God of Pain novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: Eighteen

The headlights crossed the wall, slowed, and kept going.

Cormac had the window open and half his body out of it before the sound of the engine faded.

"Neighbor," he said. "Night shift."

He pulled his head back in, and his hand shook on the sill.

I had never seen his hand shake.

"Who paid for her heart, Cormac?"

"The hospital had a fund."

"Don't lie to me in your own kitchen."

"Livia." He rubbed his face with the ice pack, and winced. "Tonight I can't. Let it go for tonight."

Down the hall, the bathroom tap ran and stopped.

Maeve came out, said good night to Detective Biscuit, and shut her bedroom door with great ceremony.

The apartment went quiet.

Cormac stood up too fast, and swayed, and I caught him around the ribs.

He hissed through his teeth.

"I told you," I said. "You do feel it."

"Don't make a big thing of it."

"Where's your room?"

His room was at the end of the hall, narrow, with a bare mattress and a stack of library books.

On the wall hung a single photograph of a man with his arm around a small boy, both of them squinting in the sun.

I made him sit on the bed, and I kneeled between his knees, and began cleaning the cut on his lip.

He let me.

His eyes never left my face.

"You are the worst thing that ever happened to me," he said.

"Thank you."

"I'm serious."

"So am I."

I pressed the cloth to his brow, and he closed his eyes, and I saw the long muscles of his throat move when he swallowed.

My hand slid down by itself and rested flat on his chest.

His heart was slamming against my palm.

"I'm eighteen," I said quietly. "My birthday was September ninth. Yours was in July, so you're eighteen too."

His eyes opened.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm saying we're both adults."

"Livia."

"I'm saying I watched ten rounds of fists hit you tonight and I wanted every one of them dead."

"That's not a good reason."

Keep reading free with an account. Start God of Pain from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.