Page 118 of All Our Secrets

Silas wouldn’t have denied it so strongly. He wouldn’t have lied over and over. Would he?

“You were never supposed to be his anything.”

“The day you walked into the bar, you were mine.”

“You’ve always been such a sore loser.”

But the things he said didn’t align for someone else’s wife, especially his best friend’s. One too many times, he had spoken as if he knew me long before Theodore had.

The sign-in display came up on the blue screen, revealing an upside-down smiley avatar. One I was all too familiar with. I looked below the avatar where the PSN would be—

The controller fell to the floor with a thud.

MoodyKing1

The gamer tag blared at me.

Below that was his name.

Silas King

The truth hit me like a freight train. My shirt collar felt like a noose around my neck as the room shrank. I pulled at it. It and everything else on my body seemed too tight. The room,King’sroom, spun.

Oh God.I was supposed to be wrong.

Tears pricked my eyes. When I tried to stand, my knees buckled. When I glanced at my hands, the very ones that had turned on the gaming console, it was like staring at someone else’s fingers. My body belonged to someone else, because in that moment, it didn’t feel like mine.

When I sucked in a deep breath, it was like breathing in fire. The truth kindled an anger inside me like no other.I knew I wasn’t wrong.I recognized that voice. Idreamedof King. Of who he was and what he looked like. With nothing more than his gruff voice, I imagined him every night after speaking to him.

My fingers shook as I brought them to my lips. I knew, I knew, Iknew. And now I’d gotten my truth, and it fucking hurt. “Why?”

Even when he told me to call him Silas. Even when he denied the identity when I asked, my heart never let it go. Even when I asked Theodore a hundred times if Silas gamed, if he could be my King,evenwhen my boyfriend got frustrated that I kept talking about someone who had stopped speaking to me, I couldn’t let it go. I couldn’t let King go. Losing MoodyKing1 the day I met Silas only made it worse.

To think Silas pretended,lied, to me for years sent pain radiating through my chest. And why? For what reason?

“You’re not supposed to be him,” I cried.

I had wished more than anything to be wrong. Oh God… What I’d done because of this obsession. I didn’t know who I despised more. Myself. Or him.

I thought King would come clean if I stayed beside Theodore. I waited and waited. Silas never stepped forward.Maybe I’m wrong, I’d believed. He’d barely spoken to me, hardly looked at me. But I still sensed him every single time he entered the room. Sometimes, I wanted to believe he stared when I wasn’t looking. Then I’d hear him speak, and I’d know I couldn’t be wrong. He sounded just like my King. But he never moved. He never reached out for me.

I fell in love with someone else while waiting for him to explain himself. To come clean with his lies.

If only loving Theodore could have stopped my wandering thoughts, then I wouldn’t feel so guilty.

No matter how great Theodore was, how beautiful his love was, sometimes, I thought of brown eyes instead of blue ones when Theo was above me. Sometimes, again and again, I wanted to ask Silas if he was the voice I’d heard so often through that headset. At some point, I wasn’t sure when, exactly, I stopped thinking about him as my gaming friend and saw him for who he was. The surly bastard I prayed wasn’t MoodyKing1. Because in my obsession with who I thought he was, I saw him. Silas King. My husband’s best friend.

All I’d done was place a Band-Aid over my guilt when I’d chosen to be with Silas, and now I had ripped it off. I let all my ugliness bleed through. I’d never felt more exposed. Never been more aware of whoIwas. In that perception, the anger set in.

With every touch, every action, I felt Silas’s love for me. Did he not have those emotions when we met? Did he not see the breath he stole from me the second I saw him? Did he not see the woman he’d just asked to meet in person? When he wrote about finally meeting, I’d been so fucking happy, not knowing that it would be the last time I heard from him. I assumed King had been ready to admit we’d been tiptoeing around each other for years. I thought he’d been ready to let meseehim like he’d already seen me. He’d always been so guarded about his identity and what he looked like, so I’d been waiting.

So, knowingus, how could Silas let me go to another man? Before my conscience got the worst of me over my feelings within my relationship with Theodore, why did he continue his lie? Andwhydid he lie, but clearly love me in secret? He made me play this game of lies without telling me it was a game at all. How could I walk away when I was so sure he was close? Right there within my grasp.

Before I had even saidI do, I had betrayed Theodore’s love a hundred times over. And this ugly, bleeding heart still yearned for someone else. Someone who couldn’t even give me the truth.

Oh, but Silas would. Because the proof was right there on the TV.

T.J. cried. I wiped my face and got him out of the car seat. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

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