Page 90 of Twisting Beauty

He carried me here and dried me. He’d put me to bed and stayed, and for a few hours, not a single thing had come after me in the dark.

I let myself feel it. The warmth. The quiet. The strange safety of a room that wasn’t mine and a bed that wasn’t mine and a boy who had no reason to be kind but had been kind anyway.

That was the mistake.

A throat cleared behind me.

I turned over.

Lorcan was in the chair by the bed, slouched, with one booted foot up on the mattress. He looked devastating, the morning light drifting in soft through the curtains, highlighting the sharp line of his jaw, the way his hair fell across his cheekbone and the dark ink curling up over his open collar.

Heat rushed up my chest at the memory of my naked body being pressed against the length of him in the dark, his arm tight across my waist. I pulled the sheet tighter around me as I pushed myself up to sit, suddenly very aware that there was nothing between me and the linen.

“Morning,” I said as I ran one hand through my hair to smooth it down.

He didn’t answer right away. One arm was relaxed along the length of his armrest, turning something small, rectangular, and flat between two fingers, slow and idle, like a man considering whether he was going to play his card.

I clocked the photo as he angled it toward me.

My own face looked back at me.

For a second I didn’t understand what it was.

Then I recognized it.

Me in a purple bedroom, a vintage minidress, fairy lights strung across a headboard. Two fingers up. An easy, open smile I hadn’t worn since before any of this started.

My photo.

Stupid girl. Deargán had been explicit: take nothing of Liath’s. But I’d stolen this Polaroid off his wall anyway, tucked it into my pocket.

A talisman. Just one small piece of myself I didn’t have to bury when I’d put on Rua’s life like an ill-fitting coat.

He hadn’t just gone through my things. He’d found the one thing I’d kept for myself. The only piece of me I’d brought into this house.

The warmth left my body in one fast pull. My fingers went cold where they’d curled into the sheet.

Lorcan’s mouth curved, slow and deliberate.

“Good morning, Liath.”

My name. My real name, in his mouth.

The version of Rua I’d worn and held together snapped at the seams all at once.

I had to get out. Out of this bed, this room, this house, this whole cursed plan. Right now. Before he could do anything with what he had. Before he walked it down the hall to Alistair.

I grabbed the nearest edge of linen and dragged it around myself, knotting it hard at my chest.

“I don’t know who she is,” I said as I clambered out of his bed. “I’ve never seen that photo before.”

“Really.” He set the Polaroid down on the arm of the chair, my own smiling face angled up at the ceiling, visible from anywhere in the room. Then he stood. “Because I found it in your room.”

I made a beeline for the door.

“Please.” I kept my voice light, breezy, wholly unconcerned. “That photo could have come from anywhere.”

But he was already there. One step and he’d put himself between me and the door with his arms loose at his sides.