< Liam

(Liam's P.O.V.)

I called Alex and asked if I could visit him. Honestly, I was expecting him to say no. Because ever since Ivory had spoken those words, a picture of Alex torturing someone kept popping up in my head and it felt as if that was what he could probably be doing right now. But I wasn't going to think about that just yet. I couldn't. I shoved all of my thoughts in a box and locked it, only to be opened when I got to Alex.

I got in my car and drove away the very second I got his response. I pulled up in front of the Rossett mansion, the place that originally got us all doomed, and got out of my vehicle. The security guard didn't stop me so I guessed Alex must've let him know that I was coming. I walked past the guard to find Alex already waiting for me, leaning on the door frame.

"Hey." He gave me a small smile, but it didn't reach his eyes.

Does he know why I'm here?

"I need to ask you something, and I want an honest answer," I told him. But as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I felt so insanely stupid. What was I supposed to ask? 'Hey, are you a criminal?'

He looked at me for a second, then his hands softly cupped both of my cheeks as his eyes bore into mine. Once again, they were doing their weird magic where I would start falling weak for him. I wondered if he was some kind of a sorcerer . . . and if this was his way of casting a spell on me.

"You know you have my complete honesty, Liam. I'll tell you the truth . . . even if I'm not supposed to," he assured me.

I didn't want to ask him anymore. His words felt like he had a hint of what I wanted to ask. I, however, wasn't sure that I wanted him to confirm my doubts. No, actually I was sure. My heart was tugging at me to just hope that he would deny everything. I had barely just gotten him . . .

After so long had I finally been able trust someone enough to let them close to my heart this way, I wouldn't know what to do if he confirmed my doubts.

I took a deep breath, and placed my own hands on his, breaking my gaze away from his eyes to instead stare at the cross that lazily hung over his chest. Funny how I hadn't noticed it before, it looked so pretty on him.

"Do you . . . know what I saw, on the night of the masquerade?"

"Yes."

I nodded, not wanting to ask the next question that was swirling in my head but knowing that I had to.

"Are you a criminal?" I finally pushed the words out of my mouth.

Please say no, please say no, please say no.

"Yes."

That's all he answered. I sucked in a sharp breath at his words and removed his hands off of me, allowing the weight of the words to settle on me.

"Liam?" he called and tried to hold me again but I stepped back and let his hands fall at his sides.

I didn't move, just stood there frozen. He was a criminal. He was involved in whatever scandals the Rossetts got into, he was involved with the murder that had almost drove me to insanity.

But what made you forget about it, Liam? A voice inside me questioned.

It was true, I had been driving myself crazy over and over again with the incident set on repeat in my head until Alex Flynn took the honours of replacing the memory. Not for once in his presence did my mind ever go back to the murder. He made me feel at ease, but did it matter if he was involved with it in the first place? At the end of the day, he was still a Rossett.

"I won't stop you from leaving Liam," he said, making my heart skip a beat as I looked at him again.

"I would understand if you want nothing to do with me anymore. But I just want you to know, this truth doesn't overshadow the fact that I have undeniably strong feelings for you. So much so that all it took was one glance at the ball and I knew that I had to get you somehow. Your presence drives me crazy and my heart does this . . . weird fluttery flip flop thing whenever you bite your lower lip or try to fight the smile that threatens to break through your facade or try to hide the red that keeps creeping up into your cheeks." He chuckled.

Right on cue, I felt blood rushing into my cheeks again. No one had ever admitted to having feelings for me before, absolutely no one. And here he was, spilling his heart out to me. But this time, he couldn't push away the image of that night from my head. In fact, he had joined the image, standing right beside the man with the gun in his hands.

"Yes, I am a criminal. And no, I've got no pity excuses like I was forced into this or something because the truth is that I wouldn't change a thing about my life . . . except for maybe you liking me back of course-" he paused- "I have the perfect family, which I'm so incredibly thankful for, where everyone would lay down their lives for each other. I've got a beautiful sister and amazing brothers and a father who pretends to be this rock hard invincible man but takes extra measures to ensure that his children are okay. And the thing is, that at the end of the day, we're all humans. We all have feelings, despite our inexcusable lifestyle, we still have a heart and we still fall in love. I know I'm stupid to expect this but . . . you know I'll be right here. For you."

I so desperately wanted to be the fool who would just ignore everything and . . . and do what? Even if I could somehow accept the fact that he was a criminal, what was I supposed to do after that? It would be so incredibly foolish to think that everything would go back to normal. It wouldn't. Every time we'd go on a date, his, 'yes,' to my question would rest in the back of my mind.

And Ivory? Would I risk her getting involved in the mess I would step into? Would I be able to ignore the fact that it was his family that was the reason Ashton's wounds were being dug fresh? Would I forget that it was because of his family that Theo was so estranged from us?

"I have to go, Alex," it was all I could say to him. I turned but he took hold of my wrist, pulling me to make me face him again. My breath hitched and my eyes shut together in anxiousness of what was to come next.

But all I felt was a cold metallic thing being dropped in my palm. I opened my eyes. It was the necklace.

I loosened up a bit, at which he gave me another small smile, the one which neither reached his eyes nor showed his dimples. My fingers twitched with the desire to see his dimpled smile before I left, even that evil smirk was welcomed at this point.

"You don't have to be scared of me, Liam, please understand that," he said as he let go of my wrist, leaving his necklace dangling from my hand. "Keep it, I'd like knowing you have something that has hung so close to my heart for this long."

He didn't stay after that. He turned and walked away from me, disappearing behind the closed doors. I stood there with my hand hanging in the air, the feel of his fingers lingering on my wrist as I stared at the wooden door. Finally, I took my eyes off of it, my gaze shifting to the left window on the second floor. Anastasia stood there, half-hidden by a curtain. She gave me a small sad smile and then closed the curtains completely.

I drove back home silently, blocking all my thoughts as my hand still held Alex's necklace. Once I got home, Ivory instantly rushed to me, her lips didn't pull into a smile, probably because she must've guessed what had happened from my expressions.

"Hey . . . you okay?"

"I will be," I answered half-heartedly. She nodded and brought her arms around me, engulfing me in a warm hug. That was the last button.

I broke down.

Tears streamed down my face as I fell to the floor. She knelt down alongside me. I held onto her, needing to feel the warmth, scared of letting go. I didn't even know why I was crying, it wasn't like I had known him for long.

This is why. This is exactly why I should never lower my walls for anyone.

Why did I just have to fall for someone I couldn't have? What made it worse was, that Alex hadn't done anything wrong to me. I had felt so good and floaty whenever I was with him. Not once did he do anything wrong. Except for saying the truth.

"Hey, shhh. It's gonna be okay," Ivory hushed. After what felt like hours, I told her that I wanted to sleep and broke away from her to head to my room.

Pulling the door shut behind me, I trailed a soft finger on the metallic surface of the cross before setting it down on my bedside table. Moving away, I took off my coat and went to open my wardrobe. I hung my coat in its place but before I could close the wardrobe, my eyes found Alex's coat.

A small chuckle escaped my lips at my forgetfulness. I still hadn't returned it. I pulled it out and sat back on my bed, inhaling his lingering vanilla-like scent that was almost fading away.

I sighed and let my back hit the mattress, too tired to fight the sleep that engulfed me.

And for the first time since Alex had filled my mind, I dreamt of the horrific murder again. But this time the gun was in Alex's hand. This time it was his face that was sprayed with blood.

═───────◇───────═

The sound of my phone going off woke me up with a start. I was covered in cold sweat and the nightmare was still all too clear in my mind.

I pushed my hair away from my eyes and picked up my phone. It was Ivory.

"Iv?" I spoke up and slumped back down on my pillow.

"Yeah hi, umm, do you think you can drop by the bar? There's a small envelope sitting at the dining table, I was hoping you could bring it to me?"

I frowned at her words and looked up at the clock to check what time it was. My eyes widened in distress as I stared at the big nine on the clock. I had slept through the whole fucking day.

"What the heck, Ivory! Why didn't you wake me up? Tristan would be pissed that I skipped without informing!"

"Hey, hey baby bro, calm down. I dropped by on the way and made up a lie. I just . . . thought you could use a day off," she explained. I did what she said and calmed down. She was right, there was no way I would've wanted to go work today.

"You should've at least woken me up. I'll be there in a bit."

"Alright then," she answered and hung up.

I reluctantly got off the bed, picked out some random clothes and hurried to the shower. Everything felt so excruciatingly slow. My mind was filled with Alex and all my movements were robotic.

Once I was done, I grabbed my set of keys and my phone. Just as Ivory had said, a small white envelope was sitting on the dining table, I picked it up and rushed out.

I locked the door behind me and drove to the club. As usual, it was heavily packed. The neon sign that hung in front of it was more visible than any other thing as it shone in awfully bright purple colours. Unpleasant music was being blasted so loudly that I could hear it even from my parking spot. Just as much as I hated this place, this was Ivory's ideal hangout.

Joe, the security gaurd nodded at me in recognition, allowing me to step inside. I tried to navigate my way through the crowd, ignoring a couple of drunks that came sauntering towards me and made a beeline for Ivory. I couldn't understand how the stink of sweat and alcohol and god knew what other things didn't bother these people. What part of going deaf due to the obnoxiously loud music was enjoyable?

Not able to find her, I decided to call her up.

"Hey, where are you?" I asked.

"Right behind you," she struggled to say and true to her words, I turned around to find her pushing through a bunch of people to get to me.

"Seriously, why do you work here?" I rolled my eyes and handed her the envelope. At that exact second, someone spilled their drink over my shirt.

"What the-" I looked around to find the culprit but they had already disappeared.

"You should clean up. Do you think you can wait a bit? My shift would be over in an hour or so."

I shook my head in displeasure and told her know, walking towards the washroom.

Looking into the mirror, I sighed in relief when I realized that it was only a small stain. I turned on the tap and splashed some water at it, desperately hoping that the stain wouldn't stay. I loved all my clothes and drink stains were practically my enemies.

It was hopeless, I realized soon enough. As soon as I turned off the tap, someone entered with a loud curse, closing the door behind them. I froze for a second before I saw the face. It was Alex.

He stopped in his tracks when he saw me. "Liam?"

I gulped, not knowing what to do. My eyes shifted away from his face and instead settled on his hand that was clutching his waist tightly. My eyebrows pushed up when I spotted a hint of red, soaking his shirt more and more the longer he stood there. "That doesn't look like a wine stain."

He looked down at my words and his mouth formed up in an 'O' shape as if he had completely forgotten about it.

Unable to stop myself, I moved towards him and placed a hand on his wrist, pulling at it so I could get a better look.

"It's . . . uh, it's nothing . . . " he trailed off but my fingers brushed against the fabric of the soaked area of his shirt, confirming my suspicions. It was blood. Instant worry shot through my body. Alex Flynn was bleeding.

"You're fucking bleeding, you don't tell me it's nothing!" I yelled, angry at his casual dismissal.

He was about to answer when his phone rang off. He struggled to pull it out with his left hand and finally placed it on his ear, his left hand still intact on hiding the wound from my view.

"Ana?" he responded to the phone.

"Yeah . . . no." His expression turned sour as he gritted his teeth. "He tried to stab me."

As soon as he said that, his eyes turned back to me, knowing that he had just accidentally admitted to my accusation of the stain being blood.

"I can't come home! Xavier will be pissed if he saw me like this! He had specifically told us to lay off, remember?" he whined into the phone before he hung up

Not giving him a chance to speak, I grabbed his hand and gave it a light pull. "You're coming with me."

"Li-"

"I said what I said. Now fucking move," I told him firmly and dragged him out of the washroom. I had already made it clear to Ivory that I wouldn't wait around, so I pushed him in my car and then got in myself.

"Not the hospital," he said as soon as I started to drive.

"Why not?" I frowned at his words. He gulped and stared out of the window as if he was waiting for me to figure it out by myself.

My face twisted in confusion before I heard police sirens going off and it settled on me. "Because it's the first place where an injured criminal would go," I voiced out my realisation.

I almost asked him what had happened but I realized that I didn't really want to know. What would he say? It was evident from the sirens going off that someone had been killed . . . or, at least, gravely injured. What else could it be?

Alex Flynn had just killed someone . . . or multiple someones. And yet, here I was, driving him off to my house because he was fucking bleeding. How pathetic of me.

I looked at him to find him resting his head against the window, a small smirk threatening to pull up at his lips.

"What the hell is so funny?" I asked, shifting my eyes back on the road.

"Well . . . last time you said that you were never going to get in a car with me again," he answered. His lips were now in a full-fledged smirk. His signature one.

I wanted to feel angry but I couldn't. Not when the smirk I had so desperately wanted to see on his face yesterday was sitting right in front of me. I almost felt relieved.

I pulled up in front of my house and got out. My fingers pushed the keys into the lock and I pushed the door open.

"Follow me," I told him and headed towards my room. As soon as I opened the door, I realized that this would be the first time he stepped into my room. The room was all neat save for the ruffled sheets and the pillows that were all over the bed and . . . dammit, the coat!

Alex was a little slow behind me, probably because of the injury. I had no idea why I did it, but I grabbed the coat and immediately pushed it under the bed. I no longer wanted to return it. I mean, he hadn't asked for it so he couldn't have been missing it that much.

When he finally reached my room, I told him to sit down on the edge of my bed and went to bring the first aid kit from Ivory's room.

Closing the door behind me, I finally sucked in a deep breath as my face flushed from the words I spoke next. "Take off your shirt."

Alex raised an amused eyebrow at me.

"So I can look at the wound," I added to push any other thoughts out of his mind . . . or mine.

He nodded, straightening up a bit to pull off his shirt, deliberately doing so extra slowly to put up a show. Before I could even help it, my eyes were already taking in the sight of his godly naked chest. It would be an understatement to say . . . he left me breathless. Wings spread open were inked on his chest, beautiful sharp feathers, stretching upto the edges of his collarbones. They were connected in the middle by a thin cross, it's lower end stretching all the way to his navel.

"You can touch, if you want." He cocked his head to the side, snapping me out of my daze.

"No thanks," I glared at him and grabbed the bottle of liquid disinfectant, kneeling on the floor in front of him. Focus, Liam. Focus, I told myself, even though I was finding it incredibly hard to do so.

A small hiss escaped his lips as I poured the disinfectant over the wound, causing me to flinch. My heart was beating intensely fast due to being in contact with his skin directly. I desperately tried not touch the inked part of his skin, knowing very well that I would loose my control the very second I did.

I dabbed his wound with cotton, his right hand flew to my shoulder, grasping it tightly. His hold tightening on my shoulders as the alcohol burned the skin and rid the wound of any dangerous bacteria. Small curses escaped from between his lips as he tried to keep his breathing steady, his eyes squinted shut tightly.

"Better now?" I asked when I was done. I was about to get up but he placed his free hand above mine, holding me in place.

"It hurts," he said, making me falter. His eyes bore into mine so deeply, our faces merely inches away as he stared down at me.

"It's supposed to," I answered, unable to look away.

"I don't want it to."

Is he even talking about the wound?

I broke away my gaze from him and got up, his hand still holding mine. "Me neither," I whispered and finally pulled back my hand.

After washing my hands and putting things back in their place, I headed back to my room but stopped when I heard him talking inside.

"I'm okay . . . don't worry too much . . . I'll think of something . . . Ana, stop worrying, okay? I'm good. It was nothing serious anyway."

I kept standing in front of the door as I recalled his earlier conversation in the washroom, he had said he couldn't go back home. Did he want to stay? No, that's of course not an option, I scolded myself. I was supposed to cut off with him, not invite him to sleepovers. But before I could go in and tell him to leave, the sound of keys jingling came.

Ivory shouted to let me know she was home.

I let out a sigh and pinched the bridge of my nose. "Alright! I'm just going to sleep now," I shouted back.

Fuck, I cursed before going inside my room.

"That's a lot of pillows you've got." He pointed behind him. He still hadn't bothered to put on his shirt and was casually leaning back on his elbows.

"Yeah, it's a weird sleeping habit of mine." Makes me feel less alone, I added in my mind.

I opened my wardrobe and stared at it for a good five minutes to find something that'd fit him. In the end, I found some backup pyjamas Ashton had left for our occasional sleepovers and took one out.

"It's not mine, but it's the only thing I'll have that'd fit you," I told him and handed it to him.

His eyebrows frowned as he took it from me. "You letting me stay?"

"What else do you think? I helped you this much, so I guess I can tolerate you a bit more till the morning. And-" I pointed a warning finger at him when I saw the smirk coming back to his face- "keep your hands to yourself."

"Aye aye captain." He gave me a salute.

I told him he could change in the room while I went to shower. When I came back, he was already asleep on the left side of the bed. I was a little relieved that he chose to sleep on the left, I had been a little afraid if just in case I accidentally pressed against his wound while sleeping.

I lay down beside him and shifted my body so that my eyes met with his closed ones. I stared at him, studying the beauty in the way each and every one of his features looked so insanely perfect. Looking like this should be illegal, I thought to myself and sighed.

Even though I felt like such a creep for staring, I couldn't just turn away. His lips were parted slightly, hair falling over his closed eyelids. He seemed so peaceful in that moment. I had no doubts that by the time he left, his vanilla-like scent would already be soaked into my sheets and pillows.

I leaned in a little closer, letting his scent engulf all my senses. Slowly, I pulled up my hand near his face, letting it hover centimetres away from his dark strands, itching to tuck them away.

Shaking my head, I turned around, deliberately facing my back towards him so that I won't keep staring at his sleeping form. I couldn't fall asleep still, after what felt like an hour or two, I was still awake, listening to the sounds of his inhales and exhales.

He seemed so normal that it was slowly becoming harder and harder to remember why I couldn't be with him. I gasped silently when I felt his arm snake around my waist as he shifted closer to me. His hot breath now falling across my neck, making goosebumps rise on my skin. But he was still very much asleep . . . unlike me.

When the morning came, I couldn't even remember the time I had fallen asleep. All I could remember was the sense of comfort I felt whilst being in his strong embrace. I wanted nothing more than being able to remain in his arms forever, but he was already gone when I woke up.

I rubbed the sleep away from my eyes and noticed his coat hanging on my bedside. Shit, he must've seen it.

I pulled it towards me when I saw a note stuck on it.

Still very much yours.

Once again, it didn't feel like he was talking about the coat.

🥀

Then only for a minute
I want to change my mind
'Cause this just don't feel right to me
I wanna raise your spirits
I want to see you smile but
Know that means I'll have to leave

-Happier
(Bastille and Marshmello)

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(WORD COUNT: 4300)

QUESTION OF THE CHAPTER:
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