All the Truths (Lies & Truths 2)

“Are you cheating on me, Reina?” His question is like a slap across my face. My cheek is hot and tingling where his imaginary hand struck me.

“N-No.” My lips tremble around the word.

Although I might have cheated before, I don’t now and will never do it again.

Why the hell did I cheat? Was it another way to remain detached and not grow close to Asher? Because I know—I’m sure—I felt something for him in the past.

These intense feelings didn’t spring up out of nowhere. They’ve been magnifying over the years, and when I finally had the freedom of amnesia, I just let them loose.

I let them consume me alive.

He leans over so his entire body is angled toward mine. “Why do I think you did?”

“What about you, then?” I cover my ignorance by jutting out my chin. “Didn’t you cheat on me?”

“No.”

“Do you expect me to believe that?”

“I don’t care what you believe. I don’t have the time or energy to focus on anyone else.”

My heartbeat hammers faster as his words sink in. He just admitted that he only has the time and energy to focus on me.

Even if it’s the most fucked-up type of focus.

“Not even in England?” I murmur.

“Not even in England.”

Well, shit. How does he have the power to make my pulse race this hard and fast? Is it a curse?

Or maybe it’s something stronger I refuse to admit.

“So, are you?” he repeats. “Cheating on me, I mean.”

“No.” I say the word with an odd type of conviction like I never cheated on him, like the thought never even crossed my mind.

“Good, because I don’t react well to others touching what I own.” His finger glides along my cheek, leaving goosebumps in its wake as he traces my lower lip in a sensual caress. “You’re mine, aren’t you, prom queen?”

Prom queen.

My chest flutters in and out of sync.

I don’t know why I love it so much when he calls me that. Could be because it’s neither Reina nor Rai. It’s neither identity theft nor confusion.

It’s just me.

His thumb and forefinger squeeze my chin. “Answer me.”

“I don’t belong to someone who wants to hurt me.”

I might be inexplicably attracted to Asher, but I’ve never, not once, forgotten what he did to me. That fear was wild and raw and I can almost feel how I hung on the roof or how these same fingers choked me with the intent of ending my life.

People think when you have dark thoughts about ending your own life, you’d feel relieved when someone else takes the burden away and finishes it for you.

It’s not true, at least not for me.

That terror I felt back then still pulses beneath my skin, pumping in my bloodstream. Those were some of the rare moments where I thought I didn’t want to die, that I couldn’t leave just like that.