Page 67 of Conflicted Lies

He offers his hand to me, but when he notices I’m not moving, he reaches in and pulls me out.

“No one is going to see us here, Shortcake,” he assures me, and it surprises me how attuned he is to my inner thoughts. Though, if he were a mind reader, he’d be running the other way.

He leads me into the building, once again holding my hand, and I stare in fascination at where we’re joined as if in a daze. Why does the only man I let lead me in any way have to be an enemy to my family?

At the start, I only cared if they found out because they’d take away my fun of killing myself. I didn’t like how closely he was sniffing around my family affairs. But lately, there’s been a flicker of concern about what they’ll do if they find out there’s something between us.

I still want to kill him, though, right? I think it’ll be the most beautiful thing, more captivating than any glass statue I’ve created. But the idea of there being no more Braxton, as much as he terrorizes me, feels… strange.

I don’t even want to think about the consequences that would follow if my family found out about us. My aunty is as ruthless, possibly even more so, than my father. She would kill him first and ask questions later, not even caring that she would have the whole police force after her.

He unlocks his apartment door with his free hand and pushes it open before pulling me in with him. It’s only then that he drops my hand as he locks the door behind us, as if silently reminding me there’s nowhere to run.

I know I can leave at any time, but my legs don’t want to carry me away from him, only toward him.

But that kind of gravitational pull is terrifying.

“Shortcake.”

“I should leave,” I tell him, a spurt of panic running through me. What am I really doing here? What arewedoing?

“No, you shouldn’t,” he growls.

He fills the space between us, my chest pressing against his stomach as I look up into those crystal-blue eyes. Eyes that seeme. That demand my attention. That feel like they’re giving me all of him when we’re locked away from the outside world. But they can’t make the complications between us disappear.

I take a shaky breath. He knows who my family is and says he’s not scared of them, but what if he had reason to be scared of me? In fact, it’s a little offensive that he doesn’t feel that way. But the truth of the matter is, even if we felt deeply for one another, wouldn’t he turn on me in a heartbeat?

He goes to kiss me, but I find myself resting my hand on his chest and steeling myself for my next question.

“What if I told you that I like to kill people?” I ask as he brushes his nose against mine. I try to avoid the lure of his lips, heavy with anticipation for his response. He’d betray me, wouldn’t he? As he would with my family? If I were the worst of the worst, would he still love me?

My heart stops.Love me?

“Well, that would complicate things, wouldn’t it, Shortcake? But I’ve also seen you with a gun,” he says with mirth.

“I’m serious, Braxton,” I chide, pulling back from him as much as it pains me to do so. I thought this was only physical attraction between us. But what if it’s something more?Fuck. How did I end up thinking any of this? “Is this all a game to you?”

His eyebrows furrow as he slides a hand over my cheek and cups it, his other hand resting on my collarbone. “If it were a game, wouldn’t I have caught you already?”

“Who says I wouldn’t be the one to catch you?” I bite back.

“Who says you haven’t already?”

My heart falters. Is this a lie? Is he tricking me? It’s all riddles.

“What I do know, and what I can tell you now, is that I’ve tried to keep my distance from you for the last month. But every day, every hour, you haunt my thoughts, Shortcake. You have no idea how much you’ve poisoned me with an insatiable thirst for you.Thatis the truth.”

It goes without saying that it’s notallof the truth. There’s only so deep we can connect without revealing our hands or damaging our careers or my family in the process. Even if I’m realizing I’m falling for the enemy, I can’t fall so hard as to hand him anything damning about my family.

My family comes first, and it breaks me little by little to know that our ending doesn’t change. Even if I care for him. Even if I’m courageous enough to admit it. It’ll still end with me holding a gun to his head.

So irrationally, irrevocably, I want to take from him as much as I can while I can.

I lean into him, pushing aside the thoughts that weigh me down. If we can’t express ourselves through words, then all we have left is our bodies. He takes me by the waist and pulls me against him. I go willingly because I very much like his hands on me. He drags me with him to the bathroom and then pushes open the door. The moment we’re inside, he removes his beanie and coat, placing them on the hook behind the door before his hands come back to me. He fingers the clips on my overalls above my breasts, then unhooks them.

Fuck.Our hands are on one another, desperately trying to undress the other as quickly as possible.

“Fuck, I’ve missed you, Shortcake,” he whispers as he kisses down my neck. I lean into him, mirroring his words but leaving them unspoken.

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