Page 113 of Lies Like Love

I want to run and never look back.

I want to drown in this ocean of lies around me.

But breathing in the salty air, cool waves tickling my goosebump-ridden skin, I’m cloaked in peace.

Calmness that shouldn’t be allowed in moments like this—after lies like his. With people like us.

As much as I should hate Jude for keeping the truth from me, a sick realization woke me in the middle of the night. I’m thankful for every lie that burned his tongue. For every evil thing he did for me.

It wasalwaysall for me.

I reach out and take his hand. Wind binds us together as our fingers lace, and the earth sighs in relief with a gust that promises my soul to wherever his is going.

We’re sick.

Twisted.

The truth is flayed open, and I’d still rather have him than lose him.

“You saved me.”

“I did what had to be done.”

Turning to face him, I might as well be seeing a different man in the light of the rising sun. Wind whips his hair over his forehead and his tired eyes let me in.

The eyes are the doorway to the soul.

And he’d sell his to protect mine.

“You saved me,” I repeat again. “And you let me hate you for it.”

“It was better than you being hurt by what they did. At least if your hate was focused, you could move on without carrying the weight of what really happened.”

I step to him like a magnet because I can’t help or deny it. My judgment, my fate—means nothing. If there was good inside me at risk of corruption, our parents already ruined it.

“I don’t think I ever really hated you.” I wrap my arms up around his shoulders and pull us chest to chest.

Seal us together.

“Maybe you should.”

“Well I don’t.”

“He was so fucked up, Fel. The things he could have done… the things he did. Even before you.” Jude rakes his fingers through his hair, maintaining the gap between us even if I don’t let him go.

“What do you mean, before me?”

Jude blinks me into focus, cupping my cheeks in his palms and handing me the full force of his breaking heart in his gaze. “Remember when I took that trip to my aunt’s house when we were younger? I found papers in some old boxes.”

“What did they say?”

His fingers glide into my hair as he pulls it back. “They had information about my mother.”

I figured as much after what Parker said at the club, but it doesn’t stop the knots forming in my gut.

“I found out—” he chokes on the words, blinking as his grip on my hair tightens. “She was fifteen when she had me.”

“Fifteen?” My eyebrows pinch.

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