Page 22 of Cruel When He Smiles (Sinners of Blackthorne U #3)

Nate

I haven’t really slept well lately. I spent most of the week holed up in my room, ignoring texts, skipping meals, replaying every second of that night like it might make the memory mean less. But the more I try to scrub him out, the more I feel him under my skin.

He knew exactly what he was doing; he always does. That’s what makes it worse. That this time, it wasn’t some drunk mistake or stupid heat-of-the-moment thing. Liam got to me at my most vulnerable and saw how pathetic I was.

My hoodie feels too tight around my body as I cross campus. My legs feel heavy, almost as if they don’t trust where I’m taking them. I keep my head down, hood up, with headphones in and blasting A Perfect Circle. I don’t want to talk to anyone, and I don’t want to make eye contact.

It’s just past two when I stop outside Dr. Ellis’s office on Wednesday.

Session number… what, six? Eight? I don’t even know anymore. It doesn’t matter because today isn’t about therapy, it’s about him.

He’ll be in there, smiling like he didn’t rip me open and then send me home to take care of myself and sleep. There’s no fucking way I’m letting him know that night was the first time I slept soundly in months.

All because he fucking told me to.

For the first time since this bullshit started, I’m scared. But not in the way people fear knives or falling or the dark. I’m scared of me. Of what I might do, or what I might say. Of how much control I don’t have when he’s in the room.

My hands are already clenched in my sleeves, knuckles sore from how hard I’ve been grinding them against each other. My jaw aches from holding it closed too tightly. And my chest won’t stop buzzing with fucking anticipation.

I close my eyes for a second, breathing in through my nose, out through my mouth, counting backward from ten like Dr. Ellis taught me. It doesn’t help… nothing helps.

I knock and she answers, bright and polished as always. “Come in, Nate.”

I step in, eyes sweeping the room before I even register her smile.

Liam’s in his usual spot on the left, but he doesn’t look at me, not right away. He waits until I sit, then turns his head just slightly, lips quirking like he knows exactly what I’ve been thinking about all week.

“Glad you both are here,” Dr. Ellis says, settling into her chair across from us. “Let’s check in. Nate, how’s your week been?”

I shrug. “Uhm, fine.”

She gives me that look again—the one that says she knows I’m full of shit but doesn’t want to push yet. “Liam?”

He smiles, easy and disarming. “Great, thanks.”

My throat burns. He sounds so fucking normal.

He’s pretending he didn’t get inside my head and whisper things that still echo when I close my eyes. Like he didn’t twist my psyche and walk away knowing full well that he fucking took something.

I dig my nails into my palm harder than before.

“Anything you’d like to bring into the space today?” Dr. Ellis asks.

I don’t say anything, and neither does he. The silence stretches, and I can’t fucking take it.

“I don’t want to do this today,” I say finally, and my voice trembles.

Dr. Ellis raises an eyebrow. “Can you tell me why?”

Because he’s sitting too close and his eyes are too calm. Because I’m one wrong sentence away from either breaking down or breaking him, and I don’t know which one scares me more.

I ignore what I want to say and just glare at the floor before answering, “I’m not in the mood.”

Liam shifts in his seat next to me. “I can go,” he says gently.

I jerk my head toward him, shocked—it almost sounded sincere.

Almost.

Dr. Ellis watches us both. “Nate, is that what you want?”

I open my mouth… then I close it again.

I don’t know.

I do want him gone. I want distance and space to breathe, but I also want to scream at him and drag him down into the mess he left me in. I want to ask him why he said those things. Why he spoke to me like that. Why I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since.

I stare straight ahead, my jaw locked and voice flat. “I want to get this over with, please.”

The session drones on after that. Questions about control and triggers. About anger, patterns, and self-awareness. I answer in half-sentences while Liam plays polite, and through it all, I sit there with my hands clenched in my sleeves and my heart trying to claw out of my ribcage.

I know I’m not okay. I know I’m fucking unraveling, and I know if he gets me alone again, I won’t know how to say no.

I grip the edge of my chair with white knuckles, heart stuttering like it’s trying to fight its way out. Dr. Ellis asks me a question, but I don’t hear it. I can’t.

The sound fades, the world narrows, and I’m not here anymore.

I’m somewhere dark and deathly quiet. Somewhere I used to go when my mother’s voice got too loud, when her smile stopped meaning safety and started meaning I’d done something wrong. When I didn’t know what I’d done, but knew I’d pay for it.

I sit there, completely still, trying to disappear into the chair. My fingers dig into the wood beneath me. My teeth grind so hard I feel it in my ears, and everything inside me screams to run.

Run, Nate.

She’s coming.

Hide. Hide. Hide.

…but I can’t.

My body won’t move, my mouth won’t open, and it’s like I’ve been dropped into a version of myself that doesn’t respond to commands—like the connection between thought and action has been severed.

Run.

I can’t.

Speak.

The buzzing in my chest sharpens into static. A deafening hum just beneath the surface, vibrating through my skin, my muscles, every inch of me that’s supposed to feel grounded. But I’m not grounded; I’m weightless and heavy at the same time.

Dr. Ellis’s voice fades in and out. Her words are underwater, muffled and distant, as if someone knocked me out and shoved me beneath the surface of myself.

I hear Liam speaking. I hear his voice cut through the silence with that careful, calculated pitch he uses when he wants people to lean in instead of run.

But he doesn’t know I’m already gone. Doesn’t know I’ve left the room, the campus, the fucking year.

No one notices… not until the chair next to me scrapes back.

The sound cuts through the fog like a blade, and my whole body flinches. A full, visceral jolt that yanks me forward and rattles the bones I thought had turned to stone. I don’t mean to make a sound, but my breath punches out of me too fast, a soft, choked noise that doesn’t belong in this room.

Both heads turn.

Dr. Ellis is the first to speak, her brows furrowed. “Nate?”

I feel Liam move more than I see him, but he’s too close to me. I try to move away, but my body still won’t comply. There’s no space. No room in my chest to breathe, and now his presence is burning at the edge of my awareness, threatening to pull me deeper under instead of pulling me out.

He reaches for me, and I visibly flinch. “Don’t,” I whisper, then I jump to my feet and run.

I don’t remember leaving the building. One minute I’m in the chair, breath catching on Liam’s voice, eyes still wet and my body stiff, and the next I’m outside with the cold settling into my hoodie and the parking lot spinning under my feet.

My fingers are still trembling, not enough to be obvious, but enough that I feel them.

Enough to know that if I sit down in my car, I might not get back up again.

I don’t head to the driver’s side right away.

I stare at my car like it has answers, like it might tell me what the fuck just happened and what part of me snapped while it was happening.

My phone buzzes, and I ignore it at first. It’s probably Sage, or the group chat I haven’t checked in two weeks. Maybe even Coach wondering why I’ve been off in practice and why my temper’s gotten shorter again.

It keeps buzzing persistently, so I reach for it with a hand I don’t trust.

The screen lights up, and my stomach caves in on itself. I feel the collapse, the sharp dip of pressure, the way the air seems to drain out of my lungs before I can stop it. The screen glows too bright in the shadow of my hand.

I should let it go to voicemail. But my thumb moves without asking me first, and suddenly the phone’s pressed to my ear and my voice is already whispering a quiet, flat, “Hello.”

“Hi, sweetheart,” her voice purrs sweetly, and my whole body freezes.

“I’ve been thinking,” she continues, and my stomach turns.

“You should come visit. Just a quick weekend. I’ll make your favorite—those dumplings you used to love.

We can watch that documentary series you liked.

You remember, the one about wolves? You always said they reminded you of yourself. So fierce.”

I feel the nausea before I can stop it. The way her words roll over my skin, pinning me under every implication, every polished twist of concern dressed up as disappointment.

I don’t know how long I stay quiet, but when her voice comes through again, there’s an edge to it. “Nathaniel. Say something.”

I continue staring at the back of my car, but I don’t see it. My vision’s starting to fuzz again, and there’s that same dull ringing in my ears I thought I’d left in that room.

“You don’t even have to stay the whole weekend,” she says quickly. “Just dinner and one night. You owe me that much, don’t you?”

There it is.

The twist.

The hook behind the bait.

I know what that means. Let me near you so I can fix what they’ve done to you. Let me in so I can untangle all the wrongness you think you’ve outgrown .

My fingers twitch around the phone, thumb hovering near the red disconnect button, but I can’t press it. I’m caught—paralyzed by her voice, her guilt trip, the leash I swore I cut but still feel looped tight around my throat.

I hate how quickly she finds that pressure point. How fast I go back to being a kid who didn’t know why it hurt so much when she smiled.

“Nathaniel—”

“Don’t call me that,” I croak, voice raw and brittle, but it’s too late. She’s already in.

“Oh, honey,” she sighs, like I’ve wounded her, like I’m the cruel one. “You always get like this. I’m trying to fix things, but you won’t even try.”

“You’re not… not supposed to contact me. They said you’re not—”

Her grip on my throat is invisible, but it’s there. My hands go numb, and the words are stuck in the back of my throat, but they won’t come out.

I can’t breathe.

I can’t breathe.

I can’t—

The phone disappears from my hand in a blur of motion, and the next thing I know, I’m being yanked back, and shoved so hard against the side of my car that the frame groans.

The air blasts from my lungs. My head snaps up, and Liam’s right there with a hand around my throat. “Focus,” he says, his voice deadly calm. “Right here. Look at me.”

His face is inches from mine, hazel eyes wild, lips curled between fury and relief. My back is pinned to the door, my heart jackhammering.

“I…” My voice is shredded. “I can’t—”

“Yes, you can, Pup,” he says in that soft voice. “Breathe for me. In and out.”

He presses me harder into the car, and the pain shocks me back into place. It hurts, which means I’m here. I’m not a kid. I’m not in that house. I’m not—

“There you go,” Liam mutters, watching me like he’s watching a chemical reaction. “That’s it. Come back to me.”

My knees buckle slightly, but he holds me there. “I said breathe.”

And I do. It stutters and it’s ugly, but it’s air. His hand drops to my chest, palm flat, pushing with enough pressure to keep me from curling in on myself again. “You were zoning out,” he says.

“I wasn’t—”

“You were.” His grip tightens, his hand curling in the collar of my jacket, dragging me forward just to shove me back again. “You were glassy-eyed, pale, and holding that phone like it was going to burn you. Who was it?”

I don’t answer, and Liam’s eyes narrow. “Who was on the phone, Nate?”

“No one,” I shake my head, too fast, too shallow. “It’s fine.”

He slams me harder into the car. “Don’t lie to me,” he says quietly. “You were shaking. You were completely gone . When I looked into your eyes, you weren’t even here.”

“I said it’s fine. I can handle it,” I snap, the words feeling like broken glass on my tongue.

He leans in, his hand pressing flat to my throat like a leash. As if he’s reminding me that if anyone’s going to push me over the edge, it’ll be him. I squeeze my eyes shut, refusing to listen to any more of his truths.

“Liam—” I inhale, but it catches. “Please stop. I don’t want to talk about this. Just… leave it.”

He lets out a sad sigh at that and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “Okay, but only because you asked,” he says, and the smile he offers me makes my heart skip a beat because I just realized something fucked up.

He’s the only person who makes me feel safe when I spiral. He doesn’t do it gently, either—he chokes the fucking sense right back into me.

“Why… How do you know how to do that?” I whisper after a beat. “That’s the second or third time you’ve… you’ve helped me. How do you know what to do?”

His lips lift at the corners. “I know how to break people, Nate,” he says with a soft smile, tilting his head to the side. “And if I can break them, I can also put them back together.”

He says it so simply like it’s not the most fucked up thing ever, then he pulls back and drops my phone into my palm. “Drive safe,” he murmurs, and walks away, and I stand there, staring after him, phone clutched in my hand, heart fucking wrecked in my chest.

I don’t know what’s worse—that he saw how broken I really am…

Or that he didn’t flinch.