Page 60 of Cruel When He Smiles (Sinners of Blackthorne U #3)

My breath is coming fast, my chest is too tight, my hands are trembling because I can’t handle this. I can’t handle being out of control, and hate how Nate has turned my entire fucking world inside out, that I just admitted more than I ever have to anyone—

A warm hand lands on my cheek and stops everything.

The spiral. The storm in my head. The memories clawing at the edges of my vision.

Just— gone. Like the second his hand touches my skin, everything else fades into nothing. I still don’t know how he does that. How he can settle me with a single fucking touch, and how he knows when I’m about to tip over the edge and pulls me back without a word.

I don’t realize how much I’ve tensed until his hand drops away from my cheek. There’s space between us now, but not enough for me to breathe the way I want.

Nate watches me for a moment, then his eyes narrow just a fraction. “What were your parents’ names?”

The question catches me off guard. “Why?”

“Because I’m asking,” he says, and there’s a flicker of something unreadable in his gaze.

I exhale slowly, leaning back enough to watch his reaction. “Lisa and Elias Callahan. But my mother hated being tied to my father’s name, so she went by Lisa Harmon-James—her maiden name.”

Nate’s entire body locks up, and he blinks twice, his body going still in a way that makes my gut tighten.

“What?” I ask. “Nate? What is it?”

He doesn’t answer immediately, but his shoulders tense even more, and when he finally speaks, his voice is quieter. “So, that’s why you knew that song.”

It’s my turn to freeze. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

He meets my gaze, something heavy in his eyes. “Liam… you’re not the only one who grew up with a monster for a mother.”

I’m confused as fuck, so I wait for him to continue.

“When we were at that away game, the night I had the night terror,” he swallows, but his eyes don’t leave mine. “Before that, you were humming something. Just a few notes, over and over.”

I shake my head slowly. “I wasn’t humming anything.”

“Yes, you were. I heard it when I went to shower,” he says, and then he hums it—soft, the melody threading through the air between us. The sound knocks something loose in my memory so fast I almost flinch.

“That’s…” I trail off, my voice strained. “That’s what my mother used to hum when I cried.”

Nate nods once, his jaw set. “My mother used to say her hero—someone she aspired to be—would do that to calm her patients. She said it was foolproof. That if you learned the rhythm, you could make someone’s body obey before their mind caught up.”

The room suddenly feels smaller. “Nate,” I say slowly, “are you telling me—”

“That your mother was her hero?” He doesn’t blink. “Yes. I’m telling you that she admired your mother enough to try and use her methods to turn me into one of her experiments, too.”

The floor seems to fall out under me. My pulse is loud in my ears, my head suddenly too full. “At what age?” I ask, my voice quieter now. “What age did she start conditioning you?”

“Eight,” he says, and there’s no hesitation.

I feel fucking sick. “Your mother started too late with you. At eight, I was already a perfectly trained puppet,” I say, and a tight, humorless sound leaves my chest. “She started on me when I was two. Ran her experiments until the day she died.”

The silence that follows is thick. I study him the way I would a threat, every detail memorized, not because I need leverage but because I need to understand what the fuck this means.

He doesn’t look away. “So, all this time… you thought I was just some stubborn asshole who wouldn’t break.

And I thought you were just some controlling bastard who didn’t know when to stop.

But the truth is…” His voice falters for half a beat before he finishes.

“The truth is, we were both built by the same kind of hands.”

I can feel the weight of it in my bones—the realization that the reason I’ve been able to get under his skin so easily is because I know the map. I’ve lived it.

“You said once that I get inside without forcing my way in,” Nate says, softer now. “Maybe that’s why… Maybe I’ve always known where the back door is.”

My throat feels tight, my hands clenching against my legs. “And maybe that’s why I can’t fucking stay away from you,” I say, the words slipping out before I can pull them back. “Because you’re the only one who knows the shape of it from the inside.”

Nate studies me for a long time, then exhales slowly. He doesn’t reach for me this time, and I don’t know if it’s because he’s giving me space or because he needs it himself.

“So, we both grew up being bent into shapes that weren’t ours.

Yours taught you how to manipulate the world, mine used the same methods and taught me how to disappear inside it.

And now, here we are—two fucked-up products of the same poison, wondering why we keep finding our way back to each other. ”

“Because the damage is familiar,” I say simply. “And because when you’re with me, I know exactly where all your edges are, just like you know mine. I get it, and I wish to fuck I didn’t.”

We don’t say anything for a while. The air between us is taut with a kind of understanding I’ve never had with anyone before.

Not even Killian. And it hits me with the same force as everything else tonight—whatever trauma Nate is dealing with is because of me.

Because his mother wanted to create what my mother perfected.

His mother.

“Is she the one who calls you? Is she the reason you shut down completely?” I ask, already knowing the answer, and watch as my Pup pales before nodding.

“Yes.” It’s quiet, almost swallowed by the space between us, and then the floodgates open.

As Nate talks, he tells me about the woman who gave birth to him, the woman who ruined him, the woman who pretends she didn’t do anything at all—and I burn.

It’s a slow burn at first, simmering low in my gut, until it spikes and catches fire in my chest. I burn with the need to erase her. To remove her from the equation entirely. To strip away every breath she has left until there’s nothing of her in this world to hurt him again.

He keeps speaking, his tone detached, and I realize it’s the only way he can say this without shattering.

He tells me about the games she played, the lies she wrapped him in, how she could twist reality so tightly that even he would question his own mind.

How she still calls, still pretends she’s innocent, still insists she’s his mother.

And I fucking hate her.

I hate that my chest feels tight under the weight of his voice.

I hate the twisting in my stomach as I picture her holding a phone, smiling sweetly while she poisons every word.

I hate that I can see it all now—every time his phone lights up and he freezes, every time he sidesteps any question about his family, every time his temper spikes in a way that feels learned or conditioned.

Nate shouldn’t have to flinch when his phone rings. He shouldn’t have to brace himself every time her voice filters through the speaker. He shouldn’t be owned by someone who has no right to fucking own him.

I want to take that part of him and rip it out with my fucking teeth.

I know my rage is obvious. Nate’s watching me, and I catch how his eyes flicker over my clenched jaw, the rigid set of my shoulders, the stillness in my breathing. But I don’t care. I’ve never cared about hiding this part of me from him.

This is what I do. I remove problems. I dismantle threats until they’re dust. And Nate’s mother is a problem I could take apart piece by piece without losing a wink of sleep. She’s a shadow that still hangs over him, and I can’t stand it. I won’t stand it.

His hand lands on my cheek again. “Liam.” His voice is quiet, but there’s an edge to it—a warning he knows I won’t take.

“She doesn’t get to exist.”

The words leave me before I even consider softening them, before I think about tempering the truth. I don’t want to temper it.

Nate doesn’t flinch. His fingers are still against my cheek, centering me in that infuriating way he does, like he’s reminding me I’m here with him instead of already planning her end.

“Liam,” he says again, and I shake my head.

“No.” My voice is iron. “She doesn’t get to keep breathing after what she did to you.”

His jaw tightens. “She’s not worth it.”

I move, bracing one hand on the mattress beside his head, leaning in until there’s no space for him to pretend he can ignore me.

My gaze locks on his, and I don’t blink.

“She put her hands on you without ever touching you. She ruined you using the same methods my mother used to ruin me. She still owns pieces of you, and I won’t allow that, Nate. ”

His throat moves in a slow swallow, but he doesn’t tell me to get off him. He doesn’t tell me I’m wrong. That’s all the permission I need.

“Tell me you don’t want her gone,” I murmur, lowering my tone, letting it slip into the coaxing cadence I know loosens him. “Tell me you don’t want me to fix this for you.”

His fingers twitch against my side, not quite grabbing me, not quite pushing me away.

So, I press closer, letting my weight settle over him, caging him in, owning the space between us.

Then I soften just enough to make him listen.

I lower my voice, drop it into that quiet, dangerous tone that he melts for, the one that makes his body relax before he even realizes it’s happening.

“I’m going to rip her out of you, Pup.”

His breath hitches.

“Every piece of her. Every fucking hold she still has. Every thought, every scar, every shred of control she thinks she still owns.”

I brush my fingers down his throat, feeling the way his pulse pounds beneath my touch, the way his muscles twitch, how his body responds to mine without him even fucking thinking about it.

“And then I’m going to replace her with me,” I tell him, my voice dropping lower still, almost a whisper. “The same way you’ve taken parts of me I never meant to give.”

Nate’s eyes darken, his lips parting just slightly. Conflict, desire, the need for control are swirling in his gaze, warring with the craving to surrender.

“That’s what you want, isn’t it?” I murmur, and his breathing stutters when I brush my lips over his ear. “You just want to give in.”

A soft, helpless noise slips out of him, and fuck, I love it.

“You don’t want to think about her anymore. You don’t want to feel her hands in your head. You don’t want her to exist in any part of you; you want me to fill that space until she’s nothing but a ghost you can’t even remember.”

Nate’s control fractures. He surges up, his mouth crashing into mine with a force that’s all teeth and desperation. His fingers grip my hair, pulling me closer, and I let him. I let him take what he needs, because even when he’s the one moving, I know exactly who’s in control here.

And fuck, there’s nothing more beautiful than watching him break exactly the way I want him to.