Page 16 of Cruel When He Smiles (Sinners of Blackthorne U #3)

Nate

“Carter with Callahan.”

I freeze.

The syllables land like a clean gut punch, and my fingers curl tighter around the strap of my bag. My head snaps toward Coach Bryant as he reads out the room assignments, waiting for him to correct it, but he doesn’t. He just checks the next names off the list and keeps moving down.

Because there’s no fucking way I just got put in a hotel room with Liam Callahan on this away game.

I glance over my shoulder and see him standing a few feet away, bag slung over one shoulder, hands buried in his pockets, expression unreadable. His eyes flick up to meet mine for a second, and he doesn’t blink or react. He nods once and turns toward the lobby.

He’s gone back to the act. That smooth, cold, above-it-all mask that fits him too damn well.

Polished edges, perfect posture, and the kind of smile that should be sold as poison.

I hate him more for it—hate how easy it is for him to slip back into pretending he doesn’t want to peel me apart and wear my bones.

We walk side by side through the lobby in silence. The hotel’s nothing fancy, but the carpet muffles our footsteps, and I’m hyper-aware of how close he’s walking. We’re not touching, or talking, but he’s a presence I can’t ignore.

The girl at the front desk hands us two room keys without a second glance, and Liam thanks her with that polite voice that makes people smile too fast and trust too easily.

I follow him down the hall, past the elevators, toward the stairwell that smells like lemon cleaner and old metal. The door to our room clicks open under Liam’s swipe, and the second we step inside, my stomach drops.

Two beds, opposite ends of the room. No divider, no privacy, and no couch I can pretend to fall asleep on to avoid sharing space.

Just four white walls, an ugly taupe carpet, and a small desk between the beds, stacked with bottled water and protein bars that the hotel probably thinks pass for a welcome basket.

I walk in slowly, dropping my duffel at the foot of the bed closest to the window. The AC unit kicks on with a groan, rattling in the corner. I can hear Liam unzip his bag behind me, hear the familiar rustle of his jacket as he pulls it off and drapes it over the back of the desk chair.

“Don’t worry,” he says, his voice calm, almost amused. “I won’t touch you.”

I don’t respond. I toe off my shoes and yank my hoodie over my head, tossing it across the mattress before heading to the bathroom. I lock the door behind me and sit on the closed toilet for a minute, hands gripping my knees hard enough to leave marks.

He doesn’t get to sound amused. He doesn’t get to act like that night didn’t do something to both of us.

We get dressed for the game without talking and leave to catch up with the others.

Coach gives his final rundown in the team meeting, and by the time we hit the pitch under those buzzing stadium lights, I’m locked in and focused.

Because that’s the only place I still have power—between the lines, on the grass, when it’s my feet, my voice, my decisions that carry weight.

I score once, assist twice, and shut down their midfield like my life depends on it.

Liam plays flawlessly; of course he does.

The crowd loves him. Our guys love him. He barks orders with that razor-sharp precision that somehow always lands as leadership instead of arrogance. The whole field moves to his tempo.

We win.

Three to one.

When we leave the pitch, sweaty and amped and a little bruised, everyone’s high off it, except me. Because I know what comes next: being alone in a room with a man I can’t control myself around.

I trail behind him on the walk back to the room, silent, shoulders still tight from the match. We step into the elevator, and Liam doesn’t say a word as he scrolls through his phone with an expression so calm it’s infuriating.

By the time we reach our floor and unlock the door, my head’s pounding.

Liam strips off his jersey first, tossing it onto his bed and leaving his compression shirt on before heading for the bathroom with his duffel. I peel off my own sweat-soaked shirt, trying not to think about the lack of distance between our beds.

When he comes back, his hair’s wet and pushed back, skin still flushed from the shower, that casual swagger back in his step. I grab my shit and go to the bathroom to shower. I need to fucking sleep and get this night over with so we can go home and be out of each other’s spaces.

Then, through the bathroom door, he starts humming. Softly at first; a low, tuneless hum that rises as he sifts through his things. It takes a second for the melody to form, another for my brain to latch onto it… and then it hits.

Not the song, but the memory.

It’s a lullaby, I think. Not a tune you’d hear on the radio or find on a playlist. But my mother used to hum it when she thought I wasn’t listening—those rare, rare moments before she turned cruel. When the mask was on. When she was pretending to be soft and maternal and human.

She’d hum that exact melody while brushing my hair or folding laundry, her voice off-key but steady, as if the sound itself was the only thing holding her together.

Hearing it now, from Liam’s mouth of all places, is like getting shoved into a frozen lake.

I can’t breathe, and my pulse kicks hard. My hands go numb, and sweat breaks across my neck, cold as ice, and the back of my throat closes like I’ve swallowed a scream.

I stand there, staring at the wall, shaking. Liam Callahan, in his arrogance or his apathy, just dragged me right back into a house I swore I’d burned to the ground. Back into a room with lavender scent, sharp nails, and that fucking melody that haunts every corner of my childhood.

How the fuck does he know that song?

My body is useless.

I can’t move or speak. I can’t even blink. I’m locked in the kind of nightmare where the world feels too real, like it crawled up from the past and built itself a home in my throat.

Her voice slinks in first; drawn out, slow, and disappointed already. I want to turn my head away from the sound, shove my fists against my ears, and scream her into silence, but my body won’t listen.

I’m trapped in this. Again.

“Sweetheart,” she coos, from somewhere behind me, always behind me, where I can’t see her face. “What did we talk about? Hm? This wasn’t the rule. You said you’d do better. That you wanted to be better.”

I flinch internally, stomach curdling. The air tastes like the lavender scent from her office, where the walls were beige and her praise was conditional.

“I am better,” I try to say, but nothing comes out. My mouth is stitched shut by the dream, the memory. She’s close now. Too close.

I want to back up, to run, to slam a door, break something, anything, but all I can do is stand there while she circles me like I’m the exhibit in her private gallery of failures.

“You were doing so well,” she says, tsking softly. “We’d almost gotten to stage four. You were starting to show improvement. Then this?”

Her hand reaches out and brushes my shoulder gently. Almost lovingly. My skin crawls beneath it. “I expected better from you, Nathaniel.”

I flinch at the full name. It’s always the full name when she’s disappointed, when she wants me to feel it in my spine.

Shame curls in my gut when I feel warmth spreading down my thighs, and the humiliation hits me like a body blow—hard and nauseating.

I can’t even cover myself or undo it. I’m frozen in it, and when she finally steps in front of me, her face framed in perfect hair and that emotionless expression, her eyes drop down.

She stares at the wet spot blooming across the front of my sweats.

The disappointment in her face is quiet and devastating.

She never yells. She just shakes her head and writes on the clipboard, lips pursed, eyes not meeting mine anymore.

“I thought we’d made progress,” she says. “But maybe I was wrong. Maybe you’re not capable of emotional regulation after all. Maybe it’s better if someone else finishes your training.”

“No—” The word is there in my head, but it doesn’t come out. My voice is gone. My lungs won’t work. I try to move forward, to apologize, to beg, but my limbs won’t respond. “I’ll fix it,” I manage to say, choking on the shame. “Please. I’ll fix it.”

“You said that last time.”

She turns away, and it’s worse than if she’d screamed. Worse than if she’d slapped me or dragged me into another room or made me strip and stand under the cold faucet like she used to.

Her back is the loudest rejection I’ve ever known.

“Mommy—” I try to follow. I beg her with my eyes. I plead with every inch of me that remembers being eight years old and desperate for a crumb of approval. But she keeps walking away—she always walks away.

Why can’t she love me? Why can’t I ever be good enough?

My lungs can’t keep up, and my chest seizes again. It feels like I’m falling to my knees, but the ground never comes. I’m floating… sinking. Drowning in the weight of that look in her eyes, that look that says I’m not enough. That I never was.

The world flickers again. A glitch. Then everything slows.

A hand closes around my throat.

Not hard or painful. Just… there. Anchoring me to the dark. Pressing gently enough to pull me out of it without snapping the cord. My pulse stutters beneath the grip, but this isn’t her touch.

It’s warm.

Familiar.

I can’t see anything except the blur of shadow and color, but I hear it. The kind of whisper that knows it doesn’t need to be louder to be heard.

“Pup.”

My body jerks, and nerve endings flicker to life, one by one. My limbs still feel frozen, breath caught somewhere between throat and lungs, but that word cuts through the static like a scalpel.

“Breathe,” the voice says again, softer now. A little closer. “You’re safe. You’re here, Nate. Just breathe.”

I want to. I swear I do. I want to break through the surface of this nightmare, crack it open, and climb out gasping. But something inside me still thinks I deserve it, still thinks I need to stay until I’ve earned my way back.

The pressure on my throat increases just enough to remind me that I’m not alone in the dark.

“Come on, Pup,” the voice says, coaxing. “I’ve got you.”

The words wrap around my ribs and squeeze. My eyes start to burn, my fingers twitch, and my mouth opens in a silent breath, and then I finally gasp.

Air rushes back in like floodwater. My chest rises too fast, and my entire body jolts as my back arches off the mattress. The room slams back into focus—hotel, dim lighting, that shitty AC unit.

I blink, hard… and suddenly Liam Callahan is crouched over me, eyes wide, hand still pressed gently to my throat. I can’t breathe; the air in my lungs feels wrong now, too thick, too jagged. My throat convulses once, and I gag on it.

“Nate…hey. Look at me.”

It takes everything, but I look up. Liam’s hair is mussed from sleep, a crease in his cheek from the pillow, but his eyes aren’t cold tonight. They’re soft and focused on me. Edges melting the longer I look at them.

“Breathe,” he says again, his voice so low I barely catch it. “Slowly. There you go, you’re okay.”

I inhale through my nose, shaky and uneven. He nods once, guiding me through every second. “Good,” he murmurs. “Keep going.”

The air floods back into my lungs, cold and dry. My body aches, muscles knotted from whatever position I’d been locked in. Sweat slicks my back, my chest, and the inside of my elbows. I don’t think I’ve stopped shaking.

My voice is rough when it finally slips out. “Let go of me.”

Liam nods, and his hand slowly slides away from my throat, fingers coasting lightly across my skin before they disappear altogether. I cough again, dragging my arm over my eyes and curling in on myself out of instinct.

He doesn’t ask if I’m okay, and I’m grateful for that, because I’m not. Not even close. But he moves back a little, giving me space. He must’ve woken up to the sound of me struggling, and I wonder how loud I was, if I screamed, said her name, or if I begged.

I know what he wants to ask. I know he heard me.

I just look at him. At Liam Callahan—beautiful, cruel, impossibly calm—watching me with an expression I’ve never seen on him before. It’s raw and painfully human. He probably doesn’t even know he’s showing it.

“You were screaming,” he says finally.

I glance down, then immediately wish I hadn’t because the sheets are wet but not from sweat.

The shame rolls back in like a punch to the chest. I grit my teeth, swallow hard, and curl my hands into fists, trying to hide the tremble in my arms. Liam doesn’t move or comment.

He doesn’t glance toward the wet sheets or the way my body’s still half-frozen in humiliation.

He just stays exactly where he is, watching me with that same unreadable intensity.

And for a second, I wonder if he’s going to weaponize this. If he’s going to file it away like the rest of my reactions. A new secret. A new crack in the armor he loves to peel apart.

…but he doesn’t.

“Don’t,” Liam says, the moment I try to turn away. His thumb lifts, brushes under my eye before I even knew there were tears there. “Don’t do that. You didn’t do anything wrong. It’s a normal response to night terrors.”

I shake my head, my throat burning. “Thanks,” I say after a minute. “For waking me up.”

He nods, stands and walks back to his bed. I track him with my eyes, still fighting the tremors running through me. He slips under the blanket, back to me now, and pulls it up to his shoulders without a word.

It only hits me then that he’s giving me privacy.