escalated it behind closed doors until they stopped blaming me and started blaming each other. I talked them in circles, undermined her credentials, and played into his paranoia. The night of their deaths, she thanked me for being their perfect son.”

His lips brush my ear again, a whisper meant only for me. “They left everything to me, then they killed themselves in the master bedroom with matching suicide notes. You know what they said?”

His hand spreads against me, and I realize mine is over his without even thinking. “They said they were proud.”

Silence.

My mother has gone pale. Her lips twitch, her mouth is slightly open, but no words come out. Her shoulders strain as if she wants to stand, to run, to scream, to do anything but sit there and hear the truth from the boy her hero couldn’t break.

“You’re lying,” she breathes, but her voice cracks halfway through. “You… you didn’t—”

“I did,” Liam interrupts, and there’s no drama or triumph in his tone. Just cold, hard facts, delivered with the samedetachment he taught me to survive with. “Because I was done being someone else’s fucking science project. Just like he is.”

His arms tighten around me again, and this time I grip them back. She looks at me then, and for the first time in my life, I see her confusion. Not fake confusion designed to manipulate, but real, raw disorientation.

“You’re not my son,” she whispers. “You’re not.”

“I know,” I say, and that’s the end of it.

I haven’t been her son for a long time. That boy died somewhere between her gaslighting and Liam’s touch, between the first time I flinched at love and the moment Liam showed me that survival can look like soft dominance in the right hands.

I step back into Liam’s chest fully, letting him hold me like this is just another night and not the one where I finally stopped feeling haunted.