Page 155 of Fault Lines
I cut her off. “I want to.”
She hesitated, then nodded. “Okay.”
Rachel looked at me, and I could see the calculation in her eyes. She was still skeptical, but she trusted Livi to make her own decisions.
We left together, Livi leaning on me, her steps slow but steady. I got her into the car, buckled her in, and drove through the city with a kind of vengeance, daring the world to try and take her from me again.
At home, I helped her into bed, washed the blood out of her hair, held her until she fell asleep.
In the dark, I stayed awake, listening to her breathe, counting every rise and fall like a miracle.
I didn’t know what tomorrow would bring. Maybe more pain, maybe more loss. But for tonight, she was safe.
And that was enough.
Chapter Forty-One
I woke in a fog, stitched together by hospital-grade painkillers and something warmer, thicker—Cam’s hand wrapped around mine, gentle and immovable, as if to remind me that I was still alive and that he was determined to keep it that way. The light in the bedroom was softer than I remembered, the edges of everything blurred, like the house was refusing to show its teeth. My head throbbed, dull and insistent, but the bleeding had stopped. Someone—Cam, probably—had cleaned the dried blood from behind my ear, combed the tangles from my hair, and found a way to tuck the bandage so it didn’t make me look like a head-trauma patient in a made-for-TV movie.
The first thing I registered was the smell: not antiseptic, but the faint, citrusy ghost of Cam’s aftershave and the lemon-vanilla detergent he used on the sheets after I’d left. I inhaled, surprised at how much of me wanted to recoil, and how much wanted to sink into the smell until I drowned.
Cam was asleep in the armchair that he’d pulled up close, a paperback crumpled in his lap, the cover bent back and flecked with crumbs from the sleeve of cookies on the side table. His mouth was open slightly, and there was a crease on his cheek where he’d been using his hand as a pillow. He looked younger this way, almost vulnerable, nothing like the man who had presided over this house with boardroom authority and a god complex about never being wrong.
I squeezed his hand. He jolted awake instantly, a twitch I recognized from a hundred mornings-after.
“Hey,” he said, voice rough with sleep but edged with alertness. “You need anything? Water? More Tylenol?”
I shook my head, regretted it. The room tilted, then steadied. “How long?”
He glanced at the clock, then back at me. “Two days. They wanted to keep you overnight, but you wouldn’t stay. You threatened to walk home, blood loss be damned.”
A laugh snuck out before I could stop it. “Sounds like me.”
He grinned, sheepish, and then his face fell serious. “They said you probably wouldn’t remember much about the hospital stay. How do you feel?”
I closed my eyes, did a slow inventory. Head pounding, jaw sore, ribs tight like I’d run a marathon with bricks for lungs. But the ache behind my eyes was the worst: a raw, tender spot that felt equal parts hangover and heartbreak.
“I’ve been better,” I said.
Cam nodded. He waited, patient as ever, for me to add more.
I took the glass of water he offered and sipped, letting the coolness pool under my tongue. My gaze wandered the room: the walls were still that indecisive gray we’d argued about, but the bedspread was new, navy and clean, without the faded spots that marked our shared life. The dresser was reorganized but the wedding photo still lingered on the shelf above the vanity. I looked at it a little too long.
Cam followed my eyes. “I meant to take that down,” he said, not quite apologizing.
“You don’t have to,” I said, and I meant it. If there was anything left between us, it was built on not pretending.
He let the silence fill in for a while, the way he always did. When he spoke, it was quiet, almost deferential. “Rachel brought you a bag. Clothes, books, your phone charger.”
“My phone’s dead,” I said, remembering the crunch of it under Nate’s heel.
He hesitated. “I’ll get you a new one. In the meantime, you’re under my protection, okay?”
I raised an eyebrow. “Like witness protection?”
“Exactly.” He managed a smile, but I could see the steel underneath. “No one’s going to hurt you, Livi. Not ever again.”
For a second, the promise was so real I wanted to believe it. But I knew better. There was no such thing as safe; there was only the next best thing.
