Page 54 of A Forgotten Mistake

Jesse flashes me a picture of him cuddling on the couch with a tarantula. Matthew visibly shudders when he sees it.

“Gabriel, I’m starting to think your cat isn’t so weird,” Liam announces.

Matthew leans in to whisper in my ear. “Told you. Acts like nothing’s wrong.”

“Liam, could we talk for a minute?” I ask.

“I don’t know if I feel comfortable leaving Cole alone with Jesse. He’s a bit creepy.”

“Look at her with this little Santa hat I made her!” Jesse says as he shows Cole, who looks less than impressed. But Liam dutifully gets up and follows me out. The issue is that now everyone in the main office is staring at us.

“Paige,” Michaels says when he sees him. “We need to talk about what we need to do.”

Liam simply waves him off like Michaels has just told him that he borrowed a Post-it Note. “I don’t plan to press charges against Kenny Marsh. I think I might have actually been mistaken. It was just… it was on my mind recently. And it was just that something he said sounded like something the man I mistook him for said. I apologize for the scene. I will apologize directly to the chief. Gabriel, what did you need?”

Michaels just stares at him for a moment, so I usher him into an empty room and shut the door.

“Are you okay?”

Liam beams at me. “I’m fine. Did you miss me? Did you witness my child-taming skills and realize that I’m the ultra man?” he asks as he kisses me. How the hell did we get here? He grabs me around my waist and pulls me in like we’re just going to start making out right this second when I canfeelthe tension in his body. He might be fooling everyone else into thinking things are just fine, but he can’t fool me.

I pull back, and when he goes in for another kiss, I put my hand between us. He doesn’t mind. He just starts kissing my hand without hesitation. He’s making sure each fingertip gets attention as he kisses his way down the row. “I love your fingers. I love you. I love everything about you.”

I pull my hand away and he looks almost upset about it until I grab his face in my hand. “Liam, stop it.”

“Stop what?”

“Stop… this. Talk to me. You can’t just… you can’t excuse what he did, and then just… what? Make him disappear? He could be telling them the name of the last person, the one who killed your mom,as we speak. They could find out he’s dead or missing or whatever the fuck they think happened to him. And then if this guy just disappears as well?”

He tilts his head, fixated on kissing my fingers like that’s the only thing in his life that matters.

“Liam, please.”

At the desperation in my words, he presses his lips close to my neck, and I’m convinced he’s just going to continue kissing me when he says, “I’m going to kill him.”

I shake my head. “No, no, you don’t have to.”

“But I do. And I can’t if he’s in prison. He’s going to lie and say that he played no part, and I’m going to tell them that I fucked up. I messed up. And I’ll play the card of ‘I was traumatized seeing my mother’s head slammed into a fucking wall, I must have made a mistake,’ andthenI’m going to kill him. Let me kill him. Please let me kill him. Gabriel, I have to kill him.”

He’s acting frantic again. It’s like he can’t catch his breath.

I reach up and smooth his hair back. “Liam… I need you to think. I need you to think really fucking hard. If you were a detective… if you were looking in from the outside and suddenly this man disappeared… and the other man who killed the person’s parents disappeared… who the fuck do you think you’d start looking at? The son, right? I can’t lose you. I love you, and I can’t lose you. And if you kill him, I’m afraid I’m going to lose you.”

Liam’s fingers dig into my back. “Please.”

“You’d riskeverything.Everythingfor this.” It’s not a question. It’s a statement and he knows it.

“FUCK,” he hisses as he tucks his head against my shoulder. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”

My fingers cradle his head as I try to convey how much I love him. How much I need him. How much I’m afraid of what will happen if he goes through this the way he wants. “I’m sorry. But not him. It can’t be him.”

I gently guide him into a chair, and I give his lips a soft kiss. “Please.”

He slowly nods.

I open the door and find Michaels not far away, waiting for us to come out. I nod to him, and he hurries over and steps into the room.

“Paige, I’m so sorry that it’s come to this. But we might finally get the closure you need,” Michaels says.

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