Page 74 of The Lies of Bryn van Doren

“Atzel, I change my mind. I need to make a stop. Tribeca, please.”

“Certainly, Mr. Morgan.”

After his driver turns around, heading back in the direction from which they came, it takes just over twenty minutes before they’ve reached his destination. As he steps out of the backseat, he waves his hand, signaling to Atzel he has no need for the suit jacket he abandoned after leaving the office.

“I don’t know how long I’ll be,” he says, staring at the front entrance of the building. “Stay close.”

Atzel offers him a silent nod, and then Khalohn makes his way inside. When he reaches the door of 601, he hesitates, acclimating himself to the regret which lingers in his chest, knowing Bryn—Jessica—won’t be inside. The truth found in her name, the fact that she lied to him about who she is, is enough to get him through the door. He stops at the threshold between the entryway and the main room, the loft as spotless as he should expect. The cleaning staff he hired to see to the place comes on Mondays, and the loft hasn’t been used since.

Sat on her place last night into this morning, but she neither came nor went.

The first time he ever met her at their place, she told him she couldn’t give up her apartment. Taking a few steps forward, Khalohn powers on the overhead lights, looking around for any trace of her. Nothing is out of place, and this irks him even more.

If she’s not sleeping at home and she’s not sleeping here, where the hell is she?

His first thought is to wonder if there’s someone else. It sounds implausible, but he can’t think of another explanation. As far as he’s concerned, they’re exclusive. That was part of their arrangement. But if she lied about her name, what else is she lying about?

Khalohn stomps to the kitchen and starts pulling out drawers, blindly looking for clues—forevidenceof the woman he’s been taking to bed for the last few weeks. He doesn’t know what he’s looking for, but he can’t think clearly enough to search efficiently. After tearing through the kitchen, he hurries toward the bedroom closet. On his way there, it dawns on him—he, too, gave her a different name when they first met. Stepping up on the platform, he pauses for a second, looking over his shoulder at the bed.

Godrik. I gave her a third of my name, hiding my identify for a reason. What’s her excuse?

Ripping his gaze away from the neatly made bed, he stifles a growl of frustration at how many times he stayed there all night.As Khalohn.

She had every chance to tell me who she really is,he thinks to himself, sliding the closet door open. He starts to rifle through it, tossing lacy panties, matching bras, and silk nighties onto the floor.She chose to lie. She had the audacity to ask about me, about my past, and she wouldn’t even give me her fuckingname?

When the closet is empty, ransacked by his own hands, he realizes he’s so upset he’s out of breath. Even more, he’s found nothing. There’s not a trace of Jessica in the place. Reaching up to sink his fingers into his hair, he pulls in a deep breath, suddenly aware of how reckless he’s been. He let himself get swept up in the fantasy. He called it a business arrangement, but he entered into it ignorantly. He wanted her, he craved her, and he let himself be led by his dick. He didn’t investigate. He didn’t draw up a contract. He didn’t even check in with his accountant after he put the two of them in touch. He didnothingbut seal their agreement with a kiss.

A fuckingkiss.

He blames himself for getting played. But as he drops his hands to his sides and glances around the apartment, all he sees isher. Bryn.Jessica—whoever she is. Or, at least, he sees the woman his body knows; the woman who made him want more.

Do you like the apartment?

His eyes fall closed at the memory of her question. Now he doesn’t know. Now he’s got more questions than answers. He wonders if any of it was real, or if it was all just a lie.

Khalohn lets himselfinto the apartment, the bottle of bourbon he picked up on his way home firmly within his grasp. It was his first stop after he got the call from his lawyer. It’s done. She signed the papers. Three months. That’s all it took to dissolve a relationship he thought would last a lifetime. On his way to the kitchen, he doesn’t deny himself the feeling of self-pity, which settles heavily in his gut. Taking down a tumbler from the cabinet, he wonders how he managed to be so naïve for so long; how he managed to trick himself into thinking he’d finally found someone who wouldn’t abandon him.

Gripping his fingers around the glass, he resists the urge to throw it across the room. He’s had weeks to wrap his mind around the situation. He’s more frustrated he’s still hurting than anything else. It should come as no surprise that what he had to offer wasn’t enough for her. He’s never been enough for anyone. Not as a child. Not as an adolescent. Now, as a grown man, on the verge of seeing the first fruits of a business with bottomless potential, life has ripped the blinders from over his eyes, revealing what he was stupid enough to forget.

He walks through the silent apartment and sinks down onto the couch. Uncorking the bottle, he surrenders to the loneliness he now feels in his home. The home he used to share with Hollie. Pouring his first glass, he thinks of his ex-wife. She moved out a week after admitting to the affair. When he told her she could stay and he would go, she argued that unlike her, he had nowhere else to go. She wasn’t wrong. She told him she’d stay with her parents for a while, but as Khalohn downs a healthy swig of the brown liquor, he wonders if that’s even the truth. Lifting his tumbler to his lips once more, he finishes off his first pour, imagining a likely scenario in which she’s withhim. The best friend he thought he could trust. The bastard who stole his wife right from under his nose.

Khalohn scoffs at himself, twisting the truth into the gnarled version of reality he recognizes and understands far better than any other. In his own mind, he knows he’s not perfect, but he never claimed to be. It was never a promise he gave anyone. What he’d promised Hollie—hiswife—was a life. A partnership. A place at his side as he worked tirelessly to be who he is, to chase after what gives him purpose, and to share every ounce of it with her. Somewhere along the way, she forgot what that meant. She forgot what it meant for him to want to build something forthem.

Khalohn fills his tumbler without delay, anxious for the haze of obliviousness to overtake him. He just wants one night. One night to wallow. One night to grieve. One night to drown the man silly enough to share his dreams and ambitions with another. When he met her, he had no intention of losing his way. And then he fell in love. He fell in love, and the vow he made to himself at eighteen—to find what he was good at, to work hard, to thrive and succeed, to do it for himself, to prove tohimselfhe could do it alone and he didn’t need anyone to support him—he let that vow slip out of his grasp as he took hold of another. A vow to share himself with his wife.

“Fuck,” he grumbles, gulping down his third glass all at once.

The burn of alcohol ignites in his throat, and he winces, welcoming the sensation. He can feel the bourbon starting to warm him from the inside out, his head buzzing with the promise of intoxication. He pours himself some more and then leans against the back of the couch. His sips the drink down slowly this round, looking around the apartment. As he swivels his head left and right and back again, his vision begins to blur around the edges, along with the memories that filter through his mind.

Everything he was sure of just a few months ago is rimmed with doubt. He questions when Hollie left him. Not physically, but mentally. Emotionally. Was it the first time Timothy was brave enough to touch her? Or before?

Was any of it real?he wonders.Or was it all a lie?

Swirling the contents of his glass around with a flick of his wrist, he frowns, his muddled thoughts proposing another possibility—that they’d both been lying. She to him. He to himself. And maybe, just maybe, if he is merciful, he could believe she lied to herself, too.

No matter how he slices it, it all comes down to one undeniable truth.

Doesn’t matter what I do.

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