Page 26 of Twisted Promise

“Was the relationship a secret?” she continued, “as you, thefriend, who witnessed it.”

“Kind of,” Anya attested, taking a sip of the atrociously layered reddish-yellow concoction in her cup.

It smelled of pineapple and watermelon.

“It was a mutual decision,” she mumbled.

It was not, but he had swallowed the disagreement.

Keeping it a secret allowed her to walk freely without fear of people violating her privacy.

“We just went on like friends and housemates. It helped since he wasn’t much into PDA, so most people at school thought we were strangers.”

They had no classes together, and their breaks never overlapped, so he latched onto her at home.

“What did you mean by ‘kind of’?” The woman flipped another white notecard over the silver ring.

“Everyone around us might have guessed, but our parents didn’t.”

Somehow, talking about thefriendbecame herself, but Anya was oblivious to the change. He didn’t correct her, and the interviewer was not about to let this news go with eagerness, virtually cleaving through her eyes.

“Them,” Anya caught on. “I meant them. He and his girlfriend.”

“Right, them.” The interviewer went with the flow as she kept veering her eyes between him and Anya.

She eyed the brightened tablet screen on the table beside her pen. “How did your impression of your boyfriend change afterward?”

“He was mean and rude, and he could insult you just by staring.” Discontent fought fortitude and lost in her eyes, so they merged into conviction and steadied her voice.

“But after you got to know him, he was really just a cranky cat craving affection. He was not as bad as everyone made him out to be; sure, he was tactless, but beyond that, he was a clingy dog who got excited when we went on walks.”

Something about the way she described Alessio felt off, and with brooding defensiveness, his soul twitched skeptically. It sounded like he should be offended, but her affectionate tone soothed the curl of his brows.

Still, he had an issue with being compared to both a cat and a dog.

“Viewers are saying you have scary dog privilege,” the interviewer added with a foxy smirk.

Anya chuckled nervously while he leaned his chin on his hand, the armrest dented under his elbow as he watched the new comments replace the old ones. They refreshed too quickly to read them all, but he caught most of them.

Some made his heart flutter, not from the people behind the comments, but the way they immediately presumed the boyfriend was him.

Netizens were smart for once.

“You two don’t act like old friends,” the woman read the last comment before their break.

Is that so?

Alessio took out his phone, pressed the power button, and lifted it to Anya’s face. It unlocked, and the rawest panic exploded on her face when the photo of them appeared on the home screen.

Transferable facial recognition was convenient.

She clasped her hand over the screen in an attempt to force his hand down, but he had a climber’s grip on it.

“Oh,” the woman crooned, “I see. Friends. Well, that’s… what the fan thought.”

* * *

Exhaustion weighed down Anya’s shoulders as she leaned heavily into the loveseat, her eyes dropping with the slow rustling from the interviewer gathering her stuff off the table.

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