Page 154 of A Smile Full of Lies
The one that had been a warning, a taunt, a promise. He’d said once that our business with each other wasn’t finished yet, but I’d told him it was when I chose Knox. I’d thought this was over and done with.
I was fucking wrong. He was here, in that mask, right fucking now, in Knox’s goddamn house.
And he was watching me.
What the fuck… how the fuck? This can’t be real.
A chill slithered down my spine. Not just fear. Something deeper. Something I didn’t have a name for.
He spoke in that same eerie, distorted voice he used in all his thirst traps.
“I told you we had unfinished business, sweetheart. I told you we’d see each other again. I meant that shit.”
And then came the first prickle of wrongness. Because he looked familiar. Not just the way he sat there, the lazy sprawl of his legs, the confidence woven into every muscle. Not just the way he held himself, like a wolf too patient to pounce just yet.
It was him. No… it was his build. The shape of his jaw beneath the neon glow. The way he sat there, head tilted, just like in the videos.
Nox Obscura.
A TikTok thirst trap fantasy just walked into the fucking house that I was supposed to be sharing with the man I loved.
No, no, no.
He couldn’t fucking be here. Not in Knox’s house — not in our house. Not in the place that had become ours ever since my power got cut off and he refused to let me struggle alone.
The room swayed.
No, goddamn it. No, no, no.
It was a coincidence. It had to be. But my stomach twisted in protest, a sick, sinking feeling dragging me under.
It was like seeing a ghost of something I should have never encountered in real life. A fictional monster suddenly made real.
The videos. The ones I’d watched, over and over, until I knew every flicker of movement, every precise shift of his body. The predator’s walk. The deliberate tilts of his head. The breathing. The mask.
He wasn’t just wearing one like it. He was wearing the exact same one.
A storm of static swelled in my skull. No. It wasn’t possible. It wasn’t fucking possible.
I took a single, staggering step backward.
He tilted his head the other way. Exactly like he did in the videos. The bottom dropped out of my stomach.
“I thought you’d come straight home tonight,” he murmured, his voice smooth as silk, low as a promise. “You surprised me.”
The reality of it slammed into me all at once.
This wasn’t random. This wasn’t a coincidence.
This was curated. Designed. A slow, careful unveiling of something I was never meant to know until this very moment.
Oh, God.
The rage hit first. White-hot, sharp, and electric.
“You broke into our fucking house?”
He hummed, fingers tapping lazily against the arm of the chair.
