Page 39 of Skalterra By Nightmare (The Skalterra Duology #1)

Emotions no longer felt real, so I wasn’t sure why I was still crying. A sort of self-preserving numbness had chilled my heart, but I stood in the corner of the dusty hotel lobby trying to sniffle through my tears as quietly as possible. In my periphery, the receptionist cast me concerned glances over Liam’s shoulder as he checked us into our room.

He hadn’t said anything on the walk from campus but had kept his arm around my shoulders, holding me close and letting me cry. I wondered if I’d ruined his trip, or if he was mad that I hadn’t told him the truth about the lecture speaker.

“This way.”

Liam took my overnight bag off my shoulder to carry for me, and I dragged the heel of my hand across my face in a feeble attempt to dry my tears.

The kitschy wallpaper was peeling in spots, and the low carpet was worn thin beneath us, but there was something comforting about the cramped hall and yellowing lights.

I tried to compose myself in the elevator. My shoulders had stopped shaking at least, but tears continued to spill down my cheeks.

“I’m fine,”

I whispered unprompted.

“I know you are.”

Liam nodded, but his eyebrows knit in concern. The elevator door opened, and he offered me his hand before we stepped out into the hall. I accepted it, twisting my fingers in his.

A shuddering breath racked my chest, but I tried to pass it off as a shiver.

“This is us.”

Liam held a plastic keycard up to a door handle, and pushed into the hotel room.

It was at least in nicer shape than the aging hallway, with a fresh coat of gray paint and a clean white comforter stretched over the bed.

The single, king-sized bed.

Heat rose in my cheeks, and Liam groaned next to me.

“I’m going to kill your grandmother.”

I gave a watery laugh as I released Liam’s hand.

“It might have been an accident. She’s not very good at using the internet.”

“I know Ethel, and I watched her click on the double room. This was no accident.”

“I can take the pull-out.”

I crossed the room to claim the couch, but Liam took me by the shoulders and spun me back around.

“Absolutely not. You go get cleaned up. I’ll take care of it.”

I scowled, but gave in, taking my bag with me into the bathroom.

The heat of the shower drew out the last of my tears, and while I would’ve loved to spend the night wallowing in disappointment and hot steam, I eventually forced myself to shut off the water and change into my oversized t-shirt and shorts for bed.

“I thought you might have fallen asleep in there.”

Liam had unfolded the couch into a lumpy bed that creaked under his shifting weight. He held up two plastic to-go containers. “Cake?”

“Where did you even get cake at a paleomagnetism lecture?”

I made myself comfy on the edge of my bed closest to Liam. He’d changed into plaid pajama pants and a Von Leer Vikings t-shirt.

“It’s a bakery across the street from campus. All the food goes on sale during their last hour every day, so I ran to see what they had left when you were talking to— you know.”

“To my dad.”

I took the plastic tray of cake from Liam and studied the pattern in the chocolate icing. The shower had been refreshing, sure, but my eyelids still felt swollen and heavy from crying. Liam could probably see they were still red-rimmed.

“Why didn’t you tell me he was your dad?”

He sat facing me on the pull-out bed, his knees inches from my shins.

“It was embarrassing,”

I admitted.

“And I didn’t want you to say it was a bad idea to go.”

“It was a bad idea,”

he frowned.

“but I wouldn’t have stopped you.”

“Why not?”

“He’s your estranged father.”

He waggled a bit of his cake on the end of his fork at me.

“Why would I get an opinion?”

“I dragged you there without letting you know what you were walking into.”

“I knew what I was walking into.”

“Did you?”

“A really boring lecture.”

I threw a pillow at him, and he dodged it with a grin.

“Watch the cake!”

“It was on sale. You’re fine.”

I poked at my own slice of cake with a plastic fork.

“I wish it had been boring, but he’s a genius. And funny. Maybe I wouldn’t feel so crappy if he had been crappy too.”

“He is crappy,”

Liam said through a mouth full of cake.

“And you know it. Didn’t you say that you wrote your entire admissions essay on how terrible he is?”

I smiled in spite of myself.

“I did, yeah. And then they waitlisted me.”

Liam set his dessert to the side and leaned forward with a new glint in his eyes.

“I want to read it.”

“What?”

I recoiled, drawing the heels of my feet up onto the bed.

“Do you have it on your phone?”

I pulled my overnight bag over from where I’d left it at the foot of the bed and pulled a folder out from inside.

“I have a printed copy, actually. For tomorrow. Just in case.”

Liam abandoned his cake and his pull-out bed, pushing me over in his haste to take the folder. He sat on his knees next to me, and held the papers close to his face to read the essay in the dim light of the bedside lamp.

“‘My father is a world-renowned geophysicist with research that has shaped modern understanding of continental shift, and yet I’ve never met a greater failure. Except, that’s not entirely true, because I haven’t actually met him.’”

Liam slapped the essay into his lap and gawked at me with a massive grin.

“You’re kidding me. You submitted this, and they didn’t immediately admit you?”

“They love him! And I’m pretty sure he donates to the geophysics program. There’s an entire study room named after him in the science buildings.”

“And someday you’ll be a bigger deal than him, and they’ll rename it after you.”

“Or,”

I suggested.

“they’ll bulldoze the entire building, hire some ice-cream scooper to design a new one, and they’ll name that after me.”

“I like it. Tell me more about this ice-cream scooper. He sounds handsome.”

I shoved him and retreated to lean against the pillows with my arms crossed. He flashed a devilish smile before returning to the essay. He read it under his breath, and I watched his lips move with the words, occasionally quirking upwards in a smile.

“This is amazing.”

He looked up at me with shining brown eyes when he reached the end.

“Wren, you are incredible.”

“It’s just an essay.”

He flourished the paper in front of him for dramatic effect and read from the pages.

“‘Dr. Brenton may have made advances in his field that will continue to inform the study of geophysics for decades to come, but he was not there when his daughter was born. He did not see her first steps or hear her first words. He did not stay up late comforting her the first time a boy called her a bitch when she was twelve. He did nothing to make sure she had three meals every day for eighteen years, nor did he help provide the roof over her head, and at the end of the day, Eliza Warrender, Smut Author, is a household name while Maxwell Brenton, PhD, is not.’”

Liam fell against the headboard next to me, still clutching my essay.

“Wren. Are you kidding?”

“‘Household name’ was a bit of a stretch,”

I admitted.

“But she’s been searched on the internet way more times. I checked.”

“You’re amazing.”

Mom had called me amazing. And Gams. And Orla probably would too. But Mom and Gams were biased, and Orla only knew the ideal, Nightmare-version of me.

No one who wasn’t related to me had ever looked at me—the real me—and called me amazing. I felt myself blush, and I took a bite of cake so he wouldn’t be able to tell how much the word meant.

“I told him I wrote my essay about him,” I said.

“And?”

I rolled my head against the headboard to look back at Liam.

“And he assumed I’d written good things. About him and his research.”

“Stop. No, he didn’t.”

Liam laughed, then straightened up with sudden conviction. He laid the essay out on the comforter in front of him and held his phone over the pages to take a picture.

“What are you doing?”

“Fancy scientist like him, he’s got to have a public email, and I think he’d love to read all the good things you wrote about him.”

“No!”

I lunged for the phone, laughing, and Liam tried to wiggle away, but I managed to pin him down with a move Ciarán had used on me once.

Unlike Ciarán, Liam didn’t fight back, and he grinned up at me from the pillows as I held his hostage phone aloft.

“Please?” he said.

“He’s friends with the dean,” I said.

“Then I’ll send it tomorrow after you get accepted.”

I weighed the pros and cons for a moment, then rolled off to collapse on the pillows next to him.

“After I get accepted,”

I repeated, setting the phone down on his chest.

“Promise.”

His face was very close to mine. He could probably see the red spots under my eyes from the capillaries I’d burst from crying too hard, and I wasn’t wearing make-up. Eyeliner was my favorite weapon when it came to camouflaging my lack of eyelashes, but it probably wouldn’t have helped at this close distance anyway.

The longer he stared, the more the laughter in his features faded into something more serious. I wanted to flinch away and hide, but my hand was still on his phone, resting on his chest, and I couldn’t bring myself to draw it away.

“What happened to your eyelashes?”

Liam whispered, his voice suddenly low and careful.

“That’s a rude question,”

I whispered back.

“I’m a rude person.”

I suppressed a laugh, afraid of breathing too hard in his face.

“No, you’re not.”

I could feel his chest rising and falling with his breathing.

“I pull them out. I can’t help it. Most of the time I don’t notice I’m doing it.”

“Will they come back?”

“Yeah. And then I’ll pull them out again.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Sometimes,”

I admitted.

“But not always. It hurts the most when I don’t realize there’s nothing left to pull on anymore, and I accidentally pinch my eyelid.”

“Oh.”

He winced.

“I’m sorry.”

“You asked me a personal question,”

I said.

“so now I get to ask you one.”

He narrowed his eyes at me.

“That’s not fair.”

“Was it hard being on campus today without Riley?”

His heartbeat quickened against my hand.

“Yeah, but not for the reasons you probably think.”

I waited for him to continue and froze when he rolled towards me, putting his arm around my waist and holding me close.

“It wasn’t because you miss him?” I asked.

“He’ll graduate next year. I have to get used to campus without him no matter what. But you,”

his thumb traced a circle on my back.

“it kills me that he hasn’t gotten to meet you yet. And that you haven’t met him.”

“He’s not missing out on much,”

I promised.

“You’re funny, you’re clever, you don’t care what other people think—”

“That’s not true. I care very deeply.”

“And you do a good job of hiding it.”

He smiled, but I was too close to his face to see his whole grin.

“Because you are strong, and you remind me of Ethel.”

“If you have a crush on my grandma, you should just say so, but if it works out, I’m not calling you Gramps.”

“Wren Warrender,”

he teased.

“what would you know about crushes?”

“Absolutely nothing.”

The corners of my mouth pulled upwards. Gams had said weeks ago that she was fine with Liam and me sharing a hotel room because he wa.

“a good boy”, and I “wasn’t interested in those kinds of things”. Something about the way Liam was looking at me and the way I felt curled up in his arms had me wondering if Gams was wrong about both of us.

Liam shifted forward and pressed his lips against the space between my eyebrows. He kept his mouth there to murmur into my skin.

“You should get some sleep. Big day tomorrow.”

A moment of wonderful panic made me lock up, but then I gave in to his embrace, burrowing into the pillows and nestling my head beneath his chin.

“You aren’t the boss of me,”

I mumbled back.

“No, I don’t think anyone is.”

His lips were in my hair.

“Sleep, alright? I promise to keep the nightmares away.”

I sighed against his chest, feeling for the first time all week that maybe everything was okay. Maybe Ferrin had failed, and I’d never see him again. Maybe I would do so well in my interview the next day that the admissions officer offered me admittance on the spot.

And maybe I would become a geophysicist so renowned that I would make Maxwell Brenton, PhD, cry over every day he had let pass without ever trying to get to know his daughter.

It was the best night of sleep I’d had since before graduation. I woke up to early morning light spilling from around the edges of the heavy window curtains, and I stretched, rolling away from the fingers of sunshine that spread across the ceiling.

“Liam?”

He’d left his hoodie on the bed, and I rolled out from under the covers to search the bathroom for him. However, he wasn’t in the hotel room anymore.

I was almost done getting ready for my interview, in my pencil skirt and blazer that was much too warm for the day’s forecast, when a beep chimed out from the door, and Liam walked in carrying a tray of pancakes, bacon, and fruit.

“Where’ve you been?”

I took the tray out of his hands.

“The lobby breakfast bar.”

He’d already dressed for the day, and his hair was still damp from a shower.

“I didn’t even hear you get up.”

He took a strip of bacon from the tray and bit it in half.

“I’m very sneaky. Are you ready for today?”

I grimaced and shoved the tray of food back into his hands.

“Mostly.”

My stomach churned as I said it.

“I have to finish my hair and make-up still.”

“I think you look fine.”

“It doesn’t matter what you think,”

I called from the bathroom. I leaned over the sink to get as close as I could to the mirror while I applied eyeliner.

“You aren’t the admissions officer.”

I waited for a quippy reply, but Liam was quiet in the bedroom.

“What, no joke about me trying to seduce the admissions officer?”

I poked my head out of the bathroom. Liam stood with his back to me and his head bowed, looking at something in his hand. “Liam?”

He turned around, still staring down at the crumpled flyer he was holding. My heart plummeted to my stomach. I’d forgotten about the stolen Riley posters I’d shoved into my backpack.