Page 82 of The Kiss of Deception

Something thumps in my chest, like Miles can set the rhythm with his bare hands.

At a loss for better words, I rasp, “Yeah.”

“Yeah?” He mimics me in term and tone, still memorizing the heart on my skin and musing. “I don’t think I ever wanted to be your friend.”

My heart races inside my chest. It always does when he’s near. Running from something. Running for something. Equal parts afraid and excited.

I pretend I don’t feel it. He pretends he doesn’t hear it under his fingertip.

We’re good at that—pretending. Pretending these little moments never happened. Pretending they’re just pretense.

Although… Perhaps it’s all me.

I pretend, Miles lets me.

I fear and await the day he no longer will.

Chapter Twenty

Zoe

The one.

I never believed such a thing—I still don’t. But as I stare ahead, I understand it a little bit—the concept.

It’s a feeling that erupts from the very core of my being, a powerful recognition that’s equal parts certainty and belief.

This is the one.

The house of my dreams. From the first time I saw it, as the second option the realtor showed us weeks ago, I knew there wasn’t a place more made to my image than this.

It’s in the way I look at walls and windows and see more than structure and cement. In the way I exhale and feel more than just now.

I can hear it, the soft tapping of little paws in the marbled tile, giggles and tantrums, and the pitter-patter of rain in the high ceilings freezing into soft snowflakes only to melt and bloom into green that rustles beneath the warm, whispering wind.

This house was designed to be a home through countless changes of seasons.

But not mine.

Alone in the middle of the driveway, I stare at my first love at first sight. White and beige brick stone crawls in irregular rectangles to sharp slopes of asphalt shingle. As black as the roofs, thin mullions and transoms of aluminum frame the oversized paneled windows in multiple small squares that let natural light filter in and fill every room.

Lost in my perusal, I don’t notice a third presence until the skin of my nape heats up—I’m not alone at all.

From the main entrance, Miles watches me looking at a dream I never knew I had. He descends the three beige marble steps and stands behind me, resting his chin on the crown of my head.

“Ready, love?”

I’m ready. I’m excited. I’m anxious.

Until I remember.

This house won’t truly be my home.

Only for the breath of an expiration date, for the stretch of a glitch in the timeline, a moment suspended in between dimensions—reality and illusion—before real life catches up and intervenes, dragging me back to the life I’m supposed to live.

But for now, I’ll forget.

I’ll live in this beautiful place for however long, so I’ll close my eyes and pretend I belong, pretend it was truly mine—everything in it. I’ll seize and savor each little moment, each little minute, and maybe when the time comes, I’ll steal some more for myself.

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