Page 2 of Lie to Me

I nod, not knowing what else to say to that. The thought of this being the only time I get to speak to him is unsettling. I step towards him and take the cell from his grasp before he can react. I put in my contact information and hand the phone back.

“In case you ever feel like telling lies,” I say with a bashful smile before turning and slipping back into the room, putting my spoilt socialite mask back on.

Chapter One

Sloane

Present

Ialways planned on coming back home.

New York City.

The place I grew up, the place where I struggled in a world that wasn’t made for me. A place where women are objects to be used by men with power and are nothing but an inconvenience if they have no purpose to serve.

I left home ten years ago after having my heart smashed to pieces and after my brother somehow convinced Dad to send me to live with Aunt Jen in Arizona. I haven’t been back since.

I always knew I’d come back, I just had to wait until father dearest died and my brother took over the familybusiness.

But now that I’m here? Yeah… this place doesn’t really feel like home anymore.

I escaped once, hoping for things to get better once I moved in with my aunt. Let’s just say they didn’t. Or they did, eventually. Kind of.

After my father’s death, my brother Finn begged me to come home. For one whole year, he called me every day and begged me to come back. It took my aunt’s death and another year after that to finally sort my shit out and agree.

Now I’m here, with my own condo close to Finn and a part time job as a nurse at New York Pres.

“Oh thank God,” my new friend, Skye, says as she plops down in the chair opposite me.

I started here at the hospital a month ago, just two weeks after her, and she somehow attached herself to me since we were the two new nurses on rotation.

“Bad?” I ask and take a bite of my pasta. Pasta that I cooked last night because fuck hospital cafeteria food.

“Yup. I need you to switch patients with me. I have a couple that seem kinda insane. He won’t let her out of his sight, like I walked in to find her shouting at him for pissing with the bathroom door open, saying he needs to sort his shit out and just take a shower, that she’d be fine without him for ten minutes. Obviously, he refused because he wanted to keep as close to her as possible. Honestly, they’re cute as hell, but you know I don’t do all this cutesy shit.” Right, she’s the definition of bad break-up and love makes her nauseous.

I don’t blame her.

I roll my eyes at her pleading expression. “Fine.”

“I knew from the moment we met that we were meant to be besties,” she says with a grin.

We finish lunch and I give her a quick run-down on my patient while we walk towards our unit, but she gets paged before she can do the same to me.

“Shit,” she hisses as she checks the pager. “I’ve gotta go, you want room 306, you’ll just have to check the notes.” She hands me the paperwork before high tailing it in the opposite direction, leaving me to head to her patient’s room.

I knock on the door and walk in, looking down at the paperwork she shoved in my hands as she left.

“Hey. I’m your nurse on call today, it’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Ro…” I trail off as I see the name written down.

Romano.

There’s no fucking way.

No. Please, fucking no.

My head snaps up to see the couple. A woman lying in the bed smiles at me before my eyes settle on her husband.

Her husband.

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