Mutual Anchors || Liam Dunbar [1]

Chapter 66 |I'm sick|

I'm sitting in the car staring at my bloody hands. I notice the way Liam looks at me, but I can't keep my eyes off my hands. "It's my fault, Liam."

"It's not, Val, it's not," he says, wanting to grab my hand, but I dodge him. I don't deserve him to touch me. I deserve no consolation. "Val, Brett and Lori didn't die because of you. I'm the one who messed up, okay?"

I hear a completely broken tone in his voice. I look at him and I see that he has a similarly broken look in his eyes as I have. "What are you talking about?"

"If I had listened to Scott, maybe things would have turned out differently. If I'd known it was a trap right away, things would have turned out differently. If I hadn't let you go alone, maybe things would have turned out differently too," he admits, then gets out of the car. I follow him at once, for he continues on. "Maybe if I had run faster, things would have turned out differently-"

"Liam," I say, but he keeps going from me to the door of their house, where's no lights turn on, so his parents are probably gone. "Liam, wait-"

He keeps his back to me and walks towards the door. "If I stopped acting like an idiot, they'd both be alive and you'd never be kidnapped- "

He pauses as I hug him from behind and press against his back. I can hear him taking a jerky breath and carefully placing his hands on mine.

"No one could have expected Gerard to do this, Liam," I whisper into his shoulder, then rest my chin on his shoulder. I figure I'm telling Liam not to blame himself and doing the same thing. But that was a different situation, I could have pushed them aside or done anything, but I didn't.

"I can't believe the crazy Argent is back," Liam mutters, leaning into my embrace. "You really don't remember the woman very well?"

"No, just her voice. Her face is in a fog," I close my eyes for a moment, because if I weren't so out of it all, I might even be able to help. "Sorry-"

"Don't apologize, Val, your life was on the line. Of course you haven't had time to look at her face," Liam tells me before I can say anything else and then unlocks the door and walks in. He watches me still standing where I am, taking off his hoodie, which he lent me earlier. "What are you doing?"

"I'm returning your hoodie and- well, I don't quite know where I'm going yet because I don't want to go home, but well-"

Liam shakes his head because he clearly doesn't like the idea of me going anywhere else. "You can stay here with me."

"Really?" I ask softly, looking up at him. Of course I want to stay here, but if he's just saying that as a courtesy, I don't want to be here bothering him.

He offers me his hand and smiles reassuringly. "Yes."

I just watch his hand for a moment and then put my palm in it.