Page 172 of Skalterra By Nightmare
He took a strip of bacon from the tray and bit it in half.
“I’m very sneaky. Are you ready for today?”
I grimaced and shoved the tray of food back into his hands.
“Mostly.” My stomach churned as I said it. “I have to finish my hair and make-up still.”
“I think you look fine.”
“It doesn’t matter whatyouthink,” I called from the bathroom. I leaned over the sink to get as close as I could to the mirror while I applied eyeliner. “You aren’t the admissions officer.”
I waited for a quippy reply, but Liam was quiet in the bedroom.
“What, no joke about me trying to seduce the admissions officer?” I poked my head out of the bathroom. Liam stood with his back to me and his head bowed, looking at something in his hand. “Liam?”
He turned around, still staring down at the crumpled flyer he was holding. My heart plummeted to my stomach. I’d forgotten about the stolen Riley posters I’d shoved into my backpack.
40. Synoptic Meteorology
A million excuses ran through my head, but none of them could explain away the stolen flyer in Liam’s hand.
“Why do you have this?” he asked, still staring at Riley’s wrinkled picture.
“Did you go through my backpack?” The anger that rose inside me was a defense mechanism. I knew that. If I was angry, how could I be guilty? But I clung to it. That wasmybag, after all. Nothing gave Liam the right to go through my things.
“No. It was on the floor.” Liam raised his eyes from the flyer to my face. “Why do you have this?”
“It’s probably an extra from when I reposted the flyers a few weeks ago,” I lied.
“It has Sabrina’s lipstick on it.”
My heart sank further. That first flyer we’d posted, Sabrina had stood on her tip-toes to give it a kiss, and Liam had laughed about her lipstick staining the paper.
I shook my head. I could feel my guilt written across my face, and Liam, who had only ever looked at me with kindness, even when I’d been rude, glowered back.
“I don’t know what to say,” I admitted.
“Say that you’re the one who took down all of Riley’s posters.”
“I am.” There was no use lying. He was holding the evidence in his hands.
“Who told you to do it?”
“No one.” The lie was easy, but my delivery of it wasn’t nearly convincing enough.
“You wouldn’t do this, Wren.” Liam held the flyer up. It felt like both he and the picture of Riley were glaring at me. “So who told you to do it?”
I shook my head. He loved Gams. I’d take the fall a thousand times before I ruined that.
“I told you. No one.”
He lowered the paper and nodded.
“Ethel, then.” My silence confirmed his guess, and his shoulders heaved with the weight of a sigh. “And when she told you to replace them, was that even real?”
His voice broke, betraying the hurt that lay beneath his simmering anger.
“Yes and no,” I said. “I wasn’t supposed to post new ones, but I did. Or I tried to. She took them down again after those girls came to the shop.”
