Page 105 of Veiled in Brick

Liam’s eyes went wide. “The cops are fucking useless right now, Luke!” He struggled to keep the volume of his voice in a hushed tone. “We have nothing to bring to them; they aren’t gonna move fast enough at this rate.”

“Well, what are you gonna do, Liam?” Luke retorted incredulously, “Track him down? Drive out into the woods with a body in Zoey’s trunk? Bury it in an unmarked grave?”

“More like sink it in a lake somewhere,” Liam noted, and Luke and Claire both looked at him with shocked gazes.

“Oh my God,” Claire muttered.

Luke whispered a horrified, “You’re fucking serious, aren’t you?”

Every word spoken by the group drove home the grave reality of my life in the now and I stood, limp limbed with what felt like a hundred-yard stare, as I listened to them all debate the possibility of murder. Actual murder. Of course, the level of severity of this situation had been alarmingly clear to me for quite some time now, however, hearing certain words aloud in a planned conversation was an entirely different being. Liam’s vicious admission, though it had nearly left me breathless the first time I heard him utter the words, now felt as though it stripped me bare. Here I stood, naked and afraid, realizing that allowing Liam to fulfill what he was now taking on as his duty was something that I couldn’t bear. It did feel as though blood would inevitably be spilled, but I couldn’t have it be on Liam’s hands—the thought was too agonizing for me.

I finally stated with purpose, “We’re not going on a fucking manhunt.”

“I am,” Liam corrected me.

“No,” I told him, defiant, “You’re not. You’re not killing a man, Lee—”

“Zoey—”

“No,” I cut him off, my defense spilling out of me. “You’re not—you’re not doing this. You’re not going to hunt him down and have to deal with the trauma of what that’ll do to you for the rest of your life.” My response quickened further. “You’re not doing this because you could end up in prison. You’re not going to go try to find him and end up having him hurt you instead.” The mere idea hit me in the chest, and I trilled, “You’re not doing this, Liam, I-love-you-too-much-to-let-you-go-through-with-it—”

Liam exhaled as if the breath had been knocked from his lungs, pulling me gently by my bicep and into his arms. I allowed myself to fold into him, and he whispered into my hair from above:

“Shhh, shhh—I hear you, Zo’. Okay? I hear you.”

The tears that had been threatening to escape me spilled over my cheeks and into his shirt, I felt my shoulders shake with uneasy breaths, and his grip tightened on me.

“I want to go home,” I begged quietly. “Please.”

Liam assuaged, “Okay, okay—we’ll go home.” I heard rather than saw him speak to Luke and Claire, his words rumbling into my ear through his chest. “Give us a minute, guys?”

“We’ll grab our bags,” Claire remarked, and I heard both of them as they walked away.

Silence reached us, Liam’s hands moved to my shoulders, and he gently pushed me away to look into my eyes.

His thumbs brushed against my collarbones softly as he noted, “We’ll pack up and drive home?”

I nodded, wiping away the evidence of my crying with my palms, and muttered, “Okay.”

Liam asked, “You need to leave a note for your parents? A text?”

“Um…note,” I deduced. “Don’t want to wake them.”

“What will you say?”

I shrugged. “I’ll, ah, make up a work emergency. Early shift at Zest; something with Brenda’s kids; Noelle’s out of town—triple-time pay. They won’t question.”

“’Kay,” he replied quietly, and I moved out of his grip.

“Gotta go find a pen and paper,” I mumbled, reluctantly dragging my legs into the kitchen.

Not a word said, Liam grabbed both of the knives from the floor and followed me. I found the drawer in the kitchen near the fridge that I knew stored various random items—pens, post-it notes, paper, magnets, and anything of the like—and I grabbed what I needed. Liam turned on the sink, cleaned both knives at a leisurely pace, dried them, and snapped them both into place on the magnetic strip where they belonged. By the time he was finished, I had a pink sticky note pressed against the dark granite, a blue pen in hand poised to write, and just as the ballpoint pressed against the paper, Liam stated:

“I love you, too, y’know.”

What felt like a hollow pang hit my sternum. I set the pen down, the thoughts that had been in my mind regarding the note to my parents lost in a haze, and my tears had suddenly returned. They filled my eyes to the point that I was unable to hold them back any longer, and I allowed them to fall, uninhibited, to the countertop. I cried not because of the stress of my current state of affairs, but because of a multitude of other things. I cried because, somehow, I had absolutely zero qualms with mentioning my love for Liam aloud. Because he had just returned those three daunting words back to me. Because when he said them, it felt right. And because neither of us had the luxury of time to relish in the moment that we couldn’t get back—it was lost in the trauma of it all. And I hated that.

I glanced up to find Liam leaning against a bar stool, his dark eyes anxious as he awaited any sort of response from me.

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