“Yes, master. Sorry, master,” she taunts me. She pauses a beat, then adds, “Only, maybe you could have told me you weren’t planning to send me to my deathbeforeyou tied me up and tortured me with that knife.”
In the back seat, Everest lets out a strangled sound.
“You didn’t use the safe word,” I tell her, my own voice choked. “You could have put a stop to it.”
“Yeah.” She leans back against the seat. “I guess I could’ve stopped the part where you were fucking me with the handle.”
A weird hybrid between a cough and a laugh reaches me from the back.
“But I didn’t realize I could use the safe word to keep fromdying.”
“I wasn’t going to kill you,” I breathe, doing my best to focus on the road, because I don’t want to add an accident to the list ofshit I’m dealing with right now. “You should’ve known that, Lia. I wouldn’t have killed you.”
“Okay, Logan,” she says wearily.
Despite everything, Everest must feel bad for me, because he leans forward and says, “You know, Lia, he hadtwenty-sevenbroken bones.”
“Shut up,” I snap.
She glances up at me, her neutral mask cracking once again, and pain flickering in her eyes.
“Twenty-seven. And a bad concussion. He spent weeks lying helplessly on a bed in Vale’s apartment. It’s a miracle he even survived.”
“Shut up, Everest!”
Lia’s eyes widen, and she sits up straight in her seat, the harsh glint in her eyes gone. “I’m… I’m sorry, Logan.”
“It’s fine. It doesn’t matter.” I let go of her hand and turn my full attention to the road. I don’t want her to look at me like that. Like I’m the one to be pitied.
“I never… I never meant for that to happen,” she says after an uncomfortable silence. “I never thought that would happen, when I… when I…”
“When you asked for it to happen,” I finish in a mocking tone. “It’s fine, Lia.”
She shakes her head. “I realize I deserve all of this.” Another long pause, as she chews on her lower lip. “You seem so convinced that I should justknowyou’re not serious. Maybe I would’ve known, if I hadn’t hurt you like I did. But now, I have no trouble believing you’re going to kill me. Or bring me back to my husband and watchhimkill me. You know why? Because I deserve it.” She speaks the last words in a strangled voice. “I deserve it, Logan. I know I do.”
“Enough, Lia,” I mutter.
“I deserve a whole lot worse,” she insists. “I can’t honestlyblame you for any of it.” She takes a deep breath. “Stupid. Selfish. manipulative. A bad mother. I know I’m all of that.”
Each of the words she’s calling herself twists at my heart. But I can’t deny them. After all, haven’t I called her all of them myself?
“You’re not a bad mother,” I settle on at last.
She shakes her head sadly.
“The twenty-seven broken bones were nothing,” I continue. “I would’ve broken every single bone in my body if it meant protecting you. I still would, Lia.”
She looks at me in disbelief.
“I never blamed you for that. The only thing I blamed you for—the only thing Idoblame you for—is fucking and then marrying the first guy that wasn’t me.”
She keeps her eyes glued to me, her lips parted, an emotion I can’t understand distorting her features.
“Is… isthatwhat you blame me for?” she asks softly.
“Yes.” I look away from the road again to try to make sense of her face. “Of course it is. Why?”
She hesitates. “It’s just… I didn’t really have a choice about that, Logan.”