Page 46 of Cruel When He Smiles (Sinners of Blackthorne U #3)

Nate

It’s been a month since I let him claim me as his.

A full month since I stopped pretending I had a choice and realized it was just easier this way.

A month of soft commands and sharp edges.

Of waking up with his voice in my ear, of closing my eyes to the weight of his hand around my throat, not in fear but in relief.

A month of watching myself change in the mirror and not recognizing who I used to be.

Because this version of me—the one who listens, who leans in, who obeys—is quieter in my head and easier to live with.

Fighting Liam is like trying to drown a wildfire. You only end up burning more slowly.

So, I stopped fighting, and I chose him.

It wasn’t some big, cinematic collapse of will. No dramatic fall to my knees. It was quiet. Gradual. The kind of surrender that comes when you realize no one else is coming. When you understand that, for better or worse, he stays.

Maybe it should’ve terrified me. Maybe I should’ve run harder. But the truth is, it’s easier this way.

Easier when I choose him.

Easier when I stop clawing at the walls of my own head and just let him in.

When I let his voice ground me instead of questioning the weight of it.

When I lean into the soft control that wraps around my ribs and holds me up when I don’t even realize I’m falling apart again. It’s easier to just be his Pup.

I stopped answering the calls from my mother two weeks ago.

First, I ignored one. Then two. Then I blocked the number altogether. She sent emails next. Long, cold things full of polished concern and veiled criticism. I deleted them without reading past the first line. I don’t owe her a thing—not anymore. Not now that I’ve finally started breathing again.

Because when I’m with Liam, the noise is gone.

The constant whirring in my head. The panicked itch behind my ribs. The shame. The choking spiral that kept me curled up in my bed some nights, too afraid to blink. All of it… quiets. He doesn’t fix me—he doesn’t even try. But he holds the pieces in place, and it’s easier just to let him.

I belong to Liam, and for the first time in my life, belonging doesn’t feel like a chain. It feels like… relief.

So, today is good.

My head’s clear, and my chest light, the kind of lightness that makes me want to run just because I can. The sky’s crisp and cloudless, and the air smells clean. We’re on the field running drills—sprints, passes, corner work—and my body is loose and fast, the blood in my veins humming with purpose.

Coach Bryant is happy with me, even though we lost a game last weekend, he's happy with how we’re playing together.

I lap around the track twice, lungs burning just enough to feel alive. My pulse is high but not panicked. My chest is tight, but not from anxiety.

I feel clear.

Present.

Coach whistles again, shouting for another sprint drill, and I don’t hesitate. I push off the line hard, legs kicking into motion, strides smooth and practiced. I veer slightly to the right to pass a lagging teammate. The benches are up ahead, but I know this field like the back of my hand.

My cleats carve into the grass, my eyes locked ahead, my focus razor-sharp. I barely register the other player veering into my line.

Pain blooms as something crashes into my ribs too fucking hard. Soccer isn’t a contact sport, not like this. The hit sends me flying, and the world tilts. But I don’t land on the grass or bounce on turf, I hit metal. The edge of the bench slams into the side of my skull, and everything goes out.

The light, the sound, the air in my lungs—all gone in an instant.

When the world starts to crawl back in, it does so sideways. Someone’s yelling. Footsteps. Distant voices tearing through the quiet like sirens in my ears. The back of my head is a heartbeat made of fire.

I groan—at least, I think I do—but it’s cut off when hands touch me. Someone’s gripping my arm, someone’s touching my face, and I flinch. Something warm and wet trickles down the side of my face, and there’s a roar behind my left eye like thunder curling through my skull.

“Nate!”

That voice cleaves through the noise like it was made to find me. The moment I hear it, I’m back in my body and being yanked back into consciousness before I’m even fully ready. I blink up at the sky, vision still blurry, ears ringing, but all I can focus on is him.

Because I can feel his rage before I even fucking see him.

“Nate. Eyes on me.”

Liam.

He’s kneeling beside me, jaw clenched, he’s touching my face, but his hands are shaking. His eyes are fire—hazel, burning gold, trained only on me.

He looks like he’s going to kill someone.

“Look at me,” he says again, lower this time. Steadier.

My vision swims, and his face doubles, then clears. I suck in a breath, feel the pain slam into my ribs, and hiss between my teeth. Liam’s thumb grazes my cheek. “How many fingers, Pup?”

It takes me a second, but I focus, swallowing back the nausea, the ache in my skull, and count. “Three.”

He exhales slowly through his nose and presses his hand to my cheek again. But his face isn’t calm. It’s fury just barely leashed, skin stretched tight over a temper he’s about to let off the fucking chain.

And then he looks up. I don’t know who he’s looking at, but his voice shifts from controlled to lethal in the span of a breath.

“If something happens to him, I’ll fucking end your scholarship and make sure you never step on a field again. Do you understand me?”

His rage isn’t loud, it’s lethal. The kind of fury that doesn’t need to scream to be heard. The pressure in my skull throbs harder, and everything sounds far away. Someone mutters something in the distance, and I try to sit up, but don’t get far.

“Don’t,” Liam growls, pushing me gently back down, his hand pressing to my sternum. “You’re bleeding and probably concussed.”

“’M fine.”

“You’re not fucking fine, Nate.”

Did I just imagine the tremble in his voice?

I close my eyes.

Everything hurts.

My head pounds like my brain is trying to punch its way out of my skull. My ribs scream when I breathe. There’s a sharp sting behind my eye, like someone buried glass in it. But Liam’s hand stays on me, his palm never moves, and his grip never falters.

I feel him even through the fog.

“Nate.” His voice is firm. No room for negotiation. “Don’t close your eyes. Stay with me.”

I try. I really fucking try. But the warmth of his hand feels too much like safety, and the ache in my head is too fucking loud. I think there are sirens screaming, and I want to tell him that this month with him has been the only time I haven’t hated being alive—

—but the words don’t make it out.

The dark takes them first.

And then it takes me.

My eyelids are heavy. My head’s worse. It feels like someone cracked my skull open and poured molten lead inside before stitching me back up with wire. There’s a bandage wrapped around the crown, tight and tugging against my hairline.

Pressure blooms just above my left temple, throbbing with every slow, reluctant beat of my heart. My neck aches, stiff and twisted at an odd angle against the hospital pillow. There’s dried blood crusted near the corner of my eye, and my cheekbone is swollen tight beneath the skin.

I’m not just sore—I’m wrecked.

And I don’t remember how I got here.

The scent of antiseptic and bleach clings to the air, curling in my throat and making it even harder to swallow. I open my mouth and regret it instantly. My tongue is thick, throat raw and dry, like I’ve been breathing in fire instead of oxygen.

I shift, and pain punches straight through my ribs, dragging a hoarse grunt from my mouth before I can stop it. The sound isn’t loud, but it’s enough.

A chair scrapes softly against the tile floor beside me, then I feel movement near me before I hear it.

“Pup?”

His voice comes out quiet, low enough to pass as a whisper, but there’s no mistaking the weight behind it. That’s not calm, that’s forced control.

Liam.

I open my eyes. Or try to. It takes effort, and the fluorescent light from the hallway spills in through the cracked door, stabbing at my vision until everything bleeds.

He’s right there.

His gaze is fixed on me, trained so hard on my face that it feels like a physical touch.

Liam’s hazel eyes aren’t just watching—they’re dissecting. Studying. Memorizing every twitch of my expression as I wake up. His brow is drawn tight, his mouth a thin line, his jaw clenched.

His control isn’t slipping, but it’s damn near cracking.

“You stayed?” I ask, and he nods slowly, running the pad of his thumb down my cheek.

I move again without thinking, trying to sit up, and the pain makes my vision splotch white around the edges.

It’s not just my ribs, my whole side aches.

My head throbs like it’s been split open and only half put back together.

There’s a tug of tension near my scalp where they must’ve stapled something, and I can feel swelling behind my left ear that wasn’t there this morning.

Liam reaches over me before I can blink. He hits the nurse call button on the wall like he’s done it before. I try to push his hand away, but he doesn’t let me.

“Don’t,” he says. The word’s soft, but his tone isn’t.

I blink at him, the world still blurry at the edges. “I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not.”

His voice is too steady, and that’s what makes it so damn unsettling. Because I know him. I know how he sounds when he’s in control. This isn’t it. This is him holding the line. Barely.

“You took a head-first hit into a steel bench,” he continues, sitting forward. “You’ve got a deep gash behind your ear, a bruised orbital, a mild rib contusion, and a grade two concussion.”

I drag in a breath, wincing. “So… I’m fine.”

Liam doesn’t smile.

His hands tighten on the bed rail, knuckles whitening for a second before he eases them back open.

“I saw your body hit the ground, Nate,” he says, continuing quietly, “and for a second, you didn’t move. Not even a twitch. You were just… still.”

I look at him.

Really look at him.

There’s something raw under his skin, some stripped-down version of him that he usually buries so deep no one can reach it.

But I see it now in the tight line of his mouth.

In the way he won’t meet my eyes for more than a few seconds at a time.

In the fact that he’s still here—still in wrinkled practice clothes, hair a mess.

I don’t think he’s moved from that chair.

“You stayed,” I murmur, but it’s more of a statement this time, as I’m still in disbelief.

He doesn’t blink. “Of course I fucking stayed.”

I should say something back. Something sarcastic, maybe. Something to take the weight off his shoulders and stuff it back where it belongs—in my chest. But I don’t have the strength. Not right now. And even if I did, I’m not sure I want to joke about this.

Because Liam Callahan is always composed. Always measured. Always three steps ahead of the rest of us, untouchable in the way he smiles without softness and destroys without ever raising his voice.

But right now, he looks wrecked, and not in the way I am.

He sighs and touches my cheek. “They said you were lucky. A few more inches and it would’ve cracked your skull open.”

“Lucky,” I echo, and this time, I do let out a dry chuckle. “Doesn’t feel lucky.”

“No,” he agrees. “But it feels better than losing you.”

The words sit between us, and I feel them in my gut more than I hear them. He doesn’t say shit like that, not unless he’s being manipulative. But there’s no trap in his voice this time. No bait and no soft-spoken threat disguised as comfort.

He just means it.

It shouldn’t matter. It shouldn’t make the tightness in my chest ease, shouldn’t make my shoulders drop, shouldn’t make my body sink deeper into the mattress just from the sound of his voice. But it does.

I squeeze his hand as a form of comfort, to let him know that I’m okay. He doesn’t react to the pressure, but he moves his other hand to my temple, brushing back the hair sticking to the gauze taped behind my ear.

“You scared me, Pup,” he whispers. “Don’t do that again.”

I swallow hard. “I didn’t mean to,” I whisper, but a part of me is glad he saw it. That he got scared. That, for once, it wasn’t just me unraveling.

I should say something Nate Carter-esque to make this moment lighter. Instead, I just close my eyes.

The pain is still there, and the exhaustion is still pulling at me.

But Liam isn’t leaving, and that’s all I need right now.