Page 48 of Cruel Lies

She chuckled at the memory that we shared, clearly remembering it like I was. "You popped your head out that window in my room and found me sitting with my knees up and my arms around them, hiding from the world while I worked on catching a cold."

I put my hand on hers, almost out of reflex, then pulled it away in a blink, a feeling of shyness warring with contentment in my chest that I didn’t like. I shouldn’t be shy. I didn’t want to get involved with her. She was a menace, an obstacle in our lives we had to figure something out for so we could be on our way.

But every time she got near, I wanted to touch her soft skin, feel it under my fingertips. I wanted to inhale the scent of the shampoo that Nash pilfered from her apartment for her. Wanted to hear the tinkling laughter that seemed to fill a room when nobody was getting on her nerves.

I shouldn’t want to. But I did.

Being around Harper was dangerous. I could almost forget that she shouldn't trust us. That we killed her—or were willing to, at least.

It didn’t matter that I didn’t slit her throat, that I didn’t move to do the deed. Not stopping it was as bad as holding the blade myself.

"You looked like the whole world was ending," I whispered, remembering the phone call that a frantic Nash had made to me when he and Rowan couldn’t find her. Her mother was worried, thinking she’d run away, and Father was going on in the background about how she was probably out whoreing herself to her boyfriend, and not to worry.‘Women are like cats in heat—let 'em out, let 'em get fucked good, and they’ll come home when they’re done getting their holes filled.’

Only I knew she’d broken up with that sleazeball boyfriend of hers and why.

"It felt that way," she sighed, her voice wavering like it had back then, throwing me back in the past seven, eight years. "You climbed out onto the slick, wet tiles and just sat there next to me in the rain with an umbrella over my head."

"If you weren’t going to come in, then I was going to stay with you until you were ready." Past me was a caring, kinder individual. I looked out for Harper because so much of her was like so much of me—tender and hurting inside. She was as much a pro as me at internalizing the pain life threw at us.

"That Harper is dead and gone. But when I think about her, I can't find it in me to be sad." Her eyes fell on mine, and for a second, I was almost afraid to hear what she’d say next. "I’ll never be her again. And I don’t want to." I watched her hand press against her chest with a forlorn sigh. "But part of her is still buried in here. I keep her locked up, safe from the rest of the world. Where no one can hurt her."

Her hand moved to my chest, covering my heart as it beat faster, revealing my reaction to her touch. I hated my body and the way it craved her, but I pretended indifference, hoping she’d think it was her imagination that my heart raced when she putthose fingers on me, and I felt her warmth through the thin fabric of my shirt.

"You’re not the Angel I used to know, but a tiny part of him is locked in here, isn’t he?"

The tears that had collected on her lashes still refused to fall, fighting for dear life not to fall. I wanted to wipe them away. The need was a physical one, so painful it almost broke me. "The old me is dead," I muttered, turning my head away so I wouldn’t have to see the result of my actions. "He’s not coming back."

"You know you’re a terrible liar, Angel. And I know it, too." Her fingers fisted in my shirt, her blunted nails scratching my skin. "So don’t try to pretend with me."

"Whatever you think you see in me, Harper, just forget it." My hand wrapped around hers and slowly detangled her from the wrinkles and folds of silk, forcing her to let me go though the only thing I wanted to do was feel her nails on more of me. Her touch, I craved it. All the lies I could ever tell myself would never change that. I’d loved this girl a long time, and even though neither one of us was the same as we’d been seven years ago, I still craved her now as I craved her then.

"I can’t just forget it, though, Angel," she snapped, her hand shaking my grip off. "I can’t let you turn yourself into someone you’re not just to hide from the man you’re afraid of being."

"You don’t know me anymore, Harper," I spat, further driving that wedge between us. "And I don’t even know why I let you haul me up here instead of beating Nash’s ass."

"Because that’s not you, and I refuse to stand by and watch you turn into someone you’re not."

I crossed my arms, hiding myself away from her and her too-true words, her X-ray eyes that saw right through me. She shouldn’t be able to read me this well after all these years. I didn’t want her to know me as well as she did. It made keeping my distance hard.

"I hate to break it to you, but thisisme now. There isn’t anyother Angel than the one you’re staring at. So you better get used to it."

"Stop putting on an act for me, Angel. This macho bullshit isn’t you?—"

I snapped. The rage, anger, and frustration I’d been planning to let out on Nash, I turned it on her. "But itis,Harper." My hands crowded her as I leaned to the side and put one on each side of her hips, forcing her to sit on the ledge with me. Being close to the lip of the concrete, inches away from a fall that, if it didn’t mean certain death, at least guaranteed a few broken bones, was a thrill. It felt good, like being alive after feeling dead for so long. "Thisisthe real me. You just refuse to see it because you want the old Angel back." I leaned in until we were nose to nose, my lips split in a sarcastic grin. "He’s gone, Harper. And he’s never coming back."

"I hate the new you," she whispered, her eyes flitting from one to the other on my face, searching me for something she wasn’t going to find. I buried that part of me so deep that I wasn’t even sure I could dig him back up if I tried. "I hate this new Angel almost as much as?—"

"Aswhat,Harper?" I leaned in closer, and she leaned back, until her back was to the concrete, and I loomed above her, hands on either side of her face, still using my body as a cage. "How much do you hate the new me?"

Her confidence wavered, and she tried to look away, but I refused to let her. Though it went against everything I was and had ever been, I gripped her chin in my free hand and jerked her face around to look at me, giving her zero chance to run away and hide.

Only one of us was allowed to hide from the truth, and I was already piloting that plane.

"As much as I want him," she whispered, her steely blue eyes turning hot in the span of a second as they bored into mine. "I want to hate him, but I can’t."

"Ditto," I whispered as I leaned down, letting my lips brush gently against hers. My hair had escaped the ponytail I had it in, and wisps of stray hair tickled the side of her face like a curtain. "Fucking ditto."

And then I was shoving myself off of her and doing the thing the old Angel would have done.

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