“Why did you lie?”
The question is a punch to the gut.
It leaves her winded, so stunned that she forgets where and when she is. Eden stares at him. Alexander stares back. There’s no give.
“I... I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she mumbles, throat closing up in discomfort. Her fight or flight instincts are offline.
“Why did you lie?” he asks again, firmer this time.
“I don’t—”
“Your math doesn’t add up.”
“What?”
“Zhao. He retired nine years ago.”
“Y-you’re wrong.”
“I know for a fact I’m not.”
Eden crosses her arms over her chest. “What makes you so sure?”
“Because Charlie Zhao is my uncle.”
Nevermind.
Thisis a punch to the gut.
“I was one of the last—” Alexander cuts himself off before he starts yelling. “I was the last student he ever taught, and I don’t remember you at all.”
Her blood is on fire. The voice in her head tells her to run, but her body has no strength left to move.
“So who the hell are you?” he asks. “Tell me the truth.”
Eden’s mouth falls open.
She can’t think. She can’t speak.
So she scrambles out of the car andruns.
Alexander gets out of the vehicle and follows her, alarmed. It’s raining hard, droplets coming down as one heavy sheet.
“Eden, wait!”
She doesn’t listen. She races into her building and all the way to the end of the hall, locking herself inside her apartment. She damn near clips Alexander’s face when she slams the door shut.
He bangs his fist against the frame, frantic. “Eden? Let me in. Talk to me.”
He regrets calling her out the way he did, but Alexander doesn’t know a better way to broach the subject. The second she mentioned studying with Charlie, he knew. There was no possible way she was telling the truth. He needs to know. He needs to know because maybe— just maybe—he can help her.
A million and one questions race through his mind.
What is she hiding? Who is she really? What the fuck is going on?
“Eden?” he calls again. “Eden, please talk to me. I just want to know what’s going on. Are you—fuck, I don’t know—are you in trouble or something? Is that why you lied?”
“Go away,” she says, her voice muffled by the door. The quiver in her words makes his blood run cold.
