Page 181 of A Smile Full of Lies
“But I also knew I couldn’t stop.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?” I asked, voice hoarse.
“Because you loved him.”
“I didn’t—” I stopped myself. Swallowed hard. “I only thought I did.”
“I know,” he said, voice low. “And I told myself that was enough. That I could be near you, watch you live, take whatever scraps of proximity I could get. I thought it would be enough just towitnessyou.”
His eyes locked on mine.
“But it wasn’t.”
A sharp, burning ache crawled up my spine. He stepped even closer. Lifted a hand. Rested it lightly against my cheek.
“I bought that house next door to your Gran’s when we were eighteen expressly so I could be close to you… not because it was close to the Stonewood University campus. You never knew, but I did. And every time I saw you through that window… every time I heard your laugh drift through the open screen in summer… it broke me a little more.”
“Knox…”
“I recorded those videos because I couldn’t fucking stand the idea of forgetting you,” he said. “In case you stayed with him forever. In case I never got the chance to tell you. I kept them because you were the only thing that made the silence in my life bearable.”
Silence. Grief.Survival.
His family had died while he was out of town. A change in plans. A robbery gone wrong.
And I remembered now — how I’d seen the shadows in his eyes back then. The weight he carried. The way he looked at me, like I was sunlight bleeding through storm clouds.
I just hadn’t known how deep it went.
“You said you felt guilty,” I murmured. “When I told you I wanted you, even when I was still with him.”
“I did.”
“But you were already…”
“Already watching?” he said, smiling without humor. “Yeah. I was. But I didn’ttouchyou. I didn’tspeakit. I waited until you were ready. Until you were mine.”
“And if I never had been?”
His expression turned cold.
“I would’ve kept watching forever.”
It should have terrified me, but it didn’t.
Because somewhere, buried deep under the shock and heat and shame, a broken little part of me exhaled. Because I hadfeltit. All those years. I hadfelthis eyes on me. I hadwantedthem there. Even when I hadn’t known what that meant.
I reached up and raked my fingers through his damp hair.
“Why keep them?” I asked. “Why never delete them?”
His voice dropped.
“Because they’re proof.”
“Of what?”
“That it was always you for me,” he said. “Not the version of you from the haunted house. Not the one I hunted through the trees. Not the one who moaned under my mask and begged me not to stop.”
