Page 74 of Unmasking My Dark Knight

I didn’t understand why she couldn’t just tell her mom to go fuck off. Well, I could, but I wanted nothing more than for Ivy Jade to bring out her feisty side and tell her mother off. She was thirty years old, and her mom was still ruling her life.

And then I realized—she would always rule her life. Gustav told me how insistent his mom was about setting him up with some heiress a while ago, right when he and Tallulah were getting serious. He spent months arguing with her about it, and he never once stepped down.

So why couldn’t Ivy Jade do the same?

But then again, maybe Ivy Jade wanted to be with someone like the wealthy dude in a suit she was sitting next to, chatting animatedly with, not even once looking back my way, like she had forgotten all about me.

Because why would she want someone like me over someone like him? He had so much more to offer. Money, a comfortable life—no, a life of even more luxury, probably able to whisk her off to the Bahamas on a Tuesday just for the hell of it.

What the fuck did I have to offer? I had no real job. I had a few thousand dollars in my savings account, and I didn’t even have my own place. I was just a freak who dressed as a clown and who lied to the one person I truly felt myself with.

I took another glance at Ivy Jade and the suit guy, who had his hand on top of hers as they began to carve into their pumpkin. She was smiling, and they were close to one another, too close. They had natural chemistry, and he was fucking charming her off her feet.

I looked down at my pumpkin, angrily using my carving knife to cut a hole in it. People laughed around me, having their own conversations, the smell of pumpkin filling the air. I sat by myself, pulling the seeds and guts out of the pumpkin that Ivy Jade and I had picked out together.

I faced the cleaned-out pumpkin towards me and began to carve. I hadn’t created anything in a while, so it was nice to be able to carve out exactly how I was feeling.

I sat back, taking a look at my work.

The pumpkin was a sad clown, his eyebrows slanted upward, frowning back at me in despair.

Fucking same, pumpkin. Fucking same.

I placed a candle inside and stood up. I took one last glance over at Ivy Jade, and it was as if she had no idea I was even there anymore.

I turned and walked away, knowing exactly what I needed to do.

“What do you mean you stole her rings?” Rachel barked over the phone as I called the one person I knew who could give me advice. I should have also known that she would chew my ass out after I told her everything I did to Ivy Jade.

“I know, I know! I’m a piece of shit,” I defended, climbing up the spiral staircase, walking to my room. The chateau felt bleak all of a sudden, nothing like how it felt this morning. “I just wanted an excuse to see her again. It was just a lapse in judgment.”

“A lapse in judgment is forgetting to put the toilet seat down. What you’re doing is completely immoral!” She huffed into the phone like she was doing push-ups or something. I think she was pacing in the apartment. “Wait. So… you’ve been meeting her as both High Jynx and as yourself?”

I got quiet.

“Yes…” I answered reluctantly.

“And she knows that it’s you, right? At the Scare Park?”

I got into my room and shut the door. Without answering, I fell onto the bed and massaged the bridge of my nose. “At this moment… she does not know I’m High Jynx.”

“ROMEO!” Rachel yelled into the phone. I wanted to bury my head into the pillow and die. “You’re such an asshole!”

“I know! I fucked up!”

“And you had sex with her as both people?” she asked with disgust. Hearing about your sibling’s sex life was as appealing as eating dog shit, but with my added layer of deception, I knew I was really turning Rachel’s stomach.

“Yes. But maybe if she really cares about me—Romeo and High Jynx—then maybe she’ll be thrilled to find out we’re the same person?” I offered an alternative viewpoint, grasping at straws.

“Oh, Romeo… you’re going to hell,” she said slowly. It sounded like she flopped herself onto the couch—aka my bed. “You are so fucking screwed, bro.”

I groaned because she was completely fucking right. Rolling over in bed, I fished the little ring box out of my nightstand drawer. This morning, I had this stupid false hope that maybe Ivy Jade and I could work out after all. I opened the box to Gustav’s and Tallulah’s matching black wedding bands. I turned it over in my hands a few times, guilt consuming me once again.

“I kept the rings a secret because I wanted to see Ivy Jade again. And the more we started to talk, the more I realized she wasn’t exactly who I thought she was. She kept coming back, night after night, and we had to continue our search together,” I said, feeling like a major dirtbag, but also helpless to how much I grew to care for her. How much I needed her. “Maybe it was selfish, but if she had found those rings, if I had pointed them out and given them to her that night, none of this would have ever happened. She wouldn’t have gotten to know High Jynx, I wouldn’t have gotten to know her, and I would have never wanted to speak to her as Romeo, especially with the way she treated me the first day she saw me.”

Rachel grew quiet over the phone.

We sat in each other's silence, giving ourselves time to process everything that was said out loud. Maybe it was a twin thing, but it felt like she was lying by my side, resting on my shoulder.