Page 97 of Lies Like Love

My protector.

My home.

“Remember the fairytales you’d read in your room?” he whispers in my ear, raking his fingers back and forth through mine until my skin tingles.

“Yes.”

“I used to think about them a lot when I came up here. I’d stare out and imagine you on the other side of all this, almost like you were some princess locked away in her tower.”

On the other side of the city is a different neighborhood—one we can’t see from here. A place he once lived in with me, until we both became different people. And from here, standing on the roof looking out, there’s no remnants of that world in sight. No sparkling hillside of comfort, just darkness coating our escape.

“Even after you went to college, I thought about you still being there. Like you were trapped in some place I couldn’t break you out of. But if I could, I’d finally get the chance to feel your skin, to smell you in my arms, to taste you—I’d be free of all this.”

“You have me now.”

Jude breathes out a laugh. “What does the prince do in your stories, Red?”

“He saves the princess.”

“No, hetakesher.” Jude plants his lips on my neck and kisses a path up to my jaw. “He slays the monsters to make herhis.”

“I want to be yours.”

“You are.” A low growl in my ear gives me shivers. “Tell me, what does he do in your fairytales once he has her?”

Knots clog my throat. We’re no longer talking about childhood books. After all, that’s not our story. Our fairytale is stained in blood.

“He does whatever he wants.”

“So is that my prize, Red?” Jude drags his hands along my arms, and over my chest, until they rest over my stomach and he’s pressing me to him. “Do I get to do whatever I want now?”

“Always.”

I want to be Jude’s everything, and I want him to be mine. If he saved me, then maybe I’m also saving him. From whatever darkness he was lost in as he sat up here alone and stared out at the distance.

“Do you want to know what I thought the first time I saw you?” he whispers in my ear, slowly dragging his hands down and bunching the bottom of my sparkly dress.

“I can guess.” His hands move inward and my breath races. “I was reading at a gala, so you probably thought I was lame.”

“That wasn’t the first time I saw you.” Fingertips graze my skin as he moves up my thighs and hooks his thumbs in the band of my thong, slowly dragging it down my hips. “It was the week before at the cemetery. I was visiting a friend’s grave and you were a few plots over, standing there in a blue dress with peacock feather earrings. It’s why I always left those in your books. They made me think of you.”

He’s never told me this. Pages he ripped from our story to distort my version.

Jude drags my thong all the way off, and I step out of it. His hands grazing the length of my bare legs as he slowly stands back up. When he’s once more towering over me, he spins me around to face him.

“You were crying, and I couldn’t help but wonder what could make a girl that pretty look so sad.”

“I was visiting my dad’s grave.” I choke out.

“I figured that out later.”

My mother would never go with me. After he passed away, she refused to acknowledge he ever existed. Almost as if another man wouldn’t want to be with her if she held onto any feelings for him. It didn’t matter to her that I was his daughter. If he wasn’t allowed to exist in her mind, he shouldn’t reside in mine either.

I’m not sure what hurt worse, losing him or trying to pretend for her sake he was never part of my life.

“I sawyouthen.” Jude lifts me up and sets me on the ledge of the building. “Not the girl on the outside you show everyone else, but the girl underneath. Tear-stained cheeks and rawness that can’t be replicated. I knew you before you ever spoke a word to me.”

“What did you see?”

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