Page 58 of Taming Liberty

He comes toward me, and my body goes rigid. I stare down at the floor, breathing fast through my nostrils.

He grabs my chin and raises it so I’m forced to look at him. Absolute nothingness stares back at me.

“Fine.” The finality he injects into the one word sends shards of glass scraping my eardrums.

No.

Oh God, no.

I whimper as his hand tightens around my jaw, his anger searing me. When he jerks away abruptly, I jump.

“You have ten minutes to pack a bag. It’s hot this time of year, plan to dress accordingly.”

He turns and storms from the room, slamming the door behind him.

I gape at the closed door, unable to move for a solid minute. His words are hazy in my mind, and it takes me some time to realize when he said, “fine,” he wasn’t saying, “fine,” to killing me. He was giving in.

He’s taking me with him.

13

Angel

Ican feel Lib’s eyes on me as her fingers tap on her leather seat. Without even looking at her, I can tell by the nervous vibe she’s putting off that she’s chewing on her lip, a bad habit of hers, but I don’t take my eyes off the clouds we pass to confirm.

My jaw aches from being clenched so long, and I just shook out the hand that had been laying on the armrest balled into a fist. My anger is hardly justified, but I’d rather be angry at Lib than think about the fact that my mother is dying.

“Could you stop?” I snap.

Lib ceases her tapping, the space in the too-small cabin closing in even more with the tension she exudes.

“Sorry,” she murmurs. I glance over long enough to see her put her hands in her lap.

I return my stare to the clouds outside my window and try not to think about the last time I saw my mother. It was five years ago, and I was in my childhood home less than a day when I realized what a mistake it was. I boarded a plane that night.

She looked good then. Vibrant and strong like the woman she’d always been. Everyone’s parents die, but my mother seemed immortal.

What will she look like now? Frail and weak?

I can barely picture it.

“Thank you for bringing me,” Lib says, interrupting my thoughts. I’m grateful for it. “Just so you know, you don’t have to worry about me. I won’t say a word about anything to your family or anyone else.”

I huff out a laugh and shake my head, not taking my eyes off the window. “Good one.”

“Really,” she insists. “I don’t have faith that the Spanish police would be able to do anything about the island immediately, and I know Sawyer wouldn’t sit around and wait to get caught. I wouldn’t risk all those women’s lives like that…”

I let her words sink in, trying to decide whether or not I believe them. Maybe, but it’s irrelevant. I’m not taking her around my family, and she won’t be anywhere near the police.

“I’ve made arrangements for you to stay with a friend of mine.” Not totally true. He’s a visitor of the island whom I’ve never even met, but he has a place for Liberty to stay that’s discreet enough not to give Sawyer a heart attack. “It’s an hour away from where I’ll be, but I’ll visit every few days.”

“I’m not going to stay with you?”

“Isn’t that what I said?” The sharpness of my tone slices through the air, and I take a deep breath to settle myself.

She did nothing wrong.

She’s fucking sad and lonely, and it would be wrong to blame her for not wanting to go back to the manor.

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