Page 140 of A Smile Full of Lies
“I will never betray Knox, so you might as well give up and leave me the fuck alone.”
His distorted voice rasped, soft and cutting: “You don’t think you betrayed him already? Running off to confront his family’s killer without telling him? You stole his vengeance out from under him. That’s a slap in the face, baby girl, a wound he might never forgive you for.”
My knees buckled and I slid into the chair, clutching the phone like I could choke him just by squeezing it.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
But he did. Of course he did. The words hit too close to home.
“You stabbed him in the back, and you almost got yourself killed in the process. Why?”
I tasted blood where I bit my tongue.
“I was protecting him,” I whispered, hating the tremor in my voice. “From himself. From what it would have cost him.”
His laugh was quiet, humorless.
“No, sweetheart. You just couldn’t stand not being the one to hold the knife. Don’t lie to me about that. What I want to understand is why you’d put yourself between Philip Knox and a motherfucking lunatic with a knife.”
“Because I’m in love with Knox, and I was afraid he’d kill Thayer. I was afraid he’d fuck up and get caught and go to prison, and I won’t allow that to happen. I refuse to do life without him now that I finally know how good it feels to let him in, rather than holding him at arms’ length all the fucking time. Now that I’ve had a taste of what it can be like to be with him? I’ll never let that go without a fight.”
“Big words from a girl who still wants me, too?—”
“I don’t want you,” I ground out, forcing steel into my voice. “You’re just a mask. A shadow. Whatever itch you scratch, it’s not real.”
“Bullshit. There’s nothing more real than the way I made you come for me after I hunted you through your pretty little millionaire boy-toy’s childhood home.”
My reflection stared back at me in the dark laptop screen, wide eyes, hair falling into my face.
“Knox is real. He didn’t walk away when you threw me under the bus and told him everything you pulled out of me during your sick little game the last time we spoke on the phone. He didn’t let me burn. He still wants me, no matter what you told him.”
Another low laugh curled through the line, indulgent, like he was humoring me.
“And yet here you are, panting on the phone with me, locked up all alone in a secluded house on the river, picturing my hand around your throat.”
Heat roared through my traitorous body, and I pressed my thighs together so tight it hurt, trying to banish my pussy’s insistent throbbing.
“I said fuck off,” I snapped, voice breaking. “Leave me alone.”
Silence hummed between us again. I thought he’d hung up until he whispered, “You’re never alone when you see the glow. Don’t forget that.”
I opened my mouth to tell him to go fuck himself, but the line went dead before I could say a word.
I dropped the phone and shoved it away like it might bite me. My pulse still skittered wild in my throat, my stupid body betraying me in every possible way. I hated it. Hated him. Hated the part of me that leaned into the terror and found comfort in the edge of it.
I staggered to the window and yanked the curtain aside. Nothing. No glow. Just dark trees swaying in the wind and the Tensaw river running silver in the moonlight. The storm clouds approaching from the opposite bank hadn’t reached this side of the river yet, but they would any minute now. Lightning lit up the sky, and thunder rumbled soon after.
Nox Obscura could have been anywhere. He could have been nowhere. My skin still buzzed with the echo of his voice, the scrape of his laughter. Knox’s name pulsed like a mantra in my head — Knox, Knox, Knox — like if I repeated it enough it would armor me against the masked bastard stalking me. I wrapped my arms tight around myself and sank down against the wall. Not for the first time since he’d left me here, I hated that Knox wasn’t home, that I couldn’t just call him and tell him to come get me, because I didn’t feel safe.
By the time the sun crept pale through the trees, I hadn’t slept. Every noise jolted me upright, every flash of lightning, roll of thunder, or flicker of shadow dragged my gaze to the glass. I kept my phone on the bedside table, its dark screen taunting me.
He hadn’t called again. Maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe he was done. But my chest still throbbed with his words, the accusation I couldn’t shake.
You took away his chance to get even.
My stomach knotted. Was that betrayal? Or was it mercy? I didn’t know anymore. But I knew this: if Nox Obscura thought he could crawl into my head and pull me away from Knox, he was wrong.
I pressed my palm to the cool glass of the window, staring into the woods where the glow had been. My voice was raw whenI whispered it aloud, just for me: “I chose him. And I’ll keep choosing him. No mask, no monster, no stupid sexual fantasy come to life is going to take that from me.”
