Page 58 of Tell Me Lies

“How so?” I barely squeak, my stomach still churning from everything he just said.

As I stare at him, my head grows even dizzier, and I feel like I’ve got to be in a nightmare. Whatever he’s about to say, I don’t deserve it.

“Like … it doesn’t seem like we’re just doing this for the sake of your book anymore, Boston.” His finger strokes my face. “At least, not to me it doesn’t. To me, it feels like this thing … it’s real.”

I don’t respond. How can I without wrecking his whole world, along with my own? Whatever I do is wrong. If I say nothing, I’m being cold after he just opened up and shared something sacred with me. If I say what I really want to—that I know this thing is real and that I’m falling in love with him—I’m screwed because once he learns the truth about me, he won’t want me anyway. So, maybe the only thing to do tonight is to liebecause I’m not ready for him to look at me like I’m the monster in my own story just yet.

“Sorry if I freaked you out,” he blurts out.

I know right away that he’s uncomfortable. The Logan Sterns I know isn’t used to being met with silence.

“You didn’t freak me out.” I force the words out, even though it physically hurts. “And I understand why you didn’t tell me sooner.”Really, I do. Because I’ve got my own set of secrets.“I’m just … super tired.”

As I flip back over, putting my back up against his side, I hear a sharp inhale.

“Me too, beautiful.” He leans forward and kisses the top of my head. “Let’s get some sleep.”

For a while, we lie there in deafening silence. A kind so thick that it’s louder than any sound could ever be. But eventually, he drifts off to sleep, keeping his arm looped around the front of me, holding me tight against him—a place I don’t deserve to be at all.

I don’t deserve to know him or to be in Amelia’s life. I tell myself I should get up. I should run away and never look back. That would be the right thing to do. As he sleeps, tears run down my cheeks. Because selfishly, I really … really don’t want to leave them.

Not now that I’ve realized … I love them both.

But my thoughts haunt me, pulling me back to the past and reminding me of the truth. The truth I need to tell him. The truth he deserves.

“Thanks for the birthday lunch, Dad.” I looked over at him sitting in the passenger seat, still in shock that he let me drive.

I’d had my license for years, yet he always insisted on driving. I tried not to take offense to it even though I knew Iwas an overly cautious driver. Heck, I was cautious with every decision in my life.

“Hey, tradition is tradition, right?” he said proudly.

And he was right. For as long as I could remember, my dad had taken me out to lunch for my birthday. Even though I had moved to Maine and he still lived in Boston, he’d made the drive just to spend time with me on my birthday.

“I’m awfully proud of you, Mace. Your mom and I both are. It’s nice to see this author thing really working out for you.” He paused. “Have you and Gavin chosen a date yet?”

There was always hesitation in his tone when he spoke about my fiancé, Gavin. I knew he wasn’t completely on board with us getting married, but my father was the type that just wanted to see me happy. And if he thought Gavin was my key to happiness, he’d suck it up and accept him, whereas my mom and sister were a little more opinionated with their concerns. But in their defense, Gavin typically always did everything he could to avoid spending time with my family and only ever wanted us to do things with his.

“We’re thinking next fall,” I said, feeling that sense of anxiousness in the pit of my stomach. The same feeling I had been trying to shake for months. “Maybe the beginning of October, before it gets too cold.”

I kept driving through downtown Portland, making our way through the city. We were going to Cabela’s to get some of those delicious glazed pecans and then planned to go to some doughnut shop nearby. My mom couldn’t make it because her sister was having surgery that morning, and I knew it killed my mom to miss out on the trip to Maine to spend the day with dad and me. But I always loved alone time with him. I had always been a daddy’s girl.

A light up ahead was red, and I pushed on the brakes until the car rolled to a stop.

“It’ll be great, sweetie. I’m sure.” He said the words in a lower tone than he usually spoke, and I knew there was more he wanted to say. “I just want you to be happy, Maci. But just so you know, I don’t think you need a man to make you happy. I think you’ve got everything inside of you for that already.”

I knew what he was saying, and deep down, I thought he knew I wasn’t happy. But I guessed a part of me just couldn’t walk away from Gavin.

He hadn’t always been weird about being around my family or jealous that my career was taking off. No, the bitterness of that had come after my third book landed in the top ten in the entire Kindle store. But I just kept thinking it would pass. That, one day, he’d wake up and realize how proud of me he was.

And then there was the other part. The one where I feared I wouldn’t find anyone else.

I was now twenty-four, and even though that was still extremely young, my parents had gotten married when they were nineteen. So, in my eyes, I was behind where I should have been in life. Sure, I was excelling in my career, but I knew life wasn’t all about work.

When the light turned green, I started driving, thinking of how I wanted to respond to his words. My dad wasn’t overly deep and emotional, but he would go there from time to time. And I thought that was his last effort to try to get through to me before I made a decision as big as tying the knot legally.

My mouth opened, but before I could get the words out, a car came out of nowhere, running right into the passenger side of mine.

My father was killed instantly. I screamed senselessly while stuck next to him in the car, unable to get myself to leave his side, but I couldn’t hear anything. It was almost as though my eardrums had been blown.

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