Page 191 of The Liar's Reckoning

He folds his arms over his bare chest. “Okay.”

I run my hand through my hair and wish I was still inside him. Wish I could rewind and reconfigure this strange, murky aftermath. “He explained how we could call it AI and deny thewhole thing. Just keep denying and shutting it down until everyone shut up about it.”

Silas’s eyes narrow. “I know all this.”

“But…”

“Jesus,” he whispers.

“He also thought it would help to shift the focus if the press had another name to run with.”

Silas stares hard at me—hard enough to shatter something. His voice is low and measured. “You agreed to that?”

“No,” I say, keeping my own words firm. I never in a million years would have agreed to that. “Of course not. Silas, I had nothing to do with it, and I know how that sounds, but you have to understand that me being a senator is so fucking important to my father?—”

“Oh, I’m aware?—”

“I know. I can tell you’ve done your damn research.”

His laugh is harsh. “Yeah.”

“So what was that?” I ask, gesturing to the bed. “And don’t you dare fucking say it was a mistake.”

His jaw sets as he glares at me. “That was goodbye.”

I nod. My head keeps bobbing up and down as I look everywhere but at him. Finally, I see it. The leather band with the key on the other side of the bed. I go to grab it and pick up the cage, shoving them both into my front pocket.

Goodbye explains all the tears, I guess. If I’d known. I probably would have cried the whole time, too. I knew something was off, but as usual, I don’t read between the lines in personal relationships all that well. I used to be better with Silas, but not anymore.

“I believe you, you know?” he says out of nowhere.

I look at him, stunned.

“Granted, you lie a lot. You lie like—all the fucking time, but I don’t think you’d sell me out like that. Even if it helped out dear old dad. This sex worker thing, though?—”

“Didn’t come from me either.”

“Does that matter?” he asks. “If you’re the one out there defending it all the time?”

“No,” I say. He’s right. “It doesn’t.”

“And as far asthatgoes,” he says also gesturing to the bed, “I don’t have a lot of self-control when it comes to you. I think we can both agree on that.”

It’s my turn to get emotional. He has every reason to hate everything about me. But it’s getting harder and harder to believe he’s not still in love with me. And the thought of that is beyond devastating. I wish I could be half the man he deserves, because I’m still desperately in love with him, too. So desperate, every breath I take without him in my life is like water drowning me. “I don’t want this to be goodbye.”

“I can’t guarantee I’ll be in the mood if you show up here again before I go.”

“I don’t want you to go, either.” There, I said it. I was going to hate myself even more if I didn’t put that out there.

“Yeah, well… I can’t afford it here anymore.”

Blackmail me.

I press my lips shut so the words don’t come out, but the answer to all his problems is right there in his phone.

It’s even possible it would save me, too.

“I should go,” I whisper before I do or say anything else I can’t take back.

---