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The anguish in his voice made my eyes smart. With no idea why I was agreeing, I forced out the reply he was waiting for. “Yes. I promise.”
“I can’t pretend any more. I can’t look in your eyes and pretend I don’t know.” He stared into the fire before finally directing his attention to my face. “I looked up your name, weeks ago. Near the beginning. Mia, I know.” He smoothed his fingers over my cheek, the tenderness in his tone breaking me. “I know.”
My heart stuttered and stopped. I tried to breathe and gasped instead. No. He couldn’t mean what I thought. That night on his bar, when he’d made me come and I’d started to cry, I’d seen something in his eyes. Something that had cut to the deepest part of who I was. The real me, the one buried beneath bravado and lies and a veil of normalcy. I’d run because I couldn’t face the possibility. Then he’d gotten hurt, and I’d pushed it all aside. He couldn’t know anything about Amelia Anderson’s past in Georgia. Seven years had passed.
Seven minutes in my head. Seven minutes in my gut. Seven minutes in a place not nearly as mystical as my soul, but way down deep at the very heart of me. Where I was still that crazed animal who didn’t care about anything but survival. I’d killed for it once.
And he knew.
He knew.
I stumbled back, falling off his lap to the pile of sand. It got all over me, clinging to skin still misty with sweat, and I couldn’t get it off. I scrabbled backward, crab walking like some crazed sea creature.
I’d ended a man’s life to make sure I didn’t die. What would I do now to ensure the me I’d created, this falsified version that fooled no one—that hadn’t fooled Tray—would live?
This time I would kill us. Him and me. Done. Over. Dead. Just like Darren.
We weren’t real. We weren’t anything but a joke. I was his charity case. Because he knew. He knew.
“Mia. Baby. Come here.” He fell to his knees and reached out for me, the tips of his fingers brushing my knees, my calves. I slapped him away as if he were a spiderweb sticking to my flesh. Binding me in an intricate, nearly invisible web.
He’d been so clever. All the lines he’d used. The way he’d made me laugh. How he’d spanked me tonight and dislodged that block of congealed glue in my chest that contained all my emotions. I’d opened myself up to him in every possible manner.
The only thing I’d held back was the truth. I hadn’t given that to him, because I didn’t want to be Amelia Anderson, broken girl any longer. I wanted to fall in love. To be normal.
Just…normal.
But everything between us was a lie. Especially me. The girl I’d become in his arms was already disappearing, shriveling into the shell she’d come from. I was a fake. A pretender. Scarred and battered and unclean.
Unwanted by everyone, even myself.
“Let me explain. Please. I didn’t mean to find out. It was an accident that I even searched, just based on a hunch. I had no idea I’d find…that.”
My life distilled to one word, uttered in horror. That.
I didn’t speak as I rose to my knees. I’d get up and get dressed, just walk out the door. My mind was already putting up a wall, layering bricks that wouldn’t let him in again. He was a stranger. A liar. He’d betrayed me in the worst way possible. He’d pretended to believe I was a regular person. I could be someone to love. When all along, he’d known that wasn’t true.
The wave of sickness spread through me so swiftly that all I could do was clutch my arms around my stomach and moan.
“Mia. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”
He wrapped his arms around me and kissed my neck, my shoulders, my back. Frantically. As if he were trying to pin me in place, to hold me here when he sensed part of me was already gone. I might’ve felt sorry for him, if I hadn’t been more sorry for myself.
“Don’t leave. Don’t go.” He sounded like he was choking. Running out of air.
I could barely hear him over my keening moans.
“We’ll get through this together. I don’t know how to fix you, but I’ll try. God, I’ll do anything.”
“I knew you weren’t happy, Amelia. I saved you.”
“You think you know? You think you understand?” The question came from way down deep, echoing out like we were in an empty, drafty room.
He said nothing, but his breath sawed out from between his parted lips. It blew hot over my back, creating more goose bumps. I would’ve shivered, if I’d still been connected to my body. I was floating above. Separate from myself. From him.
“I walked home the same way every day. Two miles from the door of my school to home. But one day, I changed the route.” I sounded completely detached from the story I was telling. My own twisted fairy tale. “I went down another street, because I wanted to see something new. For the longest time, I blamed myself for p
icking another road. Thinking I could’ve changed it. I didn’t know then that he’d been watching my sister and me for weeks. Picking his moment. If she’d been with me that day, he would’ve taken her too.” I tightened my grip on my stomach. “I convinced him he didn’t want her. Only me. I would be everything he needed.”
