Page 132 of How To Not Need You

Liv's eyes get big. Dad's do too.

“And he knows because Liv makes the gross face at you.”

“The gross face?” Liv asks.

“Yes.”

Dad's mouth starts doing a smile.

“And you do it too,” I tell him.

His smile disappears. Liv looks at him. Dad looks at Liv. There. The face. I point. “That one!”

Liv makes another funny noise and puts her hand over her mouth. Dad rubs his hand over his face. I don't know why they're making this so difficult.

“You love Dad. Dad loves you. So stop fighting.” Neither of them says anything. Honestly. Grown-ups. I pick up Hades. He makes an annoyed noise but I don't care.

“You're welcome.” I turn towards my bedroom. “And stop being silly!” Then I march down the hallway with Hades. I make it almost to my room before I stop. They're still quiet. I turn around.

“TALK!”

Dad laughs. Liv laughs too.

Finally.

I take Hades into my room and shut the door.

Operation Verandah Step is finished.

And it worked.

Probably.

Chapter

Twenty-One

Liv

Tilly’s door clicks shut and the hallway goes silent, like someone’s pressed pause on the world. My heart is still hammering against my ribs from the drive over, from running up the path with my keys in my hand and my brain full of blood and cracked skulls, and now there’s just this: Jake Reid standing barefoot in his hallway with wet hair and the kind of exhaustion that looks like it’s been carved into his face.

The glow from Tilly’s light bleeds under her door. Hades disappeared down the hallway in Tilly’s arms, apparently drafted into whatever protest she’s staging from her bedroom. The house smells the way it always does, like wood and cat and something vaguely like toast, which means Jake’s been feeding her, which is such a stupid detail to fixate on that I almost laugh.

Except I don’t.

Because Jake looks terrible.

Not just tired. Not just the kind of worn-down you get from a long shift. He looks like someone who hasn’t slept in days and then decided to stand under hot water for twenty minutes just to see how it felt. His hair is dripping onto the collar of his t-shirt, which is plain and grey and clinging to his shoulders in a way that I am trying very hard not to focus on. I almost have to visibly shake myself out of my arm candy ogling and when I move my gaze back to his face it snags on the dark circles under his eyes are so pronounced they look almost bruised. His jaw is unshaved. His feet are bare on the floorboards, and there’s a small cut on his left hand I don’t recognise, probably from work.

I want to leave.

Not because I’m angry though. Because seeing him like this makes my chest do something complicated and tight that feels dangerously close to caring, and I am not equipped for caring right now. Caring is what got me here. Caring is what sent me flying across Seabrook at approximately ninety miles an hour because a five-year-old told me her dad had fallen off a step.

A step that is currently visible through the front door, looking perfectly intact and completely innocent.

“So,” Jake says.

His voice is rough. The kind of rough that elicits a slight shiver down my spine. He clears his throat at my obvious reaction.