Page 31 of Cruel When He Smiles (Sinners of Blackthorne U #3)

Nate

I push him away and turn my back on him again.

“Don’t,” I say before he can say more, and my voice cracks, but I don’t care. “Don’t say another fucking word.”

Liam doesn’t listen. Of course he doesn’t. He’s already there, invading my space like he owns the air I’m trying to drag into my lungs. He doesn’t touch me yet, but I can feel the heat radiating off him, the steady weight of that gaze burning into the side of my face.

“You’re not going home like this,” he says.

“Watch me.”

“And I know you haven’t eaten all day.”

“So, now you care?” I turn toward him, hands shaking, my voice fraying from the need to cry. “You care if I eat? Is that your angle now?”

He exhales slowly. “You’re spiraling.”

“No shit,” I snap, loud enough that a bird takes off from a nearby fence. “You think I don’t know that? You think I can’t feel it in my fucking skin?”

Liam doesn’t react to the outburst. He never does. He’s frustratingly still, even as my whole body thrums with the urge to either punch a wall or collapse.

“Come back,” he says, softer now. “You don’t have to talk to him. Just eat something and breathe. Let me sit with you… let’s not make this uglier than it already is.”

I laugh, but there’s no humor in it. “You don’t get it. You never fucking get it. That wasn’t just Sage. That was—” I stop myself. My tongue presses hard against the back of my teeth. I almost said the last person I trusted. And that’s the goddamn problem, isn’t it?

He takes a small step forward. I flinch, not away from him but from myself. From how easy it would be to let this go. Let him say all the right words in all the right ways and drown me with them.

“Come back,” he says again, and it’s not a command, nor a plea. It’s somewhere in between. “You’ll feel worse if you leave.”

I shake my head slowly, staring at the space between his feet. “I don’t want to talk, and I don’t want to eat. I definitely don’t want to sit in that house pretending Sage isn’t letting Luca fuck him after lying to me.”

Liam waits. He always fucking waits. He lets me sit in my misery until I’m the one begging for relief. But this time, I beat him to it. My voice drops, small and splintered, more dangerous than if I’d yelled. “Can you make me forget?”

His eyes widen, obviously more surprised than I was that I asked that. “What?”

I look him in the eye, and this time I don’t hide the way the pain sits right behind my ribs, stretching wider with every breath. The betrayal, the loneliness, the fuck-you carved into my chest with every step Sage took toward Luca.

“I said, make me forget.”

There’s silence before his eyes darken with malice. It’s something I should run from, but don’t because it’s exactly what I asked for. “I thought you hated me,” he says.

“I do.” My fingers twitch at my sides. “That’s what makes it easier.”

Liam steps closer, and he reaches out. Just one hand, fingertips brushing my wrist before curling around it. His thumb presses against my pulse point hard enough to let me know he’s reading it. “You want me to do that?” he murmurs. “You want me to make you forget?”

“Please.”

He tilts his head again, studying me like I’m a broken toy he plans to put back together wrong. “I’m not going to be gentle.”

I shake my head. “I didn’t ask you to be.”

“And I won’t stop when you regret it.”

I meet his gaze, my jaw set. “Then don’t stop.”

He exhales through his nose, and for a moment, I think he’s going to back away. That he’ll push me off and call me pathetic again, or worse—say nothing and walk away like I’m not even worth a second thought.

Instead, he tugs me close, eliminating the space between us so we’re chest to chest. His other hand rises to my jaw, thumb dragging over the skin beneath my eye where it’s still red and hot.

“I’ll ruin you for anyone else,” he says, the low timbre of his voice sending shivers through me. “You know that, right?”

“Everyone already ruined me.”

Liam hums, and the sound is poison-smooth. “Not the way I will.”

I close my eyes for a second, long enough to let myself pretend none of this is real. That I’m not standing on the edge of another breakdown, begging the one person who’s been manipulating me from day one to please finish breaking me the rest of the way.

He lets go of my wrist and slips a hand behind my neck instead. The pressure there is steady and wrong in the exact way I need. And then he kisses me.

It’s not gentle, but it’s not cruel either.

It’s invasive and meant to push me over a ledge I already leaped from the second I asked him to make me forget.

His mouth parts mine, and I let him in, breath catching, fingers digging into the fabric of his shirt because if I don’t hold on to something, I’ll go weightless.

He crowds me back against the car, the heat of the metal soaking into my spine through the thin fabric of my tank. His hand finds my hip, and grips hard enough to anchor. My sunglasses get shoved back into my hair and fall off entirely. I don’t reach for them.

His teeth graze my bottom lip, and I gasp, shuddering into him as every raw edge of my emotions shatters at once.

“There’s that taste again,” he whispers, breath hot on my lips. “Sweet little contradiction. Always so fucking angry, but your mouth tells me a different story.”

He kisses me again.

And again.

And again.

Each one deeper than the last. His fingers slide under the hem of my tank, pressing flat against my side. My whole body melts at the contact, so exposed, so sudden. But I don’t stop him; I just breathe harder, louder, more desperately, as if each breath will erase the fact that Sage lied to me.

He looked me in the eyes and told me nothing was going on. Told me he didn’t trust Luca. Only to fucking abandon me at a party he practically begged me to attend.

I try to breathe through the storm in my chest. I want to punch, scream, or shove my fist into the wall until the ache in my bones replaces the one climbing through my ribs.

Because it’s not just betrayal, it’s worse. It’s that feeling you get when someone closes a door they once told you would always stay open. It’s seeing Sage—my brother, my constant—smiling into the mouth of the person who hurt him most.

And I wasn’t even worth the heads-up.

I kiss him harder, trying to breathe through the hurt clawing at my insides.

I don’t cry. I don’t even let myself make a sound.

I can’t hate Sage even though I want to because he’s the reason I’m still breathing.

The reason I didn’t put a bullet in my head after everything that happened with my mom.

The reason I get up some mornings, even when everything inside me wants to stay down.

And that’s the worst part; he’s the only person I trusted, and he didn’t even think I deserved the truth.

Liam’s fingers dig harder into my side, and I groan. “Get out of your head, Pup,” he demands after ripping his mouth away from mine.

“Make me,” I whisper. “Hurt me if you want. Just don’t let me feel anything but you.”

His hand leaves my waist and moves up. Fingers tangling in my hair, yanking back just enough to bare my throat, holding me still, making me breathe through him.

I can’t tell if I’m drowning or flying.

“I warned you,” he breathes. “This is the part where I stop being the lesser evil.”

“I never asked you to be good.”

The grip in my hair tightens hard enough to remind me I asked for this. My body’s caught between fight and fall, heart crashing against my ribs like it wants out.

But Liam doesn’t move yet. He lets the silence hang; lets it get heavy and oppressive. Then his hand slips from my hair, down to the back of my neck again, and he speaks like it’s a fucking spell.

“Come with me.”

I stare at him, searching for the reason I shouldn’t. But my chest feels hollow, carved out by the weight of everything I just saw, everything I gave and lost and never fucking deserved in return. My throat works around nothing, no argument, no bite. I give a small nod, and that’s all he needs.

He doesn’t say another word as he leads me across the Sin Bin property, stopping in a room closest to the kitchen and then down the stairs to the basement door.

The noise from outside—the laughter, music, chaos—is all muffled through the walls.

Liam doesn’t look back as he pulls the door open and walks in.

It’s cool inside, the air conditioning kicking hard against the back of my neck as we descend the stairs. The lights are low, two treadmills, a bench press, mirrors along one end, and free weights lined up on racks. A downstairs gym.

Of course, this is where he brings me.

He walks me straight to the mirrored wall without a word and stops behind me, and I catch our reflections out of the corner of my eye. I look fucked, and he hasn’t even fucked me yet, while Liam looks like a goddamn nightmare dressed in control.

He moves closer. Just his chest at my back. His hands come to my shoulders, then lower. One palm presses against my lower back. The other lands flat on my chest, just over my heart.

“You said you wanted to forget.” His voice is calmer now, but it carries the same undercurrent—coiled power, soft threats, and promise wrapped in poison. “I’m going to give you exactly what you asked for. Put your hands on the mirror, Pup.”

My breath punches out of me. I brace my hands on the mirror, palms flat, trying not to shake.

Liam’s hands skate up my thighs, teasing and not quite touching where I need it. He does that on purpose; he lives for the moment before the unraveling. And I let him because I’m too full of everything else. Rage. Shame. Ache. Betrayal. I want it all gone. I want it replaced.

“You sure about this?” he asks again, mouth pressed behind my ear. “Because once I start, I’m not stopping. I’m gonna fuck the grief out of you, Nate. Gonna take every hurt he left behind and burn it out.”

My voice cracks. “Do it. Please, do it.”