FaCade (Deception #1) (25 page)

I GRIPPED MY HAIR, TUGGING frantically at my soft curls as memory after memory assaulted me. For the previous hour, they had been slamming into me; old ones, new ones, devastating ones, confusing ones, happy ones, all of them one after the other, minute after minute. I felt dizzy with them all, nauseous, as each one destroyed me a little more inside.

I had prayed for the return of my memories, but now, now I wasn’t sure I wanted them back. They were annihilating me, burning my mind under the chaos of them all and breaking my heart little by little after each one.

Dante loved me. He was caring and so utterly gentle that each vision of him clashed with what my heart now knew of him.

I couldn’t understand, or find the memory that had changed him into the bitter and twisted man he was now. All that came to me were recollections of our teenage years and very early twenties; school days, day trips, happy moments, erotic time spent buried in each other. None of them, not one, was of him angry, or forceful in bed. He was besotted with me, completely worshipped me.

What the hell had happened between then and now? I needed this memory more than any of the other ones. Although they were enlightening, none of them told me anything new, all of them virtually the same as the previous, each one showing me the love Dante and I had shared.

“Hey.” Malik’s gentle voice filtered through my muddled brain.

I blinked up at him, forcing away another painful memory. “Did you get it?”

He nodded and held a small white paper bag in front of him and away from the camera in the corner of the ceiling. We exchanged a look for a moment. Both of us pained by what we knew was to come.

I pushed off the couch and walked over to him, coming to stand directly in front of him, his body blocking the camera. Taking the bag from him, I snatched a pen from the bureau.

What the hell is going on?

He stared at my writing scrawled over the paper bag. He blinked at it, his brow creased. Lifting his eyes to mine, he swallowed. “Nothing.” I narrowed my eyes at his lie.

“Fair enough.”

His eyes closed, denying me access to the guilt in his gaze. “Star…”

“Faye!” I whispered, correcting him.

His jaw dropped. I didn’t give him chance to answer as I pushed past him and fled up the stairs, anger surging through me with his reticence, however it came as no great shock. Dante owned Malik just as much as he owned me. We weren’t his family or his friends. We were possessions, things to control and manipulate for his own sick, perverted desires.

The bathroom walls seemed to close in on me when I shut and locked the door behind me. Staring at the bag, I wasn’t sure I wanted to do the test. I already knew what it would say. Tears sprung from my eyes before I had even peed on the damn thing.

I couldn’t have a baby with Dante, not the Dante he was now. The old one, hell yes, very much so, but not now. This baby had been created from nothing more than a vicious and cruel fetish of his, one he had blamed me for. He had said it was my fantasy, but I knew there was no way this was me. I had no proof, only my own gut feeling deep down this wasn’t an experiment gone wrong.

Dante had told me he was being used as a guinea pig for the lovely Doc, and I wondered if that was what this was, an experiment gone wrong, me as the guinea pig this time. I was nothing more than a lab rat.

Pulling the box from the bag, I ran my thumb over the writing as another memory flooded in.

“I can’t do this.”

“You have to,” he said sternly beside me. “You need to know, as he does… as I do.”

I frowned at him. How would the result affect him? I shook off his words and turned, disappearing into the bathroom, the long pink box weighing heavy in my hands.

He stood waiting for me when I came back out, wringing his hands together nervously. He took one look at my ashen face, the tears that fell, and opened his arms to me.

“Ssh,” he whispered when I fell into him and sobbed. “It will be okay, Faye. I promise.”

I gasped, pulling much needed air into my lungs as a shudder shot through me. That had been the most confusing memory of them all. My thoughts at wondering how the results would affect him.

I shook my head, pushing them away, knowing I would go crazy if I dwelled on them. Taking another deep breath, I pulled the test from the box and nodded to myself sternly.

I was surprised to see Malik staring at me when I slowly opened the bathroom door and walked back into the bedroom, my legs trembling as my heart beat too fast.

“Well?”

I shook my head rapidly, sweat from the despair flowing through me flicking off my forehead. I knew what it would say, but the proof was too much. A long high pitched wail left me as my life changed so very swiftly with the appearance of one pale blue cross.

“Star,” Malik whispered, his expression one of utter desolation. “Star.” He took a step towards me but I stepped back and hissed.

“Tell me what’s going on!”

His face crumbled. “I can’t.” His pained whisper was enough to tell me I was on my own. “Please, Star,” he urged desperately when a sob echoed from me.

I couldn’t breathe, the room closed in on me as my ears started whooshing. Malik took another step towards me. I flew for him, anger at everything coming to a head as I smashed fist after fist into him. He stood and tolerated it, allowed me vent it all on him. His body was my punching bag as I pummeled him, my tears and snot as furious as my hits.

I knew Malik cared for me, but his loyalty and love for Dante was much greater.

“No!” I screamed when his arms came around me. I pushed him off and slapped his face, the final piece of anger forcing itself out.

His palm lifted to his face as the sting shot through him.

“Faye! My name is Faye! Fuck you!” I spat out. “FUCK YOU ALL!! I’m done!”

I fled through the house. Whatever the outcome, I was leaving, whether I had to fucking swim to land, whether I drowned in the water’s depths, I didn’t care anymore. I couldn’t bear another second in this house, never mind the rest of my life. Whether my memory came back or not was irrelevant, I wanted to be free of the oppressive bastard who had done this to me.

The walls rushed past me as my legs carried me faster and faster. My heart beat too fast and I lifted my hand, pressing it to my chest to try and alleviate the pain burning my heart.

The door slammed back into its frame when I burst through it. The grass under my bare feet was almost sensual, its softness calming and encouraging me to run faster and faster.

Yet the world shifted when I finally made it to the small dock and I skidded on the damp ground when flashes and shouts blinded me.

I WAS SO TENSE. I knew what she had asked Malik to get for her on land. She thought she had an ally in him and in some ways she did. But he knew the hand that fed him was also the one that wouldn’t hesitate to break his neck if he crossed me. He respected her and held affection he tried to suppress but didn’t ... couldn’t. She was infectious; once she was in your blood there was no way you could ever get her out. I was a prime example.

I fell in love with an eleven year old Star. I remembered first seeing her in the cast of the moon’s glow. The removal trucks were still moving her family in to the house she lived in from that day forward. Even after the sun had set they continued to move furniture inside.

I lived a few streets over in a nicer area. Her smile lifted to me when she noticed me. I was late home and my dad was going to ground me but I couldn’t move. I was only thirteen but I felt it, a jolt, a connection. Her mum dragged her inside.

I had stared at the house until long after the removal truck left, waiting, and then the curtain twitched and green eyes looked back at me.

The next day she showed up at my school. She walked straight up to me in the cafeteria and placed a drawing in front of me. It was of me on my bike outside her house. It was so lifelike; she had even captured the infatuated look in my eyes. How could someone so young draw so well?

All eyes went to this new brazen girl who’d placed her tray next to mine and sat amongst all my friends. “Hey, I’m Faye!” She beamed, reaching her hand out to me. I blinked a few times before taking it in my palm. I looked down and noticed a faint birthmark on her wrist. “It’s the shape of a star,
”
I murmured. Her eyebrow rose but I smiled, turned to everyone and told them, “This is, Star. She’s with me.”

For six years she was by my side, we were a unit. I was different from most of our friends; there was something inside me that set me apart from everyone emotionally, everyone but her. I had issues with authority and it all stemmed from never feeling like I fit in amongst my family. My father was in the entertainment business and wanted the same fate for his children but it never appealed to me.

I had an IQ of 160; I was more intelligent than most of the teachers at our school but my parents didn’t send me to private school to master my intellect. They believed public school taught value and a backbone, so despite their wealth, that was where I went.

Science interested me, and luckily I had an amazing teacher who knew what to do with me, and who to contact for colleges. When I was approached for an internship with a major pharmaceutical company and college scholarship, my parents didn’t even congratulate me. Any other parents would have thrown a party, cried a little and told their kid they were proud, but I got nothing. Star did all those things. She was willing to put our future on hold while I went to college.

Little did I know it was so she could fuck
him
behind my back without the fear of getting caught. She didn’t even wait for me to leave the state before she went to
him.
The day I planned to tell her I gave it all up because I couldn’t be away from her.

I’d do what my father wanted and go to community college and then go into entertainment like him. I bought her a ring and held my tongue all through my farewell party the night before. She had said her goodbyes the night before because she couldn’t bear seeing me drive away. Fucking lying bitch.

The next evening after I planned everything out for her proposal, I drove towards her house but slowed to a stop when I saw her leaving her house with
him
. I followed them to a motel. I was dizzy; my world tipped on its axel. My insides twisted and threatened to leave my body. How could she do this to me? How could
THEY
do this? She was mine, she had always been mine. I fucking loved her. I breathed for her; she was the only person who believed in me. I took her for who she was. I kept her safe from her horrid mother. I gave her everything she wanted, including my heart.