Page 68 of Cruel Lies

"I can't help it. You're beautiful."

To my surprise, that makes her laugh.

It's quick and reflexive, an automatic little deflection with a shrug built into it. "The blue light's very forgiving," she says. "You should see me under a fluorescent. Whole different exhibit."

She flicks water at me, and it's a good joke, it's a very good joke, she is actually funny in a way that makes the rest of the world seem like it's gray and stale.

But I don't laugh.

BecauseIwasn't joking.

Not. One. Bit.

Cali's chuckle curdles and dies. I see the wariness enter her posture. "I'm not fishing," she promises. "I wasn't, like, angling for you to keep saying it. At ease, soldier, you know what I mean? I'm fully aware of what I look like."

"Tell me, then," I urge her. "What do you look like?"

She rolls her eyes, but it's a stall and we both know it. "Like a woman who had two kids and a stressful decade." She wheezes out another half-laugh. "Which is fine. I'm not, like, tragic aboutit. It's just… Todd wasn't a compliments guy." A little shrug, water rippling off her shoulders. "So I don't really have a frame for it. That word. It's not one I've had a lot of use for."

Todd wasn't a compliments guy.

She says it the way you'd sayTodd wasn't a runnerorTodd didn't care for cilantro.A preference. A neutral fact of the man's constitution. And she pivots off it immediately, already reaching for the next joke, the next deflection, because the ground she's standing on is uncomfortable and she wants us both off it fast.

But I've stopped hearing her.

Because something has gone very still and very cold in the center of me.

Ten years.

The man had her for ten fucking years. He woke up next to her—this—every single morning. He watched her carry his children and bring them out of her own body, watched her build a company out of nothing but her own mind, watched her laugh, watched her cry, watched her breathe, watched herbe. Ten years of a front-row seat to the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in my life.

And he never once told her she's beautiful?

No—his crime was even worse than that. He didn't just deprive her of it; herippedit away from her.

Bastard. Utter fucking bastard.

I have hurt men for less than this. I want to correct things. But a bullet would be too clean and a concrete coffin in the East River would be too fast. Even if I had a lifetime to do it slowly,whatever I did to Todd Bradshaw would never come within a country mile of how much pain he's actually earned.

But it's not the time for my revenge fantasies.

Cali is watching me. And whatever is showing on my face has stopped her mid-joke. I will not let her think for one second that any of this cold is pointed at her.

So I move.

I pull her close with a hand on each perfectly formed hip. Her breath goes shallow. Her hands come up and find my chest, over the old seam under my collarbone, resting gently against my overheated skin.

I lift one hand out of the water and I put it against her jaw, my thumb along her cheekbone, tilting her face up to the blue.

"Here is what I know," I tell her. "I have sat across a table from you three times now. I've seen you from up close and afar, in fluorescent light and blue. And I am telling you, as a fact, under oath, in front of one octopus and a great deal of kelp?—"

She laughs as I go on.

"— that you are the most beautiful thing I have ever been in a room with."

"Ronan…"

"You don't have to believe me tonight," I reassure her. "But soon enough, you will."