Page 170 of Skalterra By Nightmare
“‘Dr. Brenton may have made advances in his field that will continue to inform the study of geophysics for decades to come, but he was not there when his daughter was born. He did not see her first steps or hear her first words. He did not stay up late comforting her the first time a boy called her a bitch when she was twelve. He did nothing to make sure she had three meals every day for eighteen years, nor did he help provide the roof over her head, and at the end of the day, Eliza Warrender, Smut Author, is a household name while Maxwell Brenton, PhD, is not.’” Liam fell against the headboard next to me, still clutching my essay. “Wren. Are you kidding?”
“‘Household name’ was a bit of a stretch,” I admitted. “But she’s been searched on the internet way more times. I checked.”
“You’re amazing.”
Mom had called me amazing. And Gams. And Orla probably would too. But Mom and Gams were biased, and Orla only knew the ideal, Nightmare-version of me.
No one who wasn’t related to me had ever looked at me—the real me—and called me amazing. I felt myself blush, and I took a bite of cake so he wouldn’t be able to tell how much the word meant.
“I told him I wrote my essay about him,” I said.
“And?”
I rolled my head against the headboard to look back at Liam.
“And he assumed I’d writtengoodthings. About him and his research.”
“Stop. No, he didn’t.” Liam laughed, then straightened up with sudden conviction. He laid the essay out on the comforter in front of him and held his phone over the pages to take a picture.
“What are you doing?”
“Fancy scientist like him, he’s got to have a public email, and I think he’d love to read all thegoodthings you wrote about him.”
“No!” I lunged for the phone, laughing, and Liam tried to wiggle away, but I managed to pin him down with a move Ciarán had used on me once.
Unlike Ciarán, Liam didn’t fight back, and he grinned up at me from the pillows as I held his hostage phone aloft.
“Please?” he said.
“He’s friends with the dean,” I said.
“Then I’ll send it tomorrow after you get accepted.”
I weighed the pros and cons for a moment, then rolled off to collapse on the pillows next to him.
“After I get accepted,” I repeated, setting the phone down on his chest.
“Promise.”
His face was very close to mine. He could probably see the red spots under my eyes from the capillaries I’d burst from crying too hard, and I wasn’t wearing make-up. Eyeliner was my favorite weapon when it came to camouflaging my lack of eyelashes, but it probably wouldn’t have helped at this close distance anyway.
The longer he stared, the more the laughter in his features faded into something more serious. I wanted to flinch away and hide, but my hand was still on his phone, resting on his chest, and I couldn’t bring myself to draw it away.
“What happened to your eyelashes?” Liam whispered, his voice suddenly low and careful.
“That’s a rude question,” I whispered back.
“I’m a rude person.”
I suppressed a laugh, afraid of breathing too hard in his face.
“No, you’re not.” I could feel his chest rising and falling with his breathing. “I pull them out. I can’t help it. Most of the time I don’t notice I’m doing it.”
“Will they come back?”
“Yeah. And then I’ll pull them out again.”
“Does it hurt?”
