Page 37 of Claiming Liberty
“Whatever you need to tell yourself,” he mutters.
I rip my hand away from him and stop. “He’shelpingher,” I growl.
Peter spins toward me, his eyes blazing. “I could not give less of a fuck, you idiot. We need to leave.Now. If you want to be delusional when it comes to your boyfriend, fine, but cry about it later.”
My eyes water as I turn toward the door. I know it’s stupid. Iknow. But everything in me wants to walk back inside, find Angel and Naomi, and get an explanation for what’s going on.
He loves me. Iknowhe loves me. There’s no way this could be what it looks like.
Then why am I dying inside?
“Liberty,” Peter grates out. “Let’sgo.”
The door blurs as more tears pool, then spill onto my cheeks. Peter grabs me and throws me over his shoulder, and I don’t fight him. I stare at the front door while he carries me down the path to the boat.
I know he’s wrong about Angel. Everyone is. Iknowit. But he is right about one thing...
Chaffer is pissed, according to plan, and the best course of action right now is to get the fuck out of here before he decides he wants to know more.
8
ANGEL
THREE DAYS LATER
“You missed a hair.”
My hand, sticky with gel, pauses at my hairline as I glance at Naomi standing in my bathroom doorway. A bag of Doritos—her latest request—crinkles as she shoves a hand inside and pulls out a chip.
I turn back to the mirror and finish taming invisible flyaways.
She’s growing on me. In the three days she’s been here, she’s tried bossing me around, asked me a million questions I’ve refused to answer about Lib’s whereabouts, and drank a bottle and a half of Patron.
It wasn’t until last night when I couldn’t sleep and found her outside with her head in her hands that I saw her vulnerability. I stood in the open patio doorway for several minutes listening to her cry and watching her shoulders shake with her sobs.
I thought about going back to bed, but instead, I cleared my throat to make my presence known. I’ve never seen someone shoot up so fast.
We didn’t talk much, but she let me sit in the chair beside her while she stared at her knees pulled to her chest.
She’s scared and hurt, but she’s normally too proud to show it. Last night, she gave me a sliver of insight into the real her, so I’m pretty sure that means she’s beginning to trust me. We’ve come a hell of a long way from where we were three nights ago.
She was out of it, delusional even, when I found her at Chaffer’s. I tried talking to her, but she barely recognized me. She kept telling me she needed to find her friend, over and over, chanting Liberty’s name.
I only meant to make sure she was okay, but I couldn’t leave her like that. Digby Barton isn’t a cruel man, but cocaine is the last thing she needs. I don’t know for sure that she has a drug problem, and I didn’t ask, but most of the girls Sawyer brings to the island do.
So for now, she’s here. I paid Digby fifty thousand dollars to let me borrow her for a week, and I have no idea what I’ll do when time is up. She’s safe for now, but I can feel myself juggling too many things, and sooner or later, something’s going to drop.
“It’s almost ten,” Naomi informs me. “Are you going to the manor?”
I pull my gaze away from the mirror to look at her. “Soon, yeah.”
She crunches on a chip while she stares at me, and I can see something brewing in her mind. I step around her and head for my bedroom door.
“You know, you’re not going to be able to save that girl.”
I halt and look up before blowing out a breath.
“You can’t save me either,” she says, her voice small. “You might as well stop trying.”