Page 18 of Beautiful Liar

When Casera didn’t answer right away I turned to look at his profile. He looked haunted. “No, we don’t have that information or the authority.”

“So they’ll never know.”

Casera didn’t say anything. I thought about Jack dead in that shithole with his mother. Of Dad and Miguel. Amir. “Was it the drugs?”

“I can’t divulge—”

“Are you even going to investigate who’s behind the drugs?” I cut him off, anger fueling me. “Because you damn well know those drugs were meant to kill.” The croak in my throat forced my eyes to water. “This whole shit iswrong. Justwrongand you know it.” I wiped the tears from my face, then broke out into a coughing fit.

Everything hurt.

My throat. My head. My body. My soul.

I wanted Dr. Casera to tell me everything was going to be okay. That he’d fix it. That he’d at least fuckingtry. I shouldn’t have expected anything. That’s what I got. A big fat nothing. He stopped in front of Harper House and handed me my medicine. My vision watery from pain, I snatched the bag, got out of the car, and slammed the door hard. Anger better than this sense ofwrongnessraging inside of me. This feeling of being insignificant. Who would fucking care if I died? They wouldn’t even tell Nick. He’d never know. The reapers would come and bury me in an unmarked grave. Or why even bother with the grave at all. I’d be cremated and discarded in the wind.

I knew the house was empty as soon as I walked in. My pile of unopened mail in a box under the foyer table. Letters from Maddox I didn’t care to read. The living room was dark. No vibration of noise. Ever since I was a kid, I could sense other people. My superpower so I could hide as needed. I’m sure Morgan was hiding from me now, probably begged Dr. Casera to move him somewhere away from me. People around me tended to die.

I climbed the stairs to my room, which once belonged to the guy I let die. Like some fucking omen I’d set on myself for being an idiot.

The clothes on my body burned my skin. I tossed the brown paper bag on the bed and emptied the pockets of my scrubs. Some dollar bills and Kieran’s bracelet with his obol. The one he gave me when I thought he loved me. The obol was something every student in Arcadia received when they started school. A coin engraved with their family sigil and imprinted with their DNA. Wren had put Jack’s coin inside his mouth the night Kieran killed him. So that cops would know not to investigate too deep into his death.

I removed the thin garment as fast as I could. Showeringwith the hottest water I could tolerate, I scrubbed myself raw. My body had turned into a live wire after I’d been purged from the drugs. The echo of false memories carved into my mind still unfaded.

Truths within the lies. I just couldn’t pull them apart.

Except for the screaming, everything else was a haze of memories. I leaned my hand against the tiled wall, letting the hot water turn cold. My skin pruned. The voices in my head still an echo somewhere at the edge of focus.

Miguel, my dead brother, taunting me. “He hugged you when you cried. Made you feel better.”

“Fuck you!” I cried out, my ruined voice brittle.

“He made you a pussy, never letting anyone touch you.”

“Fake it, Tomás. So long as he doesn’t turn you into his bitch.”Daniel had said when moms had sold me.

Daniel had pimped me out just like moms.

Maddox wanted me dead.

And everyone else that could protect me from him was dead.

I was alone andaching.A pain so deeply rooted inside of me that I couldn’t yank it out.

I stood in front of the bathroom mirror. I didn’t even remember getting out of the tub. I lifted my eyes, my reflection stared back at me. I slammed a fist into the fucker. The mirror’s surface shattered, spreading like a web. The pinch of pain brought me back into the present. I punched the surface again, then again, until the shards fell on the floor and blood dripped down my fingers.

I couldn’t break.

I couldn’t let him break me.

I couldn’t.

I wrapped my bleeding hand in a towel, dressed in a pair of joggers and nothing else, and sprinted downstairs to thekitchen to get some fucking ice. Because with my luck, I’d lose the fucking hand which happened to have been the hand that Kieran branded me. I should’ve peeled the brand off my skin. It’d meant shit, just like his fucking obol.

I opened the freezer and pulled out a bag of corn. I pushed the door closed when I felt someone behind me.

I dropped the corn.

“What did I tell you would happen if you ran from me?” The voice I knew so well whispered in my ear. All the tension lifted and for a slight second, I let myself be vulnerable. Kieran had come for me. The reaction to him that got me in this mess in the first place—trusting Kieran. Giving him space in my heart. But he hadn’t come back when he promised. He hadn’t been there when I needed him. Ignoring my body’s response to him, I wasn’t my dick, I moved. I just wanted to feel physical pain, so damn tired of the pain I couldn’t reach inside, the itch I couldn’t scratch burrowed under my skin.

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