I could tell by the antsy way he kept looking me over when he said he had to godo his job. It took me a solid week to realize it wasn’t really an expression I could see as much as an emotion I could feel.
It came somewhere from the center of my chest and welled up, telling me that even though he was telling me the truth, there was deception behind the intention. I wasn’t sure if he knew I could sense it…
But the more time I spent with him, the more nights I spent dreaming with him in a field of red flowers… the more I couldfeelhim. And the more I could feel him, the more I was starting to believe that maybe he’d been telling me the truth, that my brother had seen something in him… that maybe in the middle of all this chaos, in the middle of my world falling apart and my life being flipped upside down… just maybe…
Maybe things could start to make sense.
It didn’t matter if we’d agreed to pretend nothing was happening—I couldn’tignoreit.
Which meant when he told me for the third time that he was going out towork, I couldn’t take it anymore. Silently invitinghim into the room every night, sharing that place in my mind with him… it almost felt healing. It was as though every part of me that had broken and turned jagged was slowly smoothing over with each day that passed. Maybe we didn’t acknowledge it in the daylight because I wasn’t ready to face it, but…
I guess I’d thought it meantsomething. At least I’d thought it meant enough that he wouldn’t lie to me, so the knowledge that he was… made all those jagged pieces of pain and anger come back to the surface. Ready to cut, ready tohurt.
When he started out of the apartment, I followed him.
“What are you doing, Cole?” I’d barely made it a few steps before he’d heard the sound of my footsteps, but I didn’t hesitate. I knew following him meant leaving whatever protection his apartment provided.
It didn’t matter.
I’d told him he had a week to figure things out. I’d been ready to give him some leeway on that, but not now.
Not when he was lying to me.
“I’m coming with you.”
His eyes narrowed—molten gold cradled in a halo of black lashes that was all beauty and lie wrapped together when he glanced back at me.
“You should stay in the apartment. It’s not safe for you to come with me, it?—”
“I want to know what you’re doing.”
“I told you.”
Fuck, why did the lie hurt so much? I was the one who told him when we were here, when we were looking each other in the eyes, he needed to know that I hated him.
He didn’toweme honesty.
That didn’t matter, though, because I was going to take it anyway.
“Don’t lie to me, Sephtis.” And before he could open his mouth to try to defend it, I stepped into his space. “I can tell that you are. I can feel it.”
I had the satisfaction of watching those golden eyes go wide before his expression shuttered. “It’s not important. And I’m not lying.”
“Sephtis, I swear?—”
“Taking care of youismy job.” It still wasn’t an explanation, and when he stepped toward me again, I realized what he was doing. He was trying to force me back inside. “I’ll do whatever I have to if it means keeping you safe. You don’t need toknoweverything that entails.”
It sounded so ominous, and a small part of me could easily guess what he was talking about.
The man in the alley.
The fact that he’d fed me Vitality before.
The way he’d gotten the hounds off my trail.
But…
“Tell me what you’re doing.”
