Page 103 of Veiled in Brick

I tried to recall the amount of resistance that I felt when I was thrusting the blade behind me and I exhaled, “Not enough, I think I barely got him.”

“Did he—did he touch you? Please, tell me he fucking didn’t.”

The words rasped through his throat in a plea, and my breath shook at the notion. Liam appeared to be seeing in only shades of red, and I breathed out:

“No.”

His entire body sagged. “Fuck, thank you,” he murmured. “Why do you look like this?”

“I fell—er, he pulled me down—I don’t know,” I told him. “He’s…he’s crazy, Liam—he had this look on his face like he’s just…insane. On drugs or some shit, I don’t know—said I belong to him—”

He spat out, “You don’t fucking belong to anyone.”

The sentence rang in my brain like a church bell. Resonated under my skin in a blissful buzz. And my reply should have been, ‘No, the fuck I don’t,’ but I found myself thinking in a knee-jerk reaction, ‘Except you.’ I said neither, for the much more pressing matter at hand left my lips instead.

“Liam, he’ll kill you. He said he would.”

My voice quavered as I spoke it, and Liam clenched his jaw so tightly that I could see the muscles flex. He moved a hand up to my face, brushing the scrape on my cheek gently.

He chose each word with care. “I. Will. Kill. Him. First.” Liam’s gaze had turned crazed, but his tone was oddly calm as he continued, “Do you understand? He will be gone. I want to see him fucking. Bleed.”

I stared into his eyes, the boiling anger and raging sincerity clear within them, and I just…nodded at his admission. I wanted with everything in me to say that I would kill the fucker myself. After all, as if I were living within some sort of fucked up prophecy, it did seem as though it were destined that either he or I would die at this point. I was, as I have said many times in my life, a woman who stands on her own two feet. An independent woman. But hearing Liam’s confession…Liam, the man who can’t even utter a bad thought about another—Liam, the one who, despite his upbringing, acted like he wouldn’t even hurt a fly—Liam, who was looking at me with a glimpse of insanity in his eyes—Liam, who was truthfully admitting that he was ready to kill. Willing to kill.

Fuck.

His dark admission, for whatever reason, swaddled me like a baby. Gave me a comforting touch that was not a desire, but a necessity. Any response I had caught in my throat and, all too soon, I heard the quick padding of feet against hardwood. Liam flinched slightly at the noise, we both glanced to see Claire rushing her way to us, and he begrudgingly let me go.

Claire almost bowled me over and, as her arms were thrown around my neck, the stinging lemony twang of a disinfectant reached my nose.

“What-the-fuck-happened?” Claire asked in a hoarse whisper that no doubt insinuated tears behind her eyes.

I found myself gently placing my arm around her waist instead of cringing away from her hold on me as I usually would.

All I could find in me to mutter back to her was, “Why do you smell like Lysol?”

“Cleaning blood off the kitchen floor. Liam—” Claire took a large breath, and then let it go. “Liam told us you went missing…he and Luke went to look for you, I—I didn’t want your parents to see it all, so I started cleaning.”

I looked to Liam from over Claire’s shoulder and asked him weakly, “You woke them?”

He nodded, and Luke’s hushed voice filtered into the room before we could even hear his steps in the hallway.

“Oh, thank God.”

Liam asked him, “You lock the front door?”

Luke’s steps halted once he reached us all. “Yeah—there’s a little more blood in the driveway. It looks like he took off in a car.” He glanced to me, his grey eyes alarmed. “Jesus, I thought he took you...how—how did your blood get all the way to the driveway? Are you okay?”

I exhaled heavily, and Liam responded for me, ignoring Luke’s initial question and answering the latter with a quiet, “No, she’s not okay. She got away this time, but it’s pretty damn clear that he isn’t going anywhere.”

Claire released me, her red-rimmed eyes wide as she looked across my face and ushered me, “What happened?”

The protection of the house and presence of others aside, the recent memories in my mind—or what was left of them—replayed, and I felt as though my breath left me for I felt anything but safe. My line of sight drew me over Claire’s shoulder, through the hallway that led out of the living room, and scant lights that had been illuminated lit up the view of the kitchen. All I could see was the reflection of the man behind me in the window overlooking the lake…his face eerily smiling down on me…his grip over my mouth…the cool scent of soil as he held me to the ground.

Concerned that my words would leave me altogether as they usually do, I rattled off, “He grabbed me in the kitchen; I cut him and ran.”

Claire’s gaze shifted down to the knives that now laid on the floor beneath us and she murmured more to herself than anyone else, “You cut him.” She allowed her own words to sink in, blinked heavily, and said once more with an alternative inflection, “You cut him…how did he even get inside?”

“No idea—door could have been unlocked for all I know,” I replied.

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