Tell Me It’s Right (Sweetspire #1)

Chapter 22

Chapter Twenty-Two

GRACIE

The shop is empty and dark as I pull up on my bike. Frowning, I lock it up and search for the extra key Liam keeps in a fake rock near the corner of the store. He didn’t offer any details about whatever errands he had to take care of, so maybe those are running later than expected.

Which is fine. I was planning on cleaning up to take a few more pictures today, and it’ll be easier without him here.

I head toward the closet to get the cleaning supplies and wince as I catch sight of myself in the mirror. My lip is swollen, though it looks better after the painkillers I took this morning. The bruising is rapidly getting worse. It’s a deeper red, nearly purple, and it makes my mouth look twice as big as usual. It’s a good thing I’ll be behind the camera.

The shop was pretty tidy to begin with, so I finish up within twenty minutes. I double-check my phone to see if Liam texted to let me know he’d be late, but there’s nothing. He did say to meet him here at eleven, right?

The small red light on the shop phone is on, which I think means there’s a voicemail. I hesitate, not knowing what to do. I’m not sure why he’d call here instead of my cell, and handling the phone isn’t really in my job description.

I click to listen to it anyway, then leave the phone on speaker.

“You have three new messages.”

I chew on my lip.

“Real fucking mature blocking me, Liam,” spits a feminine voice. “You do realize that’s not going to make this go away, right? Man the fuck up and stop running away from all your problems for once in your life.”

“I—oh.” I try to shut it off—this definitely isn’t for my ears—but the next one starts playing automatically.

“You’ve always been such a coward. Good to see nothing’s changed. You’re so fucking pathetic, Liam. This isn’t going away. I’m not going away.”

My spine stiffens. I don’t recognize the voice, but I’m pretty sure I know who it belongs to. And I’m too far in to stop listening now.

The final message starts with a drawn-out sigh. “I’m sorry, Li. I’m just frustrated. You know how I get. I just want to talk to you. Don’t you think I deserve at least a conversation? Can you please hear me out about this? I still love you. You know I still love you. And I know you still love me too, so I’ll back off and wait until you’re ready to talk. You know where to find me.”

Not a second after her voice cuts off, the phone rings. I jump and curse under my breath as the shrill sound cuts through the air.

After a few rings, I sigh and grab it. “Brooks Tattoos?”

“Gracie, thank God.”

My heart drops into my stomach at the tone of Liam’s voice. I pull the phone away from my ear and inspect the number on the screen, but it’s not one I recognize.

There’s a hint of static, and then: “Gracie? Are you there?”

“ Liam? Where are you calling from? Why are you calling me on here?”

He sighs heavily, and there’s a long stretch of silence before he says, “The Ocean County precinct. This was the only number I knew off the top of my head.”

“The police station ? — ?”

“Yes. I don’t think they’re going to give me a lot of time, so I need you to listen to me. There’s cash in the safe in the back of the shop that should be enough to post bail. I need you to bring me the yellow envelope. The code is 7742. There’s also a spare key for my truck in there. I…well, I need you to head over to the park about two blocks from the shop and pick it up. Can you do that, please?”

Post bail.

As in he’s been arrested .

“Liam,” I whisper, knowing full well there is no one around and if anyone wants to listen from his side, they’re probably recording it. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“If you’re fucking pranking me right now?—”

“I swear to you, I’m not.”

“Why the hell were you arrested?”

He sighs deeply, and there’s a long pause before he says, “Will you come or not?”

I already have my phone out to look up whatever park he’s talking about on the map. “Liam, of course I’m coming.”

My heart races as I step through the doors as if I’m the one who did something wrong. But once I say why I’m here, it turns rather uneventful—mostly sitting in one of their impossibly uncomfortable chairs and waiting, leaving my mind with nothing to do but spiral and try to figure out what could have landed Liam in here. I just saw him a few hours ago.

The place is dingy, to put it nicely. The yellow-and-blue-tiled floor and buzzing florescent lights overhead look to be a few decades old, at least.

I rise to my feet as Liam steps around the corner but freeze as I take in his face. He’s covered in dried blood. His face, his hair, his shirt, and as he lifts a hand toward me in a half wave, I realize, his hands. His knuckles are mangled.

Wind rushes into the room as the door opens behind me. A man in a suit shoves through the waiting area, and a storm brews in Liam’s eyes at the sight of him. Liam crosses the room toward me, but then Suit Guy steps in his path, forcing him to a stop.

A muscle in Liam’s jaw ticks as he slowly peels his gaze up to meet the man’s in a way that could only be described as menacing.

“I hope you know you just threw your entire future away,” snaps the man as he thrusts his meaty finger into Liam’s face.

Liam stares at him, unblinking, that same dark, deathly rage brimming in his eyes, but he doesn’t respond. The man keeps his finger up, but he takes a step back.

“Come on,” Liam says lowly to me as he steps around the man, something urgent about his movements now, like he can’t get me out of here fast enough.

We’re nearly to the door when someone else steps around the corner.

I freeze with one foot out the door.

Miles is barely recognizable. He looks like he should be in a hospital. One eye is completely swollen shut, his lip is more busted than mine is, and half of his hair is matted with dried blood.

My gaze slowly swings to Liam as the pieces click into place. He’s already looking at me, his mouth set in a grim line.

He presses a hand to the small of my back, and I can feel the heat of Miles’s attention on me now, but I don’t turn. I just follow Liam out the door.

Neither of us says anything in the car. One look at his hands tells me the shop is closed today, and maybe many days after that. The skin is broken and bloody, and his joints are already starting to swell. He holds the steering wheel loosely like he can’t quite close his fists.

He parks outside Leo’s house, but still, we say nothing. I don’t get out of the car. I haven’t begun to process the situation. I’m still in the police station, frozen the moment I saw Miles walk around the corner.

Miles, who Liam apparently beat the shit out of. Because Liam looks bad, but Miles looks a million times worse.

I wet my lips and glance at his hands resting on the steering wheel, then turn and open the door.

“You might as well come inside to clean up,” I say without looking at him. “Those look terrible.”

It’s not until I’m already in the entryway of the house that I hear his car door open. I head for the kitchen and search through the cabinets for whatever first aid stuff Leo has. I’d laugh at the way the roles have reversed in less than twenty-four hours if any of this was at all funny.

“I can do it,” Liam says from the hall.

“Sit.”

He takes a bar stool in silence as I join him with my makeshift first aid kit and plastic bag full of ice. I grab one of his hands and start dabbing at his knuckles with a cotton ball soaked in peroxide. He lets out a low hiss through his teeth but doesn’t pull away.

When I’ve finished and moved onto his other hand, he says quietly, “I didn’t plan this.”

His brow is furrowed, and he’s staring intently at the counter.

“So your errand for today wasn’t to track down Miles and beat him to a pulp?”

Slowly, he shakes his head. “Casey—my little brother—he asked for me to present with him for Career Day. I was on my way back and stopped at the skate park to clear my head before work. And I saw Miles there. And he just…I shouldn’t have let him get under my skin like that. I snapped.”

I’ve never witnessed it for myself, but I’m not oblivious. I’ve heard the stories. The other fights, the detentions at his old school, the expulsion that landed him in public school with the rest of us. But hearing about it and seeing the bloody aftermath are two very different things.

He’s never seemed violent, at least not around me. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen him truly angry. I don’t understand how the calm version in front of me could turn into the person who did that .

Swallowing hard, I wet a new cotton ball.

“Gracie,” he says lowly.

I focus on his knuckles as I dab at the cuts.

He inhales sharply, then so low I almost don’t hear him, he says, “I need you to know…this isn’t…this isn’t me anymore. I don’t want you to think that this is me.”

I set the bloody cotton balls on the counter. I have no idea what to say, so I wait for him to continue. His brow furrows as he searches my face.

“It used to be,” he says. “The fights—but I haven’t—it’s been ten years since the last one.”

“When you got expelled.”

It wasn’t a question, but he nods.

There’s a cut through his eyebrow that I hadn’t noticed before, and I jut my chin to ask for permission to clean that one too.

He nods and clenches his jaw as I get to work.

I don’t meet his eyes as I say, “There were a lot of rumors about what that one was about.”

His shoulders kind of…deflate at that. Enough to make me pause what I’m doing.

“It was a week after my mom, and my first day back at school. My dad thought it would be good for me to get back to normal or whatever. Some stupid freshmen were talking shit in the halls. Gossiping about how my mom crashed the car on purpose to get away from my dad—or that he did it and staged the whole thing to look like an accident. I just—I blacked out. The next thing I knew one of their jaws was broken and I was sitting in the dean’s office getting kicked out. My dad paid everyone off to keep things quiet and stop the kid’s family from pressing charges.”

I press my lips together against the sudden nausea churning in my stomach. I’ve finished cleaning all visible wounds, so I focus on slathering some antibiotic ointment on a Q-Tip. Just thinking about losing my mom has my eyes burning, let alone having to listen to her death turn into the latest piece of small-town gossip. And at sixteen years old?

I start dabbing the cream on his knuckles, and I think that’ll be the end of the conversation, but then in a strained voice he says, “For the record, I’m sorry I dragged you into this and that you had to come get me. And I’m sorry I got arrested for it. I know what you must think of me now, but…I’m not sorry I did it.”

I know what I’m supposed to think, supposed to feel. Angry, disgusted. Afraid, maybe? I shouldn’t condone violence or feel any satisfaction at seeing Miles’s bloody and broken face.

And yet.

“I just don’t want you to be afraid of me,” he whispers.

I hold his gaze. I must have drifted closer without realizing it because now there’s barely any space left between us. I’m standing between his legs, the heat of his body surrounding me, his face a few inches above mine even though he’s sitting. And I just…can’t bring myself to feel any of those things.

Because despite the million memories I have of him giving me a hard time over the years, I also have a lot of other ones. The kind we pretend never happened.

Like when he’d found me on the playground in seventh grade after a group of bullies dumped my lunch out and stomped all over it. He’d wordlessly dropped his in front of me and walked away, even though it meant he’d go without.

Or the ride home he gave me in high school when he found me waiting outside after Leo got his first girlfriend and forgot about me.

And my personal favorite, my freshman year, a junior named Oliver Davis asked me out on a dare and left the entire lunchroom laughing at me when I said yes. A few weeks later when Oliver tried to do a prom proposal for some senior girl, he got through his whole little musical number, with Prom? written on the chests of the basketball players behind him, and a fart-sound simulator stashed in his backpack went off the second he opened his mouth to ask.

No one was ever able to prove that one was Liam, but the smirk on his face as he watched the whole thing go down said enough for me.

Liam Brooks has made me feel a lot of different emotions over the years, but fear has never been one of them.

“I could never be scared of you, Liam.”

His gaze softens before shifting to the cut on my mouth.

“You might want to go to the hospital,” I murmur. “I’m not exactly qualified?—”

“They’re not that bad. I can tell.” Slowly, he peels his gaze up from my lips. “Thank you. For the help.”

I stare back wordlessly for a moment, two. His eyes flick between mine like he’s searching for the answer to an unasked question. Maybe I’m looking for it too.

Finally, I say, “Why did you call me? Why not your family, or Leo?”

“They only let me make the one, and I knew you were at the shop waiting for me. I didn’t want to leave you hanging.” The corners of his mouth turn down and he shakes his head. “And…I don’t know. I guess I just immediately thought of you.”

That sends a strange, confusing jolt of warmth through me.

Logically, I know bringing someone else into it would’ve raised questions about what happened with Miles, and I’d asked him to keep it a secret. And picking his son up from jail would be far too scandalous for perfect and polished Mr. Candyman Brooks. Or at the very least, he’d hold it over Liam’s head for the next ten years or so.

Calling me was the convenient, smart choice.

“I’m not going to thank you for defending my honor or whatever,” I say, stepping back and breaking the layer of tension in the air. Because saying it out loud would make it too real.

That I liked it far more than I want to.