Liam thought that Austin was a meek little bunny, traumatised by Cessair’s upbringing? Liam thought that deep down, he was actually soft and sweet?Never, Austin thought.I have never been soft or sweet with him. With anyone. Only when it was a performed act, with a purpose.
“I’m not weak.”
“I know.”
“Do you?” Austin challenged. “I have never curled up in a corner and cried. I have never run and hidden”—one could make an argument he did that all the time—“I have never—never—” Offended, he couldn’t quite think of what else traumatised people did. Gary’s skin was hot and sweaty beneath Austin’s palms. “I killed someone. I ruined him with my voice.”
Liam’s eyes narrowed. Austin had never told him about Gary. He stubbornly met Liam’s gaze and let him see the truth of the statement in his eyes.
“I bet I can tell you the exact day it happened.”
The challenge surprised Austin. He couldn’t remember where Liam had been at the time. He knew he hadn’t been caught.
Liam took his hesitation as agreement. “When the academic year ended after your first year at boarding school, they brought you back to the lab. They’d run out of samples while you were at school. Deep tissue samples they couldn’t take while you were going to classes. They took them then.”
Austin went still.
Liam ducked his head, breathing out hard. “At first, they let you out for a few supervised hours at a time to watch Connor from a distance. After you tried to burn down Sam’s boat, they didn’t let you out again for weeks. And inside the lab, they’d—”
“Stop.”
Liam stopped.
Austin leapt up and paced the length of the room, trying to push those memories to the far recesses of his mind. Let them all stay buried.
“The first week of August, they got the last of the samples and let you out as a reward. You weren’t okay. That’s when.”
Austin’s breathing went shallow.
“You won’t feel like this forever,” Liam promised.
“Who are you to promise me anything?” Austin whirled on him, furious. “A useless, insipid fucking guard! A nobody! The worst of what happened to me happened under your watch, and what did you do to help?”
Liam had risen to his feet. Now he rocked back on his heels, but the pain that flashed across his face had nothing to do with Austin’s voice. It had everything to do with the words Austin was hurling at him like knives.
Hurt. Then. Crushing guilt. Liam looked as though he might crumble beneath the weight of it.
“You’ve been better the past few weeks,” Liam said, ignoring, as he always did, Austin’s viciousness. Ignoring, as he always did, the way Austin hurt him. “Haven’t you?”
Austin stopped pacing. He hadn’t been mistaken or confused. He’d never used his ability on Liam.
“You’re going to let me hurt you forever because you feel guilty?” Austin’s voice came out hollow.
“No.”
“Where is the line, then? Let me cross it now, and you can leave for good.”
Liam’s lips pressed hard together, whitening under the pressure. He forced them open and said, as if the words had to be dragged out of him, “I love you.”
Austin’s mind stalled completely.
Liam made a helpless gesture in Austin’s direction. “My parents were absolute bastards, I never got along with mybrother, and to be honest, kids have always kind of disgusted me. You, too. You were such a terror. But, God help me, something went wrong in my brain because everything you did was somehowcute.”
“Cute,” Austin repeated flatly.
“If you being a little terror was enough to change that, I wouldn’t have cared about you in the first place.” Liam forged on. “I do feel guilty, and I’ll probably carry that with me for the rest of my life. I should have helped sooner. I should have done whatever I had to do to get you away from Cessair.”
“You would have lost,” Austin said. “He would have killed you, and I would be alone.” And likely Cessair would still be alive. Cessair was gone because of many factors at play aboard theInfinitethat night. Liam’s role in taking out Rick, the mean guard with two German Shepherds, was no small one.
