Page 71 of Glass Jawed
Shit. Part of me hopes she wasn’t joking about knowing a hitman.
“Babe—” he tries again, voice softer.
But it’s too late. The call drops. His screen lights up with the home screen, mocking him with its stillness.
He exhales hard. The sound is part exasperation, part heartbreak.
Then his eyes settle on me again.
“Get up,” he says, voice low and seething.
When I don’t move, he steps back and says it again—harder this time.“Get. Up, Lucian.”
“I can’t,” I croak, the word barely escaping my throat.
Liam exhales sharply, then crouches behind me. He hooks his arms under my shoulders and hauls me up with more strength than I expected.
All while muttering, “First Aarohi, now you. What is it with people falling apart on me?”
That makes me frown.
But I don’t get to question it—he’s dragging me toward his car like I’m a goddamn drunk, muttering under his breath the entire time.
“I don’t even know what you did,” he grits out. “But I’ve got a pissed off woman ready to have me castrated for evenknowingyou.”
Despite everything, I huff a broken laugh.
Yeah. That sounds like Kashvi.
Jesus. I don’t know if I’ll ever crawl out from under this cloud. My limbs feel heavy. The weight of what I’ve done is lodged in my chest like lead.
The drive is silent. Tense. Liam only breaks it to text at red lights—probably updating Kashvi before she burns my building down.
By the time we pull up to my place, I feel like I’ve aged a decade.
We settle onto the couch in a thick, suffocating silence. I don’t know where to start, so I just... let it all out.
Everything.
From the moment I walked into the lecture hall where I saw Rohi again, to the moment I kicked Tim out of my apartment this afternoon.
My half-baked plan for revenge. My refusal to talk about that night. My obsession with keeping things controlled—and how that spiraled into me losing everything. Losingher.
Liam doesn’t interrupt. Doesn’t offer me false comfort or ask the obvious question:What the hell were you thinking?
He just listens.
He grunts in places. Sighs during others. His fingers tighten into fists when I tell him about Tim’s visit—what he said... orimplied.
When I finally stop talking, the silence feels deafening. And I’m terrified of what he’s going to say.
“Say something,” I rasp, voice frayed. I can’t look at him—shame has me pinned to the couch.
“I...” he clears his throat, but it comes out tight. “I’m having a hard time sitting through this, Lucian. And you haven’t even told me what the hell went down tonight.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, head falling forward like it’s too heavy to hold. “I-I found some random woman at Rosalie’s and—”
“Stop!” he cuts me off like the words physically burn. “Jesus. Please.Stop.”
