Hush Hush #2 (15 page)

Turned on by his bossiness and the sharpness in his voice, I take one last look around before I lean forward. At least we seem to be in the quiet part of the street; all of the activity is either up ahead, or behind us. No one’s close enough to the car to see what we’re doing—I think.

His cock is hot and ready for me when I press my lips against it. I open my mouth and trail my tongue across his salty skin, tasting him, devouring him. Liam shifts in his seat, tilting his body towards me. The tip of his cock enters my mouth.

“Close your eyes,” he commands.

I obey. The world turns dark as I shut them tight. Using my tongue, I explore every ridge and curve of the head of his cock. My hands continue to run up and down his shaft, moving in tandem with the rhythm of my head. His hips begin to move along with me, his cock moving deeper and deeper into my mouth. It slips across my tongue. A groan slips from my throat, making my lips hum against his shaft.

“Pull up your dress. Let me see how wet you are,” he instructs.

My heart beating faster by the second, I do as he says. My dress is now bunched up around my hips, my naked pelvis fully exposed as I sit in the passenger’s seat of his car.

“Now play with yourself for me.”
 

I can feel something deep inside me stir with excitement.

My hand just begins to slide toward my clit when a car passes us with a loud whine, blaring its horn. I jolt upwards. Our heads snap toward the source.

“Get outta our neighborhood!” someone jeers, the sound of the voice trailing away with the car. My heart jumping, I watch it retreat down the street, then turn to Liam.

“Do you think they saw us?” I ask him, gathering the fabric of my dress and smoothing it back down over my legs. My voice trembles.
 

Liam shakes his head. “I don’t think they noticed what we were doing. I think they were just looking at the car. I suppose it makes sense that we’d attract attention—we don’t exactly blend in, do we?”

“No, I guess not.”

We sit in the car for a few moments in silence. The mood is ruined. Liam groans and zips up his pants. I smooth out my dress again nervously, then fix my wild hair. My heart is still pounding like a jackhammer in my chest.

Liam reaches for the door. He turns to me.

“Are you ready?”

I nod.

“Fine. Let’s get this over with,” he says for the second time. And we get out of the car, off to that blue house down the block, to the one thing in the world that Liam’s afraid of.

As we make our way down the sidewalk, passing the woman at her garden and the lawn chair dwellers, his hand reaches for mine. He squeezes tightly. I turn to him, my mouth forming an “O” of soft surprise at the intimate gesture. For the first time, it seems, Liam’s need for me runs deeper than hands on skin.

We are across the street from the blue house when Liam halts suddenly. He stares at the house with narrowed eyes. His nostrils flare.

I watch him, waiting for him to spring into movement, to start crossing the black river of pavement that separates us from the house. But moments turn to minutes, and still Liam doesn’t move.
 

I ask him gently, “Are we going in?”

He shakes his head.

“That would only make it worse,” he says below his breath. “But I needed to bring you here. I needed you to see.” He looks at me suddenly. “You wanted me to show you who I am. And for that to happen, you need to understand the things I’ve done.”

Liam’s shoulders rise as he gathers a long, steadying breath.
 

And then he begins: “His name is Finn. We were in the same fraternity, and we shared the same friends, so I guess he was my friend by default. But I didn’t like him, not particularly.” His hand swings up to his shoulder and tugs at a leaping, agitated muscle. “When he realized who I was, what my last name was, suddenly he was everywhere—at house parties, at the bar, even the grocery store. Like a gnat that doesn’t leave you alone. And he had this needling voice—it was always just a little too loud, like he needed to talk over everyone else. As if whatever he said was
that
important.”

As he speaks, I can see the window curtains ripple faintly. A shadow moves behind them.
 

Does Finn know we’re out here?
I think.

Liam continues: “When I moved back here after college to join the family business, I found out that he had moved to New Orleans too. He said it was a coincidence, but I was never sure.”
 

He pauses, reflecting. His eyes are pale and unfocused, gazing back into his past.

“I agreed to meet him for beers for a while, out of loyalty to the fraternity,” he says. “But it ended pretty quickly. Everyone in the bar would stare at him because he was talking so loud. It was embarrassing. And anyway, all he ever did was yammer about my father’s company. It was obvious that all he wanted to do was dress up in a suit and call himself a businessman…even though he was as dumb as a rock.”

“And so…you stopped seeing him? That was it?” I ask, wondering where he’s heading.

“That
would
have been it. But he managed to find a way to my father, who agreed to give him a job. Finn was thrilled, naturally. He thought he’d get to put on a tie, own a Corvette. Live the high life.”

Liam swallows hard.

“But my father had…
other
purposes for him.”

A shudder creeps down my back. Suddenly, the air feels cold; I wrap my arms around myself.
 

Liam shifts his gaze over to me. His eyes are filled with hesitation.

“Tell me,” I whisper.

He sighs.

“It starts with my mother,” he says. “She does a lot of charity work. You’ve been in New Orleans long enough—you’ve probably seen her photo in the paper from one of her galas or receptions. Back then, she was the chairwoman of the board for a literacy organization called Every Page, Everyone. Have you heard of it?”

I shake my head. I’m sure I came across the name at some point during my research, but if I did, it was just a minuscule detail that I had ignored, deeming it unimportant.

“It’s all right, I’d be surprised if you had. It’s not around anymore,” he says, casting his eyes downward. “Anyway, my mom had organized a gala for them. It was a big success—ten thousand dollars per plate, celebrities making appearances, the whole nine yards. All the proceeds were supposed to go straight to the charity.”

He draws in a breath.
 

“But then it went missing.”

I can feel my eyebrows rise. I didn’t think the Hawthornes could get any more despicable, but apparently I was wrong. Stealing from a
charity?
How cold-hearted does a person have to be, in order to do something like that?

“It wasn’t all supposed to disappear. Just a little bit, just enough to lump in with the actual expenses from the event. But there was an error, somewhere down the chain. Someone misunderstood my parents’ instructions, and then just like that—
poof
—the whole pot of money was gone. And there was no way to put it back without calling attention to ourselves.”

“What does Finn have to do with this?” I ask.

Liam grimaces. “We knew the authorities would come asking questions. It was inevitable. So my father needed to bring someone in who they’d look at instead.”

“A patsy,” I breathe out, realizing.

Liam nods. “Scapegoat. Fall guy. Whatever you want to call it. The point was—we had a problem, and he was going to take care of it for us. Even though he didn’t have a clue.”

“But that wasn’t the first time, was it? Your family’s let other people take the fall for them before, haven’t they?” I say quietly. My parents’ names are on my lips.

He nods.
 

“So how did your dad do it? How did he make Finn the patsy?”

“It wasn’t him,” Liam says quietly. “It was me.”

Somewhere down the block, I can hear the laughter of teenagers, and the
whack
of a rubber kickball as it bounces against the pavement. But the sounds feel like they’re miles away; here, in front of this desolate little house, somehow it feels like we’re deserted from the rest of the world.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“My father asked me to handle it, so I did,” Liam replies. There’s an edge to his voice. “I convinced Finn to register with the charity as a volunteer. It didn’t take much—he obviously wanted to impress me, so all I had to do was ask. I pulled some strings and put him in the accounting office, and then had his paperwork doctored so his start date began before the gala. It was easy. Easier than I thought it’d be.”

I stare at him, trying to reconcile his words with the man standing in front of me. There’s a weariness, a heavy guilt, in Liam’s tone. It’s not the voice of a man who could do such heartless things.

“You didn’t feel bad about framing him?” I ask.

“I felt nothing,” Liam admits. His eyes shift away. “It just felt like another day in the office to me. All I had to do was make a few phone calls, and that was it. And if there were some consequences, what was it to me? It’s not as if we were buddies.”

“But you ruined his life,” I say heatedly without thinking. I regret it instantly, bracing myself for Liam’s furious reaction—but to my surprise, he nods in agreement.

“He was sentenced to twelve years. He got out in eight for good behavior. And now he lives here.” Liam gestures morosely to the house across from us. “Trying to pick up the scraps of his life. No thanks to me. I think about him a lot, you know.”

“You do?”

“Every day,” Liam confesses. “Sometimes I’ll drive past his house on my way home from work. It’s out of the way, obviously, but I keep doing it. Over and over. It’s a habit.”

“Why would you do that? To intimidate him?” I narrow my eyes.

“To remind myself,” Liam says, “of who I really am.”

I look up into his eyes, taken aback by the self-loathing in his voice.
 

At that moment, the curtains in the window shake violently. It’s unmistakable now—Finn is inside, and he knows that we’re out here. Watching him.

“I didn’t think he’d be home in the middle of the day,” Liam murmurs, his eyes widening. “We should go, before he sees us.”

“I think he already has,” I say, keeping my gaze on the rippling curtains.

Liam’s hand wraps around my wrist. “Let’s go for a walk. I need to explain myself to you.”

I gaze up at him curiously. I knew I was going to see something terrible here. The tale of Finn and his ramshackle house is sad, though not surprising. It’s a storyline that’s become familiar. And as despicable as the charity robbery might be, it’s still more or less in line with what I’d expect from the Hawthornes.

But the guilt in his voice—
this
I didn’t anticipate.

“Okay,” I say, nodding. “Let’s go.”

15

The Spanish moss hangs low from the ancient, twisted live oak trees. To our left, a swan preens itself at the edge of an old bayou. We are crossing through City Park, and on any other day, I’d be appreciating the beauty of the scenery—but right now, all of my focus is on the criminal beside me.

I can feel Liam’s eyes on me, waiting for me to say something.
 

“When did you start to feel guilty about what you did to Finn?” I finally ask.

He’s thoughtful for a moment. “It wasn’t just one moment. It was a thousand little ones. I’d see the name of an old fraternity brother in the paper for getting a promotion, or completing a big business deal, and my mind would flash back to Finn. And I’d think ‘huh, he won’t get to do that.’”

We walk onto an old stone bridge draped across the bayou. The breeze sends heavy ripples across the surface of the water. The wind is starting to pick up.

Liam continues, “I didn’t even realize what I was feeling at first. I couldn’t put a name on it. But it started to happen more and more, and each time it would make me feel a little worse. Like paper cuts. One little paper cut isn’t a big deal, but too many and it becomes unbearable.”

“And that’s what you have now? Lots of little paper cuts?” I ask.

He grimaces. “You could say that.”

“Would it help, do you think, to knock on his door and try to make amends?” I suggest.

Liam scoffs. “And expect that a ‘sorry’ is enough to make up for the eight years I stole from his life?” He shakes his head at the thought. “And even if it somehow could, I’d be a liar if I went to his door. I’m no better now than I was.”

My eyes widen. “Why can’t you stop, if you dislike it so much?”

“It’s not an option,” he says heavily.

“Come on, what’s the worst that’ll happen? Your parents will get mad?” I scoff.

But he just shakes his head sadly and keeps walking.

We descend from the bridge and continue down the path together in silence. The skies are turning dark and cloudy; a storm is coming in. The birds shriek out above us, dashing from treetop to treetop.

“So how did your family spend it?” I ask after a few minutes.

He blinks, caught off-guard. “What are you talking about?”

“The money that was supposed to go to the literacy charity,” I say. “How did you spend it?”

“We didn’t,” he replies.

Now it’s my turn to be surprised. “What are
you
talking about?”

“My father’s the founder of a national financial conglomerate. Do you really think a few extra hundred thousand is going to change his life?” he says. “The money was never for us. We were simply helping to move it.”

My breath is quick in my throat. “Then who was it for?”

He takes a step towards me, moving his body close to mine. I can smell the cologne on his skin. “Sophia, I’m surprised you haven’t learned this lesson yet.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s that
everyone
has someone they’re working for,” he says. “There’s no such thing as a ‘free man.’ And anyone who claims otherwise is a fool.”

Suddenly, a thousand questions spring to the tip of my tongue. But before I can utter a vowel, Liam brings his hand to my cheek. His touch is gentle, barely grazing my skin, as if somehow he’s afraid that I might shatter like a china doll if he grips too hard. There’s a sadness in his eyes. It’s deeper than I’ve ever seen before.