Page 50 of Veiled in Brick

“You should not be here.”

“That’s what Brenda said—”

“Well, Brenda would be right, Zoey, what the fuck?!” He placed the full force of his frantic gaze upon me, and I crossed my arms, the insinuation that I had done something wrong in this situation setting me on edge. “What, were ya just gonna wait here like bait?”

I retorted quickly, “I thought it would be a bad idea to go home since he knows where I. Fucking. Live.” He groaned, hissing something unintelligible to himself as I continued to speak. “So, excuse me for asking you to get here before Bee left,” I remarked snidely. “I was trying to not get raped. Or killed. Or whatever the fuck else he want—” The familiar sound of the bell chime signifying that someone had entered the store rang into our ears, and Liam glanced toward the source of the noise, his body stilling at the sound. I sighed. “I gotta go work.”

He huffed out a loud breath. “We could just go,” he suggested softly.

I wasn’t sure how I stood my ground as his quiet begging almost made me cave, but I did so with a murmured, “I don’t want to let this guy control my life, Liam.”

His head moved slowly from side to side, clearly unhappy with my response.

“If he does show up,” he spoke slowly, “visit me in prison, yeah?”

“Liam—”

“Hello?” A woman’s voice called through the store, and without a further thought, I yelled back:

“Coming!”

My time at work was uneventful. Well, uneventful save for the stolen glances I had shot in Liam’s direction. They always ended in shifting eyes or gruff coughing to break whatever tension I had built, and I cursed myself for it. The longing looks that I allowed myself as he lounged, perused the store, or hummed quietly to himself as he waited for my shift to end made my chest clench. I couldn’t decide whether it was from fear of my potential inability to maintain our platonic friendship, fear of the unknown, or fear of my feelings themselves. But that was certainly what it was—fear.

Thankfully, there were several occasions when Liam had regained his typical upbeat spirit, and I followed right along with him while we trudged through the dreadfully long hours remaining. When there weren’t customers to tend to, Liam busied himself by thumbing through the clothing racks, every so often holding up a particularly revealing piece and holding it against himself.

“Yay or nay?” he would say, holding an item like a bright red, lace, see-through bralette against his chest.

I rolled my eyes with every item he displayed, chuckling a variation of, “Put that back, Lee,” and he would oblige with a smirk on his face.

At one point, he called out, “Can ya get me a bigger size, Zo’?!”

Unaware that he had wandered into the dressing room with the largest size we had of a white, pleated skirt that he was unable to pull over his thighs, I cackled as I glanced into the room he occupied and yelled, “What are you doing?!”

As amusing as the time was, between his bouts of altogether Liam-esque behavior and our occasional locking eyes, he was looking back toward the glass windows with nervous snaps of his head. The sky having turned dark, the visibility low and the foot traffic on the sidewalk slowed to a crawl, the outside held an ominous appeal. With little to no lamp lighting and the inability to see all the way across the street, there was an air of the unknown about it. I would catch his glimpses towards the night, and as he would notice me watching him, he would plaster a large smile on his face. I knew better, though, because those smiles would never reach his eyes.

Liam stood behind me as I locked the front door to Zest, the dim lighting outlining his frame that towered over me and shadowed onto the sturdy wood. I dropped the keys into my purse, their soft clinking sound oddly loud in the still air. We walked silently, and I found myself taking a large breath as we approached the space where I scraped my palms. I let it out in a ragged sigh, and his head turned to me.

“All good?” he asked in a murmur that rang in my ears.

I met his gaze and shrugged, for I didn’t want to sound weak. I gathered that he must have seen the uncertainty in my eyes when he placed a guiding hand between my shoulder blades. The dress I wore had a low, scooping neckline, and his fingers flexed right against the skin on my back. I exhaled a slow, shaking breath for an entirely different reason then, and we ambled on.

We arrived at the apartment complex with no incident and as we ascended the stairs, Liam’s touch left me. I felt my lips pull down in a slight frown that I was unable to hide until he muttered in question:

“You want a drink or something? We could watch a show.”

I truly wanted to. We had done so countless times before, after all, but the electrical current running underneath my skin that I was unable to subdue was ever-present, and the moment felt…different. I was only able to hum to myself in thought, debating whether I was one to fight or one to flee, when we approached the space between our respective doors. I stepped on a small piece of something very solid, the disturbance in my footing pressing into the soles of my shoes, and I looked down. It was a rather large wood chip—a slim chunk about two inches long edged with a cream-colored paint that was akin to the interior walls of these apartments. I lifted my heel, staring at it curiously until I trailed my gaze back up. I was only able to see Liam’s alarmed expression for but a moment before he cursed under his breath, digging in his pocket quickly. I looked to the source of his panic and gasped at the sight.

The entrance to my apartment was ajar. The deadbolt stuck out between the door and the jamb, its silver color shining in the dim hallway lighting. The crevasse where it should have been locked securely in place was mangled—instead of the clean cuts of a divot for the lock to sit in, I saw splinters of wood jutting out from the door frame.

It wasn’t a question of whether someone had broken into my apartment or not—that much was abundantly clear. The question was if anyone was still lingering inside.

Liam opened his door with enough force for the backside of the knob to slam against the wall in his foyer, and he hissed, “Get inside.”

The moment that I crossed the threshold, he walked past me with purposeful steps. Heart hammering, I watched him stride past his kitchen and disappear momentarily into his bedroom before returning with an aluminum bat held so firmly in his right hand that I could see the whites of his knuckles. His jaw was set in a fashion that screamed contained anger.

I called to him, “Whoa, whoa-whoa.”

I strode towards him, holding my hands out in a gesture for him to stop, and met him in front of the island in his kitchen. He stepped to the left, and then the right, attempting to shimmy around me while I continued to step in his way.

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