Page 91 of The Life She Had

“Bull. Shit. I was scared, and you liked it.”

He shifted under me and cleared his throat. When he spoke, the lawyer had moved in. Brisk, firm. “Yes, I went too far, but don’t embarrass yourself by pretending you’re going to pull that trigger.”

“Embarrass myself?”

“Did I mention how poorly you bluff? You’re keeping your trigger finger on the grip. That means you have no intention of shooting me.”

I moved my finger to the trigger, just barely touching it. “Better?”

His face spasmed once, terror quickly masked by a smirk so tight a flinch would shatter it.

“You want to shoot me, Lizzy? Go ahead. Just know that the game is up. You—”

He grabbed the gun barrel and tried to yank it aside, but I held it in both hands, and it stayed pointed at his eye.

“Let go,” he said.

“Uh, why? I’m not the one who’ll catch a bullet in the face. Let go, and I’ll lower—”

He smacked the gun with his palm, and it jumped in my hand, and he fell back, and there was blood. Blood spurted from his eye.

Blood spurted from where his eye used to be.

There was a moment where I was confused. I was straddling his chest, and he was poised there, still up on one elbow, and there was a bloody hole instead of a blue eye, and I did not understand what I was seeing.

His mouth worked once. Opened as if in speech, and then his jaw dropped, and he slumped onto his back, and I still didn’t understand.

That was when I heard the shot.

No, that’s wrong. It’s all wrong. The sequence played that way in my head, but it wasn’t correct, and my mind scrambled to fix it, like a puzzle where you must place the panels in their proper sequence.

Liam’s mouth opening, as if to speak.

A shot instead of words.

Blood spraying.

A hole where his eye should have been.

So much blood. More than blood, too. Bits of bone and gray.

His jaw dropped. His elbows collapsed, and he fell on his back, staring up at the sky.

Dead.

Liam was dead.

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