Know Me (Truthful Lies Trilogy - Book One) (26 page)

“
You’re not so little.”

“
Yes I am. Look at me!” She stretches her
tiny arms out. The beauty of the tatted one makes me want to lick
it top to bottom.

“
I meant big in spirit. I loved that mix
you made for me.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. And I think I know you better because
of it.”

“How so?”

I think of how best to answer this... “Sit,”
I say.

Let’s see if we
can
’t start
those teeth and claws growing out again.

I stretch out to grab her arms
to ease her to the chair, but
when my hands touch her skin, I’m undone. Almost without will, I’ve
clutched her to me and put her lips on mine.

They
burn like fire.

“You smell smoky,” I say.

“
Sacrament
stinks.”

I ease her to the stool, lick her lower
lip. “Close your eyes.” She does. I ease my hand over the wild
skull on her arm, look at her. “Keep them closed.”

Her left hand moves to my waist. Her
partly opened lips make my manhood yearn. I’m bursting with
need.

I slide my hand over her left arm and her
skin breaks out in goosebumps. “Keep your eyes closed.” Lightly, I
lick her lower lip, left to right. Wetting it.

S
he starts to smile. “Keep your lips open,” I say. “Don’t
move them.”

My hands are at her shoulders now. From
the right of her lip, I lick along the top now, all the way left.
Hot breaths burst from her, and her shoulders relax. Under her tee,
I see her nipples tighten.
No bra.

I’m hard now.
So
hard for her.

Her grip tightens on my waist. I start
moving my hands, flat-palms, down above her chest, lower, pressing
down on her soft body.

As the heel of my palm
reaches to just above her nipple,
she
clasps
on my
waist and pushes me back. “Declan Cox, don’t think I don’t want
you. But you can’t start a conversation about my music and then
expect me to be worry-free while kissing you.”

“But you’re not kissing me, I’m kissing
you.”

She sucks in a slow, ragged breath.
“You’re going to be the undoing of me, this much I
know.”

“You’ve already undone me, so fair is
fair.”

Her eyelids open. And I almost fall
because of their beauty. “You have got the
sexiest
motherfucking eyes I have ever seen.”

“
Sexiest
motherfucking
?”

“
Sexiest
motherfucking.”

“You thought of that adjective all day?”

“
This from the girl who puts on music about
digging out a girl’s eye while we make out.”

“
Wait until you find out what’s playing
when we make out today, so tell me fast what you thought of my damn
mix, or you’re gonna leave us both feeling
motherfucking
frustrated.”

Blaze
Ryleigh

It took all the resolve I had to push him
away. My skin burned and sizzled and my blood was overflowing,
moisture soaked my panties
. Thoughts of his hand—his gorgeous fingers—inside me,
slapped and pummeled me like fists. All of this from only one
kiss.

But he commented on my music.

So I need to know. I
need
to know.

He
asks, “Did you think of which songs to put on there? I
mean, did you plan it beforehand?”

“
No. Why? Did it suck?”

“
No, no. Wait—” He grabs me by the arms and
pulls me off the stool toward him. It’s only when his tongue is
inside me that I realize we’re kissing again. I pull back, “Deck,
I— Just tell me what you thought.”

“
I’m already doing it.”

Huh?

He stands straight, and it’s the first
time I fully take in his towering tallness, his strength and
masculinity. Leaning down, arms on the counter, he pins me between
them. And then he plants one on my lips again.

Slowly, like a sailboat fighting
to reach the shore, stuck ten
miles away from it in a raging storm, I come back...to this room,
only remotely feeling the tremble of insecurity which was brought
about by the statement:
I think I know you better because of
it.

As his lips massage mine, and his tongue
washes away
my tension,
my muscles soften. My grip on his solid forearms eases.

And I can breathe again.

“
Are you with me here?” he says.

I nod, swallow. “Yeah, I
think.”

He smiles. “Your voice is always so soft
when you speak to me.”

“
I don’t usually communicate with
words.”

And when he says the next thing, it
unravels me, because now I know
that he does know me, knows me through every solidified barrier and
fortification I’ve ever erected to protect myself.
Especially the ones
I built in the last year.
He knows everything about me.

H
e says: “I know. You communicate with music.”

“
I’m gonna jump out on a limb here, OK?”
His grip is firm on my upper arms, holding me steady so I don’t get
blown away by the whirl which is the world. “Now, I listened to
your mix the entire day. Trev and me. And Trev was talking,
yapping, and he was saying some things about it. But I think I
looked a little deeper than he did.”

“
Him too?”

He smiles politely. “Blaze, I don’t think
Trev can see into you like I feel I can. Now, I know that sounds
crazy and...maybe you’d expect me to put on a hockey mask and pull
out the chainsaw because I say it. But, it’s just how I
feel.

“
I ain’t gonna beat around the bush here
anymore about how I’m feeling about you. Because, out there, today,
in the world...the magic started dying. And as true as fuck, I felt
like
I
was dying. You
know? Like I’d finally tasted of the sweet water of life, and then
it got ripped away from me—”

“
Meth.”

He laughs. “I was hoping more like
oxygen.”

“
No, it’s Meth. Or H.”

His hands climb up my arms, to my neck. My
cheeks. He holds them steady, and tilts my eyes up to look at him.
“I’m gonna go out on a limb, and if I’m out of line, you tell me,
OK? You kick me in the shins or slam me in the nuts with your
knees. I’ll take it. But I gotta say it. You ready?”

“No.”

“
I think you’re scared. And that fear comes
out in your music. So much so that, when I heard the mix,
I
got scared—like, real
fear.
In
here
.” He taps his
chest. “Then, it rose. It...I don’t know the musical term for it...
It got...
higher
?”

“
Crescendo.”

He snaps his fingers. “That’s it! It
started
crescendoing
.”

I laugh, because it’s not a verb.

“
And when it hit the top, my heart exploded
into millions of sparkling pieces of confetti, and I felt like I
was in an open field— This was on the corner of Flushing and Union,
Blaze. You know, with those ugly brown buildings and black palisade
fencing? So, I was not confusing the current environment with your
music.

“
When that crescendo hit the top, there was
confetti. There was sunshine. There was elation, unreachable by any
drug I’ve ever hit. There was blue sky and there were freaking
glowing Angels in the goddamned heavens. And then—

“
Blackness. Red and sad. I don’t know what
that song was.” He sings a few lyrics for me. He has a terrible
singing voice.
And I love how it sounds
.

“
Seven Devils
,” I say.

“
Wow. What a name. Appropriate. You see,
and I didn’t even know the name. But there was this hollow echo
and, I felt like I was in an alley, with rats in it. And a dripping
faucet in the corner that’d just keep me up all night.

“
And I felt cold.

“
And...what I’m trying to say is, Blaze—and
here’s what you need to be ready for: I know there’s a big freaking
Black Hole in your world. I don’t know what it is, but I can see
it. It’s like this hole’s in the center of the room and
you’re...
gripping
onto
the walls and there’s blood under your nails and it’s sucking you
in and—”

I grab his shirt, clutch it for stability.
Rip and tug at it!

“—
there’s another thing, Blaze. Now, I want
you to look at me for this, OK? Look at me.”

My eyes
sting. The tears slam up inside my head
but I won’t let you
out, you bastards! I won’t!
I look up at him, barely. My eyes are foggy, and I know he
sees it; I’m ashamed to be nearly breaking down in front of someone
I hardly know.
But I do know you, Declan Cox. I do.

“
There’s another thing. You know what I
find incredible? What I find mind blowingly
insane
? Do you? I’m asking you.”

“
N—no.”

“
It’s this: How the
fuck
is it that you’re still holding onto that wall?
You should’ve been sucked into that hole and been dead a millenium
ago.”

A year ago:

She died, and Mr. Bernstein took care of
me. But
, when he left,
days later, I stood on the roof—
my
roof. And I looked down.
Will I die? Is it high enough?

Her letter:

I believe in you, baby. I only wish I believed in
myself as much as you do. I’ll be looking out for you from below.
Don’t be such a screw-up like I was.

Patryk’
s words:

“
I cannot do it, Błażej. Take it
all. I don’t want any link to the past. Don’t want any link
to...
her.”

And Xavier:

“
I didn’t kill my sister joo
fuckin puta! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU!”

“
You...
murderer
! You gave her the drugs yourself! You
mother...
fucking
killer!”

“
She would’ve never even gotten
on the drugs if it weren’t for you, Blaze!
”

I spoke slowly:
“You’re a fucking dealer. You gave
them to us—to
both
of us! Who the
fuck
do you think you are, coming in here telling me it’s
my
fault!?”

“
Truth is truth, baby.”

“
Get. Out. Just get. The Fuck.
Out!”

H
e did.

And that’s when I went on the
roof.

And I looked down.

The wind blew my hair, froze my tears. I
got up on the wall, a dizzying
ly high wall.
Just one more step, Blaze
,
and the pain will be gone.

One more...

I lifted my foot.

And I saw Mr. Bernstein’s car. He got out,
carrying brown bags (bagels, I discovered later.) And all I
remember thinking is:
If anyone finds me, it shouldn’t be him. Not after
what he’s done for me.

So I got off.

And we
ate bagels.

He never said anything about it. Did he
see me there? Did he not?

Later, when he left, he said,
“
Blaze, hang
in there. No matter what, just hang in there, OK? You matter to
people. You do. So, just
hold on
.”

Water marred his gray eyes. The door
closed. He left. And I fell on my knees and cried my tears. For
hours.

The next day,
I moved on.

Never forgetting
just how close I
came...

“Sometimes it feels like I already let go,” I
tell Declan.

“
Blaze, you’re as hard as they get, man.
You’re like Bruce-Willis-
Die-Hard
hard.
Terminator
hard.
You’re... You know, in football, after the Center snaps the ball to
the QB, the defense is all
over
that motherfucker! They wanna
take him down
. Because he’s the man. He’s dangerous.
And if he didn’t have a team, he’d get sacked all the time.
Sacked
—that
means getting taken down. But even when he has a team and he gets
sacked, he
knows
it’s up to
him. Even if his team’s shitty and lets him get taken down all the
time—or maybe he holds the ball too long and gets sacked that way,
you know,
his
fault—even
if that happens, he knows it’s up to him again. In the next down,
it’s up to
him
. No one
listens to his bullshit, to his complaining, so he doesn’t bother
complaining. He takes the ball from the hike, and he does it again.
And again. And
again
. You
understand what I mean?”