Chapter 152 157
Chapter 152 157
He waits patiently, but I can’t read his expression and I have no idea what he’s thinking right now.
“What’s going on between us?” I blurt. It’s the first thing that pops into my head.
As mortifying as it is to talk about this, it’s not faked. The question has been festering in the back of my mind for ages. I’m not in the right headspace to keep track of a lie. The stakes are high and the best deceptions contain at least a shred of truth.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, we’re married, legally speaking,” I say. “We’re having this baby and… we have been known to engage in… in…”
“Carnal relations?” he jokes, though his face remains impassive.
I blush. “Yes,” I say with an embarrassed nod. “That. So what are we, Aleks? Because despite all that, I still don’t know where I stand with you.”
“Where would you like to stand with me?” he asks.
The truest answer I can give, the one that comes instinctively to my lips, is that I want to be with him. I want us to be a family, like the one I grew up in. I want us to love each other and support each other and fight for each other and maybe sometimes fight with each other, but that’s okay, because the love will see us through and make it all alright in the end.
But how can I even so much as entertain the dream after what I just discovered?
How, even now, could I pretend to cling to the fading hope that there’s a future here?
There’s not.
There’s just more and lower levels to this hell.
Aleks scans me up and down. I clutch my hands together behind my back, as if he’d be able to read through my lies if he saw them trembling.
I can feel the goosebumps forming on my spine. As much as I would like to claim disgust, it’s not that.
It’s desire I’m feeling, even now.
What does that say about me? That I can still feel this for him even when I know now he’s spent all these months lying to me? That beneath the mask of the monster is… a worse monster, and yet I love him anyway?
“Olivia, is something wrong?” he asks.
He doesn’t sound overly concerned. More like… amused. Like he’s waiting for something to happen.
“Everything is wrong,” I whisper. My chin falls to my chest.
He’s close to me now. So close that if I look up, I’ll be confronted with his haunting eyes.
And I don’t want to be haunted anymore. I have enough demons running around inside my head as it is.
“What if I wanted to leave?” I ask. “After the baby is born?”
“Then you would be free to,” he says. “So long as the threat of Hargrove is taken care of.”
“And my child?”
He seems even more amused now. “Your child would stay here with me.”
“A baby should be with its mother.”
“I don’t subscribe to that belief.”
“So if I want to be with my baby, I have to stay here?”
He nods. “We all have to make choices in this life.”
“If you think that’s a choice, then you’re delusional,” I snap up at him.
“What do you want from me, Olivia?” he asks calmly. “You want some bold declaration of love? You want me to tell you I can’t live without you? That I want you to stay, not for the baby, but for me?”
I’m aware of the fact that I’m holding my breath. But I remind myself that his promises, no matter how sincere they may seem, are all lies.
“Answer the question. Is that what you want, Olivia?”
“You know what I want, Aleks? What I really want?”
“Tell me.”
“The truth,” I say, releasing the painful breath I’ve been holding. “I want the truth.”
35
ALEKS
The truth.
People think it’s a simple thing. Or that it’s even a thing at all.
But it’s not—or if it is, it’s not just one thing. It’s a thousand things melted together.
Everyone has a different truth. They carve off the portions they don’t like, mold it and twist it to shape their own needs. They deal in half-truths so they can keep themselves as the hero of their own story, the center of their own universe.
But the truth is ugly.
And sometimes, the only way to truly understand the beating heart of it is with a lie.
“Have you been talking to the wrong people again, Olivia?”
“Who are the wrong people, Aleks?” she challenges. “Anyone who claims you’re the villain?”
I raise my eyebrows. “Ah, so I’m the villain again?”
“You were always the villain. I was just too blind and foolish to see it.”
“Blinded by what exactly?”
She turns so I can’t see her face. “It doesn’t matter.”
I grab her hand and twist her back around. I won’t let her avoid me—avoid this—any longer. “I’ll be the judge of that.”
I can see the betrayal in her eyes. She’s trying to play her part, trying to keep control of her emotions, but she’s not practiced at it. Deception is utterly alien to her.
Maybe that’s why she’s managed to sink beneath my skin and stay there like a cancer I can’t get rid of. Her innocence and naivete helped her slip past all my defenses.
It was an unwelcome intrusion at first. But now?
Now, I can’t bear to cut her out of me.
“Aleks,” she says. “Please…”
“I can’t know what you’re talking about unless you tell me, Olivia.”
“If you don’t know by now, then what’s the freaking point?” she cries out.
I sigh and go for the door. She grabs hold of my arm in a panic and forces me to turn around. Her chest nearly bumps into mine, but she stiffens like a board to keep from touching me as much as possible.
“You’re giving me some mixed signals here, Olivia,” I remark. “But I take it you’re angry about something.”
“I’m angry about everything.”
I nod. “And I’m guessing most of that anger has to do with me?”
She shakes her head, searching for a satisfying answer to all her questions. “Why couldn’t things have been different? Why couldn’t you have been different?” She’s talking to herself as much as to me. “I can’t help thinking how easy things would have been if you’d just been… a normal guy.”
I snort. “That sounds like a nightmare.”
“Does it?” she asks. “It sounds kind of… wonderful to me.”
“Does it?” I retort. “Something tells me you wouldn’t be satisfied if I wasn’t who I am. You’ve been down that road, Olivia. You know where it leads. You stayed on this path for a reason.”