“Oh my God, Alexis. How could you not tell me?”
She instantly regretted the question, but confusion and betrayal had taken hold of her tongue. “You let me work there and never even warned me. After you left, you didn’t even warn me what he was like.”
Alexis shook with indignation. “That. That right there is why I never told you. Because it’s all about you. Do you have any idea what it was like for me? Do you even care?”
“You have a responsibility to other women!”
“Do you hear yourself? You walk in here so full of judgment—”
Bile stung Liv’s throat. “I’m not judging you.”
“Are you serious? All you’ve talked about since the minute you got fired is how you’d never stay in situation like that and you can’t understand a woman who’d let this happen to her.”
“That’s not true.” Except it was. Even Mack had called her out on it.
Alexis’s expression turned mournful and furious at once. “Do you honestly think I didn’t want to tell you? To unburden myself just once of the secret I was hiding? But I knew that I couldn’t. Because you use weakness as a weapon. You’re so ashamed of your own mistakes in life, so afraid of your own fragility, that you accuse everyone else around you of being soft just for the crime of basic human frailty.”
Her words were like shards of glass. They stabbed, shredded, and left Liv bloody. Somehow Liv’s voice found its way through the wreckage to stammer out another weak denial. “That’s not true.”
“I’m not helping you, Liv. I’ve endured enough because of Royce Preston. I got out, and it’s over for me. And you have no right to expose those women and subject them to something you can’t possibly understand. If you want to be the big hero and take on Royce, be my guest. But don’t drag us into it just because you have something to prove.” Alexis’s hand trembled as she pointed to the door. “Now get the hell out of my life and don’t come back.”
Two hours later, Mack was officially worried because Liv wasn’t responding to any of his text messages. Noah, Hop, and the Russian left just after eleven.
Just before midnight, Mack texted again. I’m worried. Just let me know you’re OK.
His doorbell rang.
He barely had time to open the door before Liv barged in. He stumbled back in relief and also a little bit of anger. “Christ, Liv, where have you been—”
Her arms went around his neck, and she silenced him with her lips. Even as he went weak-kneed, the logical part of his brain recognized that this wasn’t right. Her actions were almost desperate. Something was wrong.
He snaked one arm around her middle and pulled her inside, kicking the door shut with his foot. “What happened?” he mumbled against her lips.
She claimed his mouth again, this time using the distraction to back him into the living room. He went willingly because he was powerless against the way she made him feel, against the havoc she wreaked on his senses with a single touch.
They stopped in the middle of the room, and he broke the kiss with a guttural groan. “Talk to me. What happened with Alexis?”
She burrowed her face into his chest, tangling her fingers in his shirt.
“Liv.”
She backed away, letting her arms fall against her side. “She’s been lying to me all along. For years.”
Mack swallowed against the stinging taste of something sour and sinister in his throat.
“She didn’t trust me,” Liv said, voice flat. “She said I’m judgmental. That I use weakness as a weapon.”
The instinctive need to protect her brought his hand to her face. “Then she doesn’t know you.”
Liv looked up at him with an expression that reminded him of the day when she’d come to his office and demanded that he hire Jessica. Just like that day, her eyes betrayed a battle inside—the need to believe his words, to trust him, but no idea how. But this time Mack was struck with the sickening realization that she had no reason to trust him, to believe him.
Because he was lying to her too.
He had fallen for her. Hard. And he was lying to her.
His voice was like gravel. “Liv—”
She interrupted him. “She’s not going to help us. She won’t come forward.”
“Maybe she just needs time.”
“We don’t have time!” She shook her head and faced him with an expression that usually preceded words he didn’t like. “We don’t have time to wait for anyone else to do this.”
Mack tilted