Page 30 of Forget Me Twice

The vitriol I can hear in his normally unruffled tenor ispotent.

As potent as my genuine confusion.

I sit up, glasses sliding down my nose as I empty my lungs with a surprised, smoke-filled laugh. “Excuse me?”

My eyes flick between the four of them, looking for tells. There’s no humor on any of the handsome faces before me. No smirks, no giddiness. Each one of them is tense, muscles taut and on guard. I recognize the way they are pulling their emotional shields into place.

There’s no shared joke here. They are deadly serious.

“Sabine Winters? Sabine Winters isdead. So who the fuck are you?” Callum’s angry voice is pure sin, deep and roughened. I feel it behind my ribs and between my legs.

My mouth drops open just a little bit. I’m almost at a loss as to how to respond to that.

Dead?

“I assure you, I am very much alive,” I say, after a breath, my tone incredulous.

There’s no relief on their faces or relaxing of postures.

“SabineIngridWinters?” Tristan continues, posing it as a question, but he sounds so skeptical that it may as well be rhetorical. He’s obviously had access to my full file and transcript; all the information about who I amsupposedlyclaiming to be.

“Yes.”

“Liar.”

If I thought Tristan or Callum’s voices gave me a kick in the guts, I wasnotprepared to hear Atlas speak. His voice is dark and gritty as if it goes regularly unused. Like he only speaks when absolutely necessary. That one word is all he needs though, and it’s dripping with venom.

The combination islethal.

I’m so disoriented now, both by the heady effects of their combined presence, as well as the batshit words coming out of their dumb, handsome faces. My shoulders tense, and I can’t help the tremor that shudders up my spine. Blood pulses in my ears.

I hate being on the back foot. I hate not having all the information.

It’s literally myjobto have the information.

No. No. Fuck.

Now is not the time for a fucking headache. I squint my eyes as the pounding begins, royally irked that my reprieve will be so short lived.

What the fuck is going on?

With some degree of difficulty, I grab onto that semblance of annoyance with both hands and use it to pull myself back together.

I need control. I need to maintain control here. I stand, hauling my blazer up with me and draping it over my arm.

“I don’t know what to tell you. You must have me confused with some other Sabine Ingrid Winters,” I say coldly, dropping my joint to the ground and crushing the cherry under foot.

Sabine Winters is dead.

Nope. I’m not engaging further. I need to wrestle back the command of the narrative. I can’t let them be blind-siding me with this crazy sort of shit. I thought my work was cut out for me just trying to uncover their secret Ace connections. Now I need to figure out why they think I’m walking around with the name of a dead girl.

An emergency ripcord comes in the form of my cell phone vibrating inside one of the pockets now tucked under my arm. Retrieving it, I grin as Rhett’s name lights up the screen.Finally.

He’s is going to have his work cut out for him, because I don’t think a quick fuck in the back seat of his car is going to be enough.

I hold it up and shake it.“Excuse me, but I have a lunch date I need to keep.”

I spin around and with my back to them, carefully pick my way down the other side of the incline. I know I’m off my gameand I’m not about to trip and ruin my exit.

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