Page 57 of Little Liar
15
Malachi
The smell of strawberries fills my senses as I rouse from my sleep.
There’s tangled hair all over my face, limbs spread over me, a leg hooked around my own, and a gentle hand resting on my chest. For a split second, I think I’m still dreaming and in a memory from when Olivia used to sneak into my room when we were teenagers. I’m still in that place I used to go to when I was in my cell, alone, pretending Olivia was asleep beside me, talking to me about our future.
We were going to get married. Have kids, if she really wanted them. We were going to go on vacations and find careers we loved. As long as we had each other, no one else mattered. We were a unit. A strong fucking unit that would disintegrate when someone interrupted my thoughts.
I wasn’t losing my mind like the guards had said. I was latching on to memories of her to keep myself sane. All the times we snuck into each other’s rooms played like a broken record inmy head. The prison guard overheard me talking to Olivia—the imaginary version of her who smiled and kissed me while we lay in bed together for hours. They heard me arguing with myself, begging no one while I dropped to my knees, crying, and asked Olivia to forgive me.
Tears that no one in the world would ever see but her.
They thought I was insane, and I was sent in for further evaluation on my ASPD diagnosis. All that came back was that I had depression, and I was given more call times and an extra visitation slot, but everyone who tried to call or visit, I didn’t agree to see. My parents hated me, and I only wanted Olivia there. I didn’t need to see any of the fake assholes.
My friends vanished. Even Mason didn’t attempt to see me. My relationship with my sister died. And I lost my parents again. It was a miracle I didn’t lose my mind, commit myself to a noose, and end it all.
When she kept refusing my calls and not writing back to my hundred-odd letters, and when I sat at that table, waiting to see if she’d visit, another piece of me would shatter. I’m not sure how I’m able to lie with her in my arms now and even think I can be normal again. If I ever was.
During therapy—the four meetings I’ve attended so far since being released—they try to talk about my childhood. They ask questions based on what they’ve read in my report.
Do you still think about your biological family? Do you remember what happened to you? Do you get nightmares? Can you remember the day you nearly killed your adoptive father?
Regardless of what went down with us, I still saw him as my dad. Biology or not. Jamieson Vize raised me, not the guy who gave up and left me with the woman who birthed me.
I sometimes remember her face. I know it’s probably a made-up image, since she died when I was young. She had long blondehair that was almost yellow, bright red lipstick, and smoked far too many cigarettes.
The therapist always pushes for me to talk about her.
It’s like he can hear her telling me that I’m weak and useless and weird and fucked up. He can see the abuse I suffered. Hear me crying for my mom and dad when I was a kid.
Am I supposed to say I had an awesome childhood and that I miss my real mother? That my father should have taken me with him when he threw himself off a bridge?
If I still had them, I wouldn’t have met Olivia. No one could save me but her. She’s the only person in the world who understands me, even when my voice is locked away and I struggle in every aspect of communication—no matter how many times she’s called me it, she doesn’t think I’m a freak.
I’m not normal. I know that. My mind isn’t the same as hers, or any of the people I grew up with. Even some of the inmates I bunked with before I was isolated thought I was either a lunatic or schizophrenic.
Everyone says it. I’m sick, depraved, wrong, yet she loves me anyway. These assholes who seem to assume to have me figured out are clueless. Always thinking they know me best, asking me things like I’m a helpless child. They wouldn’t know the first thing about what goes on in my head. Every corner of my mind is filled with a girl named Olivia.
I blink a few times, the haziness vanishing when my fingers run through her dark strands, bringing them to my nose and inhaling.
That same delicious scent of strawberries fills my senses. It’s been the same since we were kids. She has no idea how calming it is to me.
And she’s real this time.
Olivia really is in my bed, clinging to me like I’m going to disappear. She’s not running from me. No parents are knockingat the door and making us break away and hide. Society isn’t keeping us apart and telling us it’s wrong to be together. We’re just two adults, cuddling, happy, and I’m fucking terrified something bad is going to happen, putting an end to the joy I feel swelling in my chest.
I want to be happy so fucking much, but I don’t know how to be.
Her contractual obligation to marry that dickhead Xander still looms over us, but it’ll pass. He doesn’t even know Olivia and has no reason to expect her to run to him. His family is rich, way richer than the Vizes.
Money—it’s all Mom cares about. To the point she’d sell her own daughter for power.
Maybe I should kill her, right after I strangle Xander and leave his body for his family to find, my name carved into his forehead.
With all the security around him, and the fortress of an old orphanage he lives in with his elitist family, I’m nervous for the first time. Because if he does come for her, and if he successfully gets her, I won’t know how to get her back.
I might lose her.
