All the Truths (Lies & Truths 2)

What I have planned for her doesn’t contradict that fact. Just because I gave her freedom doesn’t mean she can parade around with another man as if she has every right to.

What were they doing in the pool house anyway?

I only stop my murderous plans when Jason waves at her and heads toward the small house he shares with Elizabeth. Reina barely acknowledges him as her feet carry her in my direction.

She doesn’t lift her head so she can’t see me watching the slight tremble in her full lips, the way her blond hair falls to her shoulder with abandonment. Her shorts ride up her pale thighs with every step she takes as if enticing me with what’s beneath, with what I tasted last night.

The moment I had her, the moment I buried myself into her warmth and looked into her ocean blue eyes, I felt a strange energy.

It’s like the ocean’s pull when it’s drowning you, or the sirens’ song when they’re luring you to nothingness.

Reina has that effect on people.

She lures then traps.

She manipulates then strikes.

She’s the devil dressed as an angel.

For three years, that’s what I believed, and I still do—in some way.

It’s just that she came up with this fucking amnesia thing that keeps shuffling my cards. She keeps acting in sporadic ways that mess with my fucking head.

She’s not supposed to get into my head, let alone mess with it.

My plan was simple: torture then kill her. Make her suffer then finish her miserable life.

Make her mine one final time then toss her aside.

Now the lines are blurring with every word out of her fucking mouth, with the way she got on her knees for me, the way she submitted to me, the way she opened her mouth and legs as if they’ve always belonged to me. They do.

She hasn’t only done it with me. I’ve noticed the way she treats her cheerleaders, how she laughs and talks back, how she fucking smiles.

Reina doesn’t smile.

She stopped smiling around her sixteenth birthday.

When she does, they’re filled with contempt and malice.

Fake.

Since the hospital, I’ve caught her smiling and laughing from the bottom of her heart more times than I can count.

I took pictures of those smiles while she wasn’t watching and studied them later to see if she was putting on a front again.

She wasn’t.

They were almost as genuine as when we were pre-teens.

She’s not smiling now, though. Her shoulders strain with tension and her head appears lost elsewhere. She passes beside me without as much as a glance.

I doubt she even notices I’m there.

Her steps are heavy and slow as she takes the stairs, clutching the railings for balance.

I release the tie with a jerk.

Since waking up in the hospital, this is the first time Reina hasn’t acknowledged my existence. She’d usually sense me a mile away and lock gazes with me with defiance and spikiness that makes my cock hard.