Page 114 of Cruel Abandon (Fallen Royals 5)

My heart beats out of control.

“What are you two doing up here?” Mom asks, popping around the corner. She squints at me. “You okay?”

I will myself to look… anything other than flustered. Because I am flustered. He was just touching me—the echo of it pulses in my core. He almost got me to admit that I like him.

Sometime in the last week, he’s lost his anger toward me and I lost my resentment. I don’t hate him. Far from it. Every day we spend more time together, pieces of my past click into place.

We didn’t hate each other before.

And the video wasn’t me.

I didn’t betray him, and the bullying certainly didn’t break me.

“Skylar,” Mom pries.

I shake my head. “I’m fine, Mom. It’s just a bit weird with everything boxed up.” And it’s true: everything is changing. It’s rattled me.

Liam peeks out the window. “My parents are home. Want to come for dinner?” He glances at my mother. “You, too, Kathy.”

I smile. I’ve always enjoyed his mother’s company. She was the sane, quiet one of the bunch. One woman in a household of men.

“I’d love to, if it’s okay,” I say.

He nods once. “I already checked with Mom about inviting you both.”

Mom contemplates him, then lifts her chin. “Sure. It would be nice to not eat alone for once.”

It’s only after she’s gone, moving past my doorway toward her own room, that I let my wince show.

“She’s lonely,” I murmur. “God, that just makes me feel so guilty. We all left her.”

Liam reaches over and threads his fingers with mine. “It’s why she’s moving, right? Loneliness is a huge motivator for some people.”

Some. “But not me,” I guess. I let loneliness live inside me for years, but it didn’t get to me. Not until the girls started going missing, until Liam reappeared, until the city slipped further and further toward madness.

“No. You’re strong.”

He pulls me up and kisses me softly. I’m not sure how to react to these gentler touches: a soft kiss here, the sweep of his thumb over my lip, the way he navigated his hand into my panties earlier.

I part my lips, pushing up into him, and he obliges me. Our tongues dance, and his teeth scrape my lower lip. I can’t suppress the moan that comes from deep in my throat. We stay like that for several minutes, our lips sliding against each other, the taste of him in my mouth. Kissing wasn’t like that for me. Before. It was dull, without emotion.

Now everything has emotion. Every action seems to rebound in my chest, in my head.

Eventually, though, it has to end. My feeling, I mean, but also the kiss.

Things will grind to a halt in me, as they must. As they have and will again.

It’s inevitable.

Sometimes I think it’s the post-traumatic stress. The complex part of it. I have trouble finding—and regulating—my emotions. Holding on to them is like trying to keep sand in my fist. Eventually, it slips away.

Every trauma since The Trauma has been waves crashing against a cliffside. As in: it doesn’t make a difference. The waves don’t make a goddamn difference to the rock, they just beat against it in vain.

“I owe you an orgasm,” Liam whispers. “And if your mom wasn’t here, I’d lay you out and give you several right now.”

I shake my head, and our noses brush. I lost my opportunity to tell him my truth. The moment has passed. The words bottle up in my throat.

He tucks my hair behind my ears and straightens my shirt.