Page 68 of We Are All Liars Here

She feels him building, the pulses that press against her walls, the sharp hitch of his breath against her lips. Stroking in and out of her, he rests his forehead on hers, the flutter of his lashes tickling her brow.

Preston’s mouth frowns, a hunt of hesitation. After a beat, he says, “I’ll never let you go, Bambi.”

Billie buries her face into the nook of his neck, wraps her arms around him—and lets herself feel the embrace of his words.

Billie’s voice is a whisper, muffled by the way she hides her face. She echoes his words back at him, “Fuck me like you love me.”

If he heard her, she wouldn’t know.

He deepens his strokes until—his cock thickens inside her. The swell of his climax comes with a deep growl that rumbles in his chest. Like his pace, he comes slow and long.

Shudder after shudder runs through him until, slowly, he starts to slump against her. Until, still sheathed deep inside her core, his weight near crushes down on her.

Then stillness.

Time halts around them.

And the only sound is the synced song of their heartbeats.

Then, he swoops down with a kiss. His lips linger near hers, he doesn’t draw back, and she feels his mouth move with the words, “We could always skip dinner and take this over to the bed… or the shower… the bathtub?”

She smiles against his lips. “You’re nuts, you know?”

The tickle of his lashes brushes her own. “It might surprise you just how crazy I can be…” he plants a firm kiss on her lips “about you.”

epilogue

Gloves, blacker than spilled ink on a night road, fit snug on the hand; the hand that reaches out for the tape. A fingertip presses against it, pushing it into the tape player.

The noise that follows is a whizzing sound, broken only by occasional churns and hisses as the player prepares the tape.

Static, blasting black and white, on the TV; the static stops. In its place is a silent video. It’s granulated and greyscale. In the frame, there are three people. One, dead; one, injured; and one, armed.

But the eyes that watch the surveillance recognize so much in the grainy visuals. The familiar corridor in the hospital closest to the small, hick town of Dosserport. In that corridor, Trevor Vanderbelt stands over Billie-George Sharp. The handgun he points at her is loosely aimed, as though just lifted to keep her in place on the floor, while he speaks; his mouth moving with words that the tape doesn’t pick up on.

Only slightly in the frame, far in the corner, a nurse is slumped dead in a chair behind the circular desk.

She’s unimportant.

Collateral.

No, the eyes watching this silent surveillance tape watch only Trevor and Billie. Not the nurse.

But the eyes pay close attention to the way Trevor’s lips curl and bend around the words he speaks. Too grainy an image to make out what he says.

In front of the TV, the gloved hand reaches for the second tape laid out on the floor. Leathered fingers pluck the smaller, clear tape from the scuffed floorboards and slide it into the cassette player.

The finger presses down on the play button.

And now, the video has audio to match.

TREVOR: ‘You didn’t just murder Henry. You butchered him.’

A button pressed; the tape whizzes as it fast-forwards.

BILLIE: ‘You didn’t care about Henry. This ain’t about him.’

TREVOR: ‘Henry was a friend.’

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