Page 160 of Fault Lines
“You need to block his number,” he said, not a suggestion.
I bristled. “I can handle it.”
He snorted, all patience gone. “You shouldn’t have to.”
I didn’t argue, because he was right.
But I didn’t block the number, either.
That night, just past midnight, the phone buzzed again. I’d left it on the nightstand, face-down, hoping that ignoring it would make it go away.
The name flashed on the screen. I answered without thinking.
“Livi?” Nate’s voice was raw, slurred. I could hear music in the background—something angry, distorted. “Why are you doing this? Why are you with him?”
I didn’t answer.
He kept going. “He’s never going to make you happy. You said that yourself, remember? You told me he was dead inside. That you felt like you were sleeping with a corpse.”
I winced, because it was true. I’d said exactly that, once, in a moment of drunken honesty. I’d never imagined it would come back to haunt me.
“You need to let me go, Nate,” I said, voice low. “You need to get help.”
He laughed, bitter and broken. “You don’t get to tell me what to do. You’re not my fucking mother.”
Cam had come into the room, drawn by the noise. He watched me, eyes narrowed, as I put the call on speaker.
Nate’s voice grew louder. “You’re going to regret this, Livi. You’ll see.”
I looked up, met Cam’s gaze. His jaw was clenched so tight it looked like it might shatter.
Nate kept talking, the words dissolving into threats and curses, his rage so wild I couldn’t even make out the meaning.
I ended the call, heart thudding.
Cam didn’t say anything. He just walked to the front hall, grabbed his keys from the ugly blue bowl, and slammed the door behind him.
The sound echoed through the house, rattling every picture frame and loose glass on the shelves.
For a second, I just stood there, staring at the silent phone, trying to breathe.
Then I realized what Cam was about to do.
And I was terrified for all of us.
∞∞∞
The house was so quiet I could hear my own heartbeat, a wet, arrhythmic thump echoing in my ears. I paced the living room, eyes flicking to the front window every time a pair of headlights swept past. It was raining hard, the kind of rain that erased all boundaries, turning the street into a river and the sky into an endless gray bruise.
I called Cam, once, then again. He didn’t answer.
I left a message, voice shaking. “Please, Cam, just come home. Don’t do anything stupid. Please.”
There was a kind of cosmic joke in how quickly I’d become the woman waiting up for her man, praying he wouldn’t come home in handcuffs or a body bag.
The phone rang at 1:00a.m., startling me so badly I nearly dropped it. I expected Cam, or maybe even Nate. But it was Rachel.
“Livi,” she said, words spilling out in a rush. “Where’s Cam? Jackson just called. He said Cam left him this weird voicemail about ‘taking care of things’ and then hung up. I’m freaking out.”
