Page 78 of Glass Jawed
I groan, pressing my fingers to my temples. “So you were with him.”
He nods. “Yeah.”
Silence.
It grates at me. This quiet. This weird, incomplete confession that feels like being dragged up a hill with no idea when we’ll hit the peak.
“Liam...” I say flatly. “I said I want to hear it. Are you gonna make me interrogate you or will you just—talk?”
His eyes widen. “Shit. Sorry. Yeah. I just... didn’t know how much you wanted to know.”
I stare at him blankly.
“Okay, okay,” he holds up his hands, “I’ll start from the beginning.”
And he does. He tells me everything.
How Tim confessed to Liam on text—because apparently he’d been blocked by Lucianagain. He told him he lied—said I knew he wasn’t single when I absolutely didn’t. How lying to Lucian was a last ditch effort—but a mistake nonetheless.
How Lucian had called Liam at two in the morning, asking to be picked up like a kid who’d gotten in trouble and didn’t know how to face the world.
And how, when Liam found him, Lucian was lying on the ground. In the park. Mud-streaked. Disoriented. Almost unresponsive.
“Alcohol,” I mutter bitterly.
Liam nods. “And shame. I think mostly shame.”
He walks me through the rest—how Lucian broke down while explaining what he’d done. How everything spiraled out of control. How it was never really about revenge, not at the end.
By the time Liam finishes, he’s breathing hard—like recounting it all just drained him. Like he’s reliving it too.
“So, no,” he says finally, quiet but firm. “It wasn’t an illusion. I don’t think.”
I nod numbly.
“Barista girl...” he says gently, like approaching a wounded animal. “I’m sorry. I’m not proud to call him my friend right now. I don’t like this version of him. But I swear to you—this isn’t who he’s always been. The Lucian... the one he was with you? That’s the one I knew a long time ago. But I know he wasn’t himself for a good year before you. After... Tim.”
I scoff. “Convenient excuse.”
“I’m not saying it to defend him,” he says. “I’m saying it because I want you to know where the lies started and ended. So that when you put yourself back together, you’re not confused.”
I blink. Hard.
Because that’s the thing, isn’t it?
When something breaks you—it’s not just the pain you have to carry.
It’s the confusion. The uncertainty.
The not knowing which parts were real, and which ones were just vindictive manipulation.
And I’m so tired of trying to make sense of it all.
But I fully believe Liam. I believe that he trusts his friend to have said all that in truth.
What I don’t believe anymore—what I have a hard timeunderstanding—is whether or not Lucian just created another victim of his deceit in Liam.
TWENTY-ONE
