Page 30 of Tell Me It’s Right

“I already got it,” Liam says, and I feel him set my bag at my feet.

“I did manage to get a few good pictures,” I say as the engine roars to life and he pulls away from the curb. “And the rest of what I was planning to do today I can do from home. It’ll probably have to be, like, eight hours from now…”

“Gracie,” he says, sounding…perplexed. “I don’t care about the work. It’ll get done another day. Don’t worry about it.”

I press my lips together as the car turns, not sure if the steadily building nausea is from my head or motion sickness.

“I didn’t realize you still got these,” he says after a while.

“I didn’t either. It’s been years.”

“You know Mak started to get them after pregnancy? She’d never had them before. The doctor said it could just be temporary with her hormones out of whack and whatever. She said they were worse than giving birth had been.”

I hum, not knowing how else to respond. I barely know Liam’s sister, Makayla. She’s the oldest of the Brooks, putting her a good ten years older than me. She also got the hell out of town the moment she turned eighteen, so the last time I saw her, I was in elementary school. I didn’t even know she had a kid.

And I’m far too busy concentrating on not throwing up in Liam’s very nice, verycleantruck.

A low, primal groan escapes me as I fold forward and put my head between my knees.

“Gracie?” says Liam, a hint of panic in his voice now. “Do you need me to pull over?”

“How close are we?”

He turns the AC up higher and points the vents in my direction. “Two minutes?”

“I can make it.” I have no idea if that’s true, but I guess we’re going to find out because there is no way—no way—he is pulling over and letting me puke out of the side of his truck. It’s not like we’re on some two-lane highway in the middle of nowhere. We’re in the center of this very small, very gossipy town. I don’t need the witnesses, and my pride can’t handle beingthat personwho threw up on some random person’s yard or a public sidewalk.

But the second Liam pulls up to Leo’s house, all bets are off. Liam tries to be helpful by opening the door and offering his hand, but I push past him, hurrying for the bathroom. I barely manage to open the toilet seat before the contents of my stomach surge up. I retch a few times, the action making the pounding in my head amplify, then slump against the wall, exhausted.

This is not good. In my experience, how a migraine starts sets the tone for how the rest of the day will go. If I can take my medicine and stay in the dark right at the start, it’s like I cut the headache off at the knees and it never builds to its full potential.

Today, it’s clear, will not be like that.

Liam knocks quietly on the door.

“You can leave my stuff out there,” I murmur.

A pause, then: “I won’t have you falling down the stairs on my conscience.”

After flushing the toilet and rinsing my mouth in the sink, I swing the door open. “Didn’t know youhada conscience.”

His grin almost looks relieved as he steps aside to let me pass, and true to his word, he follows me to the basement. But even once I make it down the stairs, he doesn’t leave. The sunlight is streaming through the windows in full force, and I curse myself yet again for not putting up curtains.

I groan and burrow under my blankets for cover.

“Hold on,” Liam mutters, then jogs up the stairs.

I hear him return, but don’t come out of my cave. That is, until he startshammeringsomething.

“What are you?—?”

He’s balanced on top of a stool he must have brought down from the kitchen with a hammer in his hand and nails between his teeth. He secures a dark blue towel over the first window, casting darkness over the bed, then moves his setup down the wall to tackle the other one. I wince, but the relief from the darkness far outweighs the pulses of pain from the noise.

“Good enough, yeah? Hopefully Leo won’t mind a few holes in his walls.” He grimaces. “And his towels.”

“Thank you,” I say softly. I don’t think I could manage to do it myself right now, and I wouldn’t have lasted long in this room. I probably would’ve ended up curled in a ball in the bathroomwith a towel shoved in the space beneath the door to block the light.

“What else do you need?” He hops down from the stool and discards the hammer in the corner, looking around like he’s eager for his next task.

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