Liar, Liar

by T. L. Martin

  Icy blue eyes stare up at me. “You can’t run, little girl,” he coughs, heaves. “Not from me.” Blood drips down the corner of his mouth. “You should know by now, I always come back.”

  My lungs are tight, cheeks wet, and cold certainty washes over me. “You should know by now that I do too. The difference is, in the end, you always lose.”

  Trapped by a little girl, too weak to move, his eyes spark with outrage, and it’s the most satisfying thing I’ve ever seen.

  Something warms the side of my face, and my eyes slide up, up, to find Easton’s gaze locked on me. Even leaning against the wall, pale and exhausted, his gaze is penetrating, so heavy with unspoken thoughts it beckons and soothes.

  “Not bad, baby cuz.” I start at the familiar voice, and a gentle hand curls around my waist, easing me to my feet. “But do me a favor and let me play with him before he passes out, yeah?”

  “Alejandro,” I whisper, relief and disbelief flooding me all at once. My hands are still shaking, and my voice isn’t much better. “What . . . ?” I look from him to Easton, then back again. “How . . . ?”

  Easton’s lips tip up, and he winces as he pushes his weight off the wall. “I’ll tell you all about it. But right now . . .” He nods toward the window. “We’re about to hear sirens.”

  Paul sputters, his eyes widen, and he tries to scoot away. Alejandro steps on his stomach, digging his heel into Paul’s gut to keep him in place.

  “Let me go,” Paul wheezes. He clutches Alejandro’s boot, but his grip is weak, his eyes roll upward, and he looks moments from losing consciousness. “Let me . . . fucking . . . go.” He grimaces, drags his unsteady gaze to the window.

  Alejandro laughs, the sound cruel and so unlike the cousin I know that it gives me chills. “Yeah, no.”

  I don’t understand how he’s so calm. The cops aren’t here yet, but it’s only a matter of time. Alarm clutches me, and I shove Alejandro’s arm. “You can’t be here. You have to go, now.”

  Easton looks between us, his brow arching, and Alejandro says with a smirk, “Always worrying about me.” He looks down at the guy beneath his boot, who’s now crying. “They’ll know I was here. I’ll make sure of it. But I’ll be gone before they catch me. I’m just gonna have a little fun before I go.”

  My gaze freezes on Paul. I track the stream of tears mixing with blood on his cheeks. He whimpers, actually whimpers, and disgust rises in my throat like bile. The longer I watch him, the more he shrinks. Monsters look so big and scary, but without someone to hurt, their stilts get knocked out from beneath them and reveal how small they really are. All this time . . . all this time, he told me I was nothing. But without me, he truly is nothing.

  A gentle touch wipes the wetness from my cheek, and I swallow, look up at Easton. He’s so close to me, gaze narrowed on my tears. He wipes another one away, his lips brush my temple, and he whispers tenderly, “Unbreakable.”

  A quiet sob chokes me.

  “Take her,” Alejandro says to Easton. “I won’t be long.”

  Easton nods and starts to wrap his arm around me, but he sways slightly, wincing. I catch him by slipping my arm under his. Panic rises in my chest. Just how badly is he hurt?

  “Lean on me,” I say quietly and take a small step toward the door.

  His weight presses onto my shoulder, but his limp gives away how much he’s still supporting himself. It’s not until the bedroom door closes behind us that I realize what Easton just did for me. Honest, law-abiding Easton. Alejandro wasn’t shy about wanting to punish Paul on his own terms, and yet, Easton walked away. I tilt my head and stare up at him, at my Easton. His hair is wild, knuckles cracked and bloody, skin ghostly. His expression is stoic and unreadable as he looks straight ahead, determined to get me out of here. An ache I’ve never known creeps its way into my heart, and I lean into him.

  Sunlight beams down on my face as we step outside. A man stands outside the door, his back against the wall, arms folded, eyes hard. He looks at me, at Easton, and then he tips his chin in acknowledgment. I know he’s here with my cousin.

  “Hey,” I say to him. “Get him out of here in time, okay? Promise me. Promise me you won’t let him get caught because of me.”

  The man nods, firmly this time, and I thank him before continuing toward the concrete staircase. Easton guides us down the stairs at his own pace, slow and steady. On the last step, he stumbles, and I barely catch him in time before we both lose balance.

  “You’re okay,” I whisper, but my voice cracks when I see how bad he looks under the sunlight. “You’re going to be fine,” I reassure us both.

  “Eva.” He winces, leaning on me more than before as we step onto the sidewalk. He pauses, and his gaze, laced with a dark and serious edge, meets mine. “I’m sorry,” he says. I don’t know how his voice can sound so rough yet so tender. “I’m so fucking sorry. He never should have found you. I promised you were safe. I promised you’d be okay—”

  “Shhh. S-stop.” I look away because I don’t understand the emotions tightening my throat. No one has ever said words like that to me. I never thought anyone would. “Anyway, I’ll be fine.”

  He nods, adjusts his weight, lightly touches my chin with his knuckles. The gentle contact spreads liquid heat through me. When he lifts my face so I have to look at him, I can’t stop more tears from spilling over.

  “I swear . . .” His Adam’s apple moves up and down. “I’ll never let anyone hurt you again.” He says it quietly, softly, but the unmistakable fire behind each word sends a warm shiver through me.

  I believe him.

  “You’ll be fine too,” I whisper.

  “Of course, I will.” It’s a raspy grunt paired with a grimace as he wavers, leaning on me more than before as we move closer to the curb. “I’ve got a promise to keep.”

  “Easton, I’m serious.”

  “So am I.”

  I look up at him, and although the seriousness in his gaze is piercing, his lips kick up on one side. Then, he teeters too far to the right, and I carefully lower us to sit on the curb. It’s not easy with over six feet of football player weighing me down, but I manage, and we both breathe heavily while the sirens finally hit our ears. Easton’s arm curls around me. Despite his pain, he holds me tightly, like someone might steal me away at any moment. He rests his head on mine, and after a moment, his breathing starts to slow.

  Eventually, bright red and blue lights flicker into view.

  “Easton,” I whisper.

  He doesn’t respond.

  “Easton, look.”

  When he still doesn’t respond, dread turns me cold. “Easton.” I give him a little shake. “Easton!”

  His tired, heavy-lidded gaze finds mine, and he gives me a crooked, knowing smile. “I like when you worry about me,” he rasps. “You should do it more often.”

  “Oh my god.” I punch him in the shoulder. He winces, his eyes shutting in pain, and guilt splits me in half. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry. Are you okay? Are you hurt there?”

  He lazily peeks one eye open at me, lips tipping up. “Seriously,” he drawls, his eyes falling shut again. “I could get used to this.”

  “Unbelievable.” Two police vehicles pull up, then two more, followed by an ambulance. My eyes narrow as a car with an FBI van pulls up behind them. “There are so many,” I muse, confused.

  Easton releases a breath, then clutches his ribs. “Yeah,” he says gravelly, “I think . . . fuck.” He tips his head upward and tries another exhale, but instead, his eyes roll back into his head.

  “Easton?”

  His body goes limp, and the dread I felt a few seconds ago pummels back with a vengeance.

  “Easton!” I place my palms on his cheeks, turning his head toward me, but his eyes won’t open. He shudders slightly in my grasp, and then he just . . . stills.

  My breath quickens. I shake him, but he doesn’t move. “Easton!” This isn’t happening. Trembling, I carefully pull his T-shirt off him, then fold it i
n half and put pressure on the wound at his back. My stomach sways, vision blurring, and I try to ignore the blood running over my fingers. So much blood . . .

  I don’t know what else to do. I don’t know how to fix him. I wrap my arms around him and squeeze gently.

  “Please, wake up. Please, stay with me.” Tears run down my cheeks as I heave against his chest.

  “You’re okay.” My voice shakes, and I repeat firmly, “You’re okay. You’re going to be fine. I promise.” But the promise is an empty wish, because the only certainty there is at all is that I’m okay. I’m okay because of him. And I may have cost him everything.

  Eva

  “Do you still have any pain, honey?”

  I stare at a rose. Deep red, with shades of pink between the petals. Blurred green ink hints at the start of a stem, but the image never fully forms. Several petals drift away from the flower, wandering past the nurse’s collarbone and beneath her peach-colored scrubs.

  The petals look soft, inviting, and I have the urge to touch them. Her skin is much darker than Mom’s, and it’s a different type of flower, but for a moment, I imagine tracing the outline and pretending it’s Mom’s lily. My fingers itch with curiosity, and I curl them lightly into my palms instead.

  “Okay,” she says. “Why don’t you take a look at the pain chart and tell me how you’re feeling?”

  The woman beside her gives me a soft smile, and I drag my gaze to a poster on the wall that depicts an array of faces ranging from smiling to crying. Then I glance back at the nurse, whose lips tilt down in a tight frown.

  “I want to see him,” I say for the hundredth time.

  From the moment Easton and I were ushered into the ambulance, everything has been a whirlwind—turbulent, at breakneck speed, and completely out of my control. I should have assumed we’d be separated, but until today, I’d never even been to a hospital. He was taken to the ICU, while I was brought to the children’s wing since I’m underage. I’ll be eighteen in two weeks. Two stupid weeks are separating us by entire floors.

  “I know.” The nurse looks at the other woman, and her brows slant in concern before I look away. “I promised to update you as soon as I can, and I will hold true to my word. I won’t forget. In the meantime, please, will you give Miss St. Claire a chance? She’ll leave if you really want her to, but we need you to know . . . she’s here for you, Eva. She’s here to offer support.”

  Tears well in my eyes narrowed on the window I’m not really looking through. I don’t need support. I need Easton. I need to know he’s going to be okay.

  From the corner of my eye, I see her step closer, the therapist I’m done talking to. I already answered everyone’s questions and recounted what happened more times than I can stand. I don’t know why she’s still here when I’ve been nothing but absent at best, rude at worst.

  Miss St. Claire takes one more step, then stops, her frazzled, shoulder-length blond hair and electric blue glasses coming into view. “We don’t need to talk anymore, Eva,” she says softly. Kindly. Her tone makes me more bitter. “It’s all right. I know your experience here hasn’t been easy so far, and I just want to help make everything from this point forward be as comfortable as possible.”

  The burn in my eyes only builds, and I release a shaky breath, gaze locked on the raindrops running down the windowpane. Unfamiliar hands and instruments—poking, prodding, invading my space. Clinical walls, strange faces, and a foreign gown rubbing the stitches on my arm. Goosebumps cling to me like barnacles, and I just want to go home yet I have no home to go to.

  But none of that matters. None of that is why I can’t stop this gnawing, continual urge to cry.

  I’ve been through worse things than having no home and spending an afternoon being probed by people just trying to do their jobs. I’ve walked through hell and managed to come out on the other side with my limbs intact and my heart still beating. I don’t need a stupid pain chart for any of this; I need the kind of chart that can’t be scaled. The kind that measures heartache and anxiety and the unbelievable desperation of not knowing if the person you love is going to be okay. Each second that passes without seeing his whiskey eyes steals a little piece of me, and if this goes on much longer, I won’t have anything left.

  Miss St. Claire’s voice calls me back to the hospital room. “You’ve been so brave, but the worst is over. You don’t have to be brave anymore. I’m here if you need me, okay? If you need anything at all.”

  Finally, my gaze slides to her. To this stranger who wants to comfort me now—now that I’ve survived The Pitts, shattered vases, and hairy knuckles. Where was she when I was alone, when I was scared, when I was robbed of everything I am? Where was my comfort then?

  Resentment settles in my chest, but my words are cool. “You’re right. The worst is over, and I got through it on my own. I may have needed you at one point, Miss St. Claire, but that was then. I don’t need you anymore.”

  The words ring with certainty, and hearing them spill from my own lips stuns and strengthens me all at once. I got through it, all of it, and now my head is held high. Maybe he didn’t rob me of everything after all.

  “Okay,” Miss St. Claire says simply. “I understand.” She nods at the nurse. “I’ll be around if you change your mind. Oh, also, I thought you might want to know, your parents are here.”

  I stare at her.

  “They’re in the ICU checking on your brother, but I’m sure they’ll be down to see you any moment now.”

  Anger, repulsion, hatred all buzz in my stomach like a swarm of bees. But at the base is a hive built of rejection. As much as I want to hate them for sending me away, I don’t. Not even a little. Not even at all.

  “Don’t hold your breath,” I whisper and shift my gaze back to the window.

  The nurse tips her chin toward the tray beside my bed. “You’re not hungry?”

  “No.” My traitorous stomach grumbles at the reminder of the tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwich.

  “You know,” Miss St. Claire says, “I’m dying for a coffee. Is there anything you want me to pick up for you in the cafe?” At my silence, she says, “My cell is on the card beside your food tray. Feel free to call me if you think of anything.”

  She’s halfway out the door when I hear myself stop her. “Orange juice,” I say, my throat parched with thirst for something I long for but can’t fill without whiskey. I turn my head toward the two women. “Please.”

  Miss St. Claire raises her brows. “Orange juice. I think I can handle that. Anything else?”

  I shake my head.

  “All right.” She disappears, and the door falls shut behind her.

  The nurse stays quiet as she approaches the computer monitor. I watch her fingers flit across the keyboard. Her nails are long and curled just enough to tap the keys with a light rap, rap, rap, and they’re painted the same shade of red as her rose tattoo. I take in the close shave of her hair, bleached a whitish blond, and the naked row of piercings along her ears. I wonder what kind of jewelry she dons when her shift ends. I wonder if she wears big silver hoops like my mom used to slip on when Dad wasn’t home.

  The longer I watch her, the more I think of Mom, and the more my throat burns. Even as a prisoner, she sacrificed herself for me. At least now, wherever she is . . . at least she’s free.

  “Okay, honey,” the nurse says, giving the screen a final tap and turning toward me. “I’ll give you a little space. But remember, if there’s anything you need, just press the call button, and I’ll be here.”

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  Surprise crosses her features. “Of course.”

  “Your tattoo . . . does it mean anything?”

  “This one?” She tilts her head, rubs the rose, and when I nod, she releases a long breath, her hand falling back to her side. “It did once. I got it when I was young and stupid, for someone who was older but stupider.”

  She stops, like that’s the end of it, but it can’t be. So, I wait and h
ope she’ll say more.

  She squints, watching me. Eventually, she breathes in deeply and continues. “Later, when I realized my mistake, I couldn’t stand the thing. I wished I could rip it off. It wasn’t until I grew up and got these”—she raises the bottom of her scrub top a few inches, revealing faint stretch marks etched into her flat, ebony stomach—“that I learned the value of scars. You can’t erase them, that’s true, but you can shape and define them however you want. In this case,”—she gestures to her stomach before lowering her shirt—“these define the beginning of my sacrifices as a mother. And in this case,”—she trails a long red fingernail along her rose tattoo—“you see these? The petals falling?”

  I nod, chewing my lip. I don’t know why my eyes sting with the pressure building behind them.

  “I added these not long ago. They’re my reminder that roses don’t last forever, and that even scars can be beautiful.”

  I stare at the rose. At the incomplete stem and the drifting petals. It is beautiful, poetic too. The back of my shoulder and upper arm bite and prickle, mocking me along the seam of my stitches. I imagine what that would feel like: to define your scars instead of letting them define you. For a second, I even allow myself to imagine me, scars and all, being beautiful.

  Easton

  Fuck, my eyelids are heavy. I consider opening them, but the last time I did, it was to searing pain, the news I’d lost a kidney, and an IV hit containing enough morphine to knock me back out within seconds. This time, when my eyes squint open, it’s to bright lights and hushed, angry whispers that make me wish for another hit.

  “Well, if you hadn’t run away when things got bumpy—”

  “Bumpy? Is that what you’re calling getting impregnated by another man and pretending the child is mine?”

  “You wanted biological children! You couldn’t have any. I did what I felt I had to do to keep our family together. Do you realize the sacrifice that took on my end?”

  “Yes, such a sacrifice to climb into bed with a man on the cover of a firefighter calendar. Despicable. Your manipulations and deceit are despicable—”