Page 42 of Veiled in Brick

I don’t know why, but the sight of the frayed fabric made me whine, “Oh, no.”

Liam’s grip that had remained on my bicep tightened. “Talk to me, Zoey.”

It wasn’t until he shook me slightly that I was able to croak, “Some guy followed me home, I—” Liam’s eyebrows flew up, but he said nothing, awaiting the next words out of my mouth. “I…he chased me—”

Liam spat out, “He fucking did this?”

“Y-yes.” The word came out in a stutter. “He pinned me down near an alley but I—I kicked him in the balls and ran like hell.”

He nodded, absorbing the information that I told him, and the only sound that he made before turning to the doorknob was the shuddering exhale that he let through his nose. I reached for his wrist to stop him.

“Please don’t leave,” I whispered.

“Zoey, he could still be out there—”

“I don’t want to be alone right now, Liam, please.” I quavered as I said his name and his face pinched together, clearly torn on bounding out into the night and remaining here with me. I begged him once more, “Please.”

He sighed, moving to flip the deadbolt on the door, and pulled me back to him. I let him hold me, an arm around my waist and a hand at the base of my neck.

“We should at least call the police,” he spoke gently from above.

My voice took on the occasional extra inhale as I spoke. “No—no use; I didn’t get a good look at him. He was be-behind me—”

His arms tightened around me further, and there was no need for me to say any more. His thumb brushed against my hairline, and I breathed easy. It took a minute or two for his embrace to soften, and he peered down at me.

“Are you okay?”

I nodded in response. I knew he didn’t believe me with the concerned nature of his intense stare. It worked its way right through me, and I looked down to my hands, turning the palms up. There were bloody scratches all along the heels.

“Oh,” I muttered, tentatively touching my right hand’s wounds and noticing that they were damp with blood. “I didn’t know they were all—”

“Go.”

He pushed me toward his couch and gestured for me to sit. I did, all the while keeping my palms up, and when I glanced back to him, he was looking intently through the peephole on the door. He stayed there for a moment, assumedly waiting to see anything or anyone, and finally backed away, his shoulders sagging with an exhale. Liam moved to stand before me then, and I held out my hands as he looked at them. He reached down, squeezing my fingers with his to angle the scrapes to his line of sight. He let me go, walked to his bathroom, and returned quickly with a bag of cotton balls and a small bottle of some sort of cleanser.

I objected, “I’m fine, Liam.”

He sat down on the cushion beside me and gave me a pointed look that made me huff out a breath and roll my eyes. I offered him up both of my hands without further complaint. Liam wet a cotton ball with the cleanser and took my right wrist in his, his fingers engulfing it gently as he held me still. The material touched my palm, and I sucked in a quick breath.

“Sorry,” Liam muttered.

I replied, “It’s just cold.”

The scar above his lip twitched with the smallest of sympathetic smiles, and I watched him as he tended to me carefully, touching each bloody streak with the damp cotton ball. His compassionate stare made tears well up in my eyes, and as Liam grabbed a second cotton ball and began to move to treat my left hand in the same fashion, the wetness spilled over my cheeks. He glanced upward for a beat several seconds later and froze.

“Zoey,” he spoke my name consolingly, and it made me whimper. “You’re not okay; what can I do?”

He was clearly referencing the near assault…or, I supposed, the beginning of an assault that I then prevented by landing my heel in the exact right position.

“It’s not that,” I responded quietly. “Please, just ignore me.”

“What is it?” he pressed lightly.

I let out a short, bitter laugh. “There’s just…a lot going on.”

Liam nodded, his dark eyes inspecting my face, tracing every tear stain. He had a pained look to him, as if he knew what was going through my mind, or, rather, that he wanted to erase it altogether. He swiped at my palm with the cotton ball once more, focusing intently on each individual scratch until there was no more to be done. His grip softly squeezed my wrist, he gently scratched his nails up the back of my hand until his fingers met mine, and he remained there. He brushed his thumb over the pads of my fingertips as he looked to me hesitantly. There was a question in his eyes that he didn’t speak aloud that spurred a longing within me that I was unable to verbalize.

I held his gaze, feeling my breaths halt and my stomach somersault as he continued to graze his fingers over mine. I allowed myself to revel in the depth of it all until my tears had dried, only the salty streaks remaining on my cheeks.

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