Page 68 of A Smile Full of Lies
“Hello?”
My voice came out thin and unsteady, trembling with everything I couldn’t hold back.
Suffocating silence greeted me.
I was alone. My chest collapsed, and shame hit me in a wave so strong that I nearly staggered under the weight of it. Words tumbled out of me in a whisper, my voice wrecked.
“…what the fuck did I just do?”
Chapter
Eighteen
ROS
I wasn’tsure how I made it back to my car. My legs still felt like they were jello.
My brain hadn’t caught up to the fact that it was over. It was almost like some part of me was still in that hallway, still panting beneath neon purple light, still pinned between a locked door and a man whose name I didn’t even know.
Except… I sort of did.
Didn’t I?
My fingers trembled around the steering wheel. The silence inside the car was deafening. No music. No haunted house screams. Just the sound of my own breath, uneven and shallow, like I hadn’t taken a real one since Nox Obscura told me to run.
I pulled out of the gravel lot on autopilot, headlights cutting through the dark. The streets were mostly empty, the occasional porch light flickering past as I drove through Stonewood’s quiet neighborhoods. Street signs blurred. Every red light dragged. My body was buzzing, lit up from the inside like a match had been touched to a fuse and it hadn’t burned out yet.
I gripped the wheel tighter. My thighs pressed together on instinct. I could still feel him… his breath, his voice, his fucking thigh between mine.
God, what the hell was wrong with me?
My cheeks burned as I turned onto our street. My house sat in darkness, just like I’d left it. But Knox’s?
It was all lit up, warm, and welcoming.
I pulled into his driveway, my heart hammering against my ribs. The porch light was on. His living room window glowed faintly.
He was awake, probably still working. Still steady. And I was about to walk through his front door with shaking legs and the ghost of another man’s hands all over me.
I sat in the car for a full minute after turning off the engine.
The keys hung limp between my fingers. My pulse still hadn’t steadied. My body felt wrung out. My skin was too tight, nerves lit up like live wires, thighs and pussy aching in a way I didn’t want to think too hard about.
I couldn’t go inside like this.
I absolutely could not walk intohishouse —Knox’shouse — looking like I’d just come undone in the arms of a stranger. I couldn’t sit across from him and pretend everything was fine when my mouth still remembered the shape of the moans Nox Obscura had pulled out of me.
I shoved the keys into my hoodie pocket and leaned back in the seat.
Deep breath in. Hold. Breathe out for a count of six.
My reflection in the rearview mirror was flushed and a little wild. My mascara had smudged slightly under one eye. My lips looked too full, too soft. Like they’d been kissed, even though they hadn’t.
Not really.
God, what thefuckwas wrong with me?
I climbed out of the car, pulling my hoodie tighter around me like that might help. The October night air was cooler now, and I shivered as I crossed the short stretch of driveway to his front door.
