Devious Lies (Cruel Crown, #1)

by Parker S. Huntington

This is why happiness isn’t permanent, I thought. Life introduces you to fantasies, then makes you feel like you can’t have them. You spend the rest of your life seeking that fantasy. When you realize it grew beneath your feet, it’s too late.

When Nash added a layer of Cheddar & Sour Cream Ruffles inside the sandwich, my head jerked back. My favorite sandwich. He remembered. How the fuck?

Getting to know someone is like gaining weight. Scattered bits acquired here and there. Next thing you know, you’re twenty pounds heavier, wondering where the hell all of it came from.

His smile could cure cancer, abolish student loan debt, and bring world peace. I wanted to pocket it and save it for myself. World peace sounded boring anyway.

“Did you ever feel like fighting for him?” His eyes read my face, collecting all the answers he needed from the dumbfounded expression pasted on it. “If someone looked at him wrong, talked to him wrong, touched him wrong, you would pick up a fucking sword and dive into battle without remembering to grab your armor?”

“You’d fight beside him, not for him. Two separate things. If he asked you to put down the sword, you’d listen because your stake isn’t bone-deep, a reflex, an untrained instinct. You have a choice in it, and that is the difference between loving someone and being in love with someone. You can control one, but you sure as hell can’t control the other.”

“If I tell you anything worth learning, it’s this. Love is the most expensive thing you’ll ever own. You pay for it with grief, tears, and a piece of your soul, but in return, you receive happiness, memories, and life.”

I didn’t believe in perfect, but I believed in lagom. It meant right, but not necessarily perfect. And in a world filled with devious lies, it was a truth I latched onto.

“Perfection is unattainable. It’s stained by the suffering required to chase it. Perfect is something you think with your head. Lagom is something you feel with your heart.”

“Who wouldn’t buy a book with this beautiful face on it?” “Literally, everyone on this planet and any extraterrestrial life on every other planet. If you showed up on a cult’s doorstep and told them Rosco is the second coming of Jesus, they’d find a different cult to worship.”

“The existence of a word proves that someone in the history of humanity felt the same way I did and gave it a name. It means we’re not alone. If there’s a word for what we’re feeling, we’re never alone.”

People measure love by how much someone receives, but I measure it by how much someone gives. No one in the history of the universe has ever or will ever have more love than Nash Prescott.

My villain. My knight. My prince. My Ben. I had to tell him.

Piece of shit, meet your twin. Me.

With her spinning in a dress of dead roses, frozen peas pressed to my eye, I succumbed to the fact that I wanted Emery Winthrop. This was happening. I’m going to hell.

I didn’t know if defying Virginia turned her on or if staring at me did, but I was So. Here. For. It.

“Why would I do that?” “Because you’re mine, Tiger,” I declared, soaking in her lust-heavy gaze. “Your lips are mine. Your tits are mine. Your ass is mine. Your soaking wet pussy is mine.” “You’re delusional.”

This was the type of shit that spiraled, and next thing I knew, it’d be plastered all over tabloids that I fucked the twenty-two-year-old daughter of the face of embezzlement. This was definitely not okay. But it fucking felt great.

The general IQ of the fine people of Eastridge, North Carolina sat somewhere between Americans who can’t locate America on a map and people who believe the Earth is flat.

“He’s so damaged. Ugh, and he always looks so tortured. Why does that make him hotter?” I don’t know, Stepford #1. Perhaps you should seek therapy for that. (For the record, I am tortured by this brunch, which isn’t even a word.)

“My neighbor told me he gave her the best sex she’s ever had at last week’s gender reveal party.” My blue balls can attest that I haven’t fucked your neighbor, and I’d sooner show up to a swingers’ night at a retirement community than a fucking gender reveal party.

“I told my wife he’s a thug. Look at his eye. Once a poor kid, always a poor...

This tool looked like every Disney villain rolled into one idiotic, blue-blooded asshole.

When I loved a book, I didn’t read it once. I read it over and over again—until the pages fell off, until I could anticipate the words before I read them, until they sunk into me and melted inside my bones in a way that never happened with books I’d only read once.

Nash. You will always be older than me. I will always be younger than you. Maybe we’ll always ’hate’ each other, too. But will we always feel like this?” “Like what?” “Like our fingertips can shoot lightning, but the only target they can hit is each other.”

“You know he’d want you happy, right? Life is fucked up. It’s a roller coaster ride without an exit, and you’re smushed into the same tiny cart with eight billion other people. You can either push everyone off, throw up until you’re miserable, or enjoy the ride. Let’s enjoy the fucking ride, Nash.”

“You’re obsessed with peeling the breading off their McNuggets and shoving them into a McDouble with fries, which by the way is fucking disgusting.” “My McMasterpiece. Yum.”

No wonder Nash’s chest was so broad. It housed such a big heart.

I never really gave much thought to Fate, but every time I considered how hard the world must have worked to get our paths to intersect so many different ways, I became a believer.

What did it say about me that watching her talk to the sky got my dick hard?

“Break me.” She stared at me like she wasn’t completely whole and didn’t entirely care. “Then put me back together, mismatched, scarred, and chaotic as this storm.”

“Beautiful,” I said, knowing she wouldn’t understand the compliment. “I know.” She threw her head back and stared at the moon. “I love starless skies.” “I’m not talking about the fucking sky. I’m talking about you.”

I know what you are, and it’s not the storm or the clouds.

I lifted her, locked her legs around my waist, and positioned myself at her core. “I’m going to fuck the last asshole out of your system. And I’ll ruin every other asshole for you. Nothing will compare.” Her nails dented my shoulders, and she laughed. Goddamn laughed. “You. You are the last asshole inside me.”

She believed in words, and magic, and storms. In fighting back, going down hard, never giving up. In blind loyalty, jumping first, dealing with consequences later. She was awful. She infuriated me. She drove me fucking crazy. And, I realized, I love her. “Ask me the question, Tiger.” Her eyes fluttered open, not staring at me but into me. “Is this just lust?” “It’s everything.”

Stabbing you with the stiletto heel of my mandatory Louboutins would make me very happy.

“Why is it that two people never realize how much they love each other until one of them says goodbye?”

“Hiraeth is a homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, a home which maybe never was. It is the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for the lost places of your past. I’ve always thought of it as the saddest entry in the dictionary.”

He didn’t compare to Nash. With Nash… It’s a vicious love, the kind that beats me down and robs me of all my possessions until I feel bloodied, worn, and bruised, stolen of everything that makes me… me.”

Sounds healthy. Who needs carrots when you have Nash Prescott?

“Hey, Ceiling? Avoiding Nash sucks.” Ceiling: Awwwwww, did the bad boy break your heart? “Don’t be silly. He didn’t break my heart. He cracked it open.”

“If I had to guess, it’s because I need something to do with my hands. Whenever you’re around, they always want to touch you.”

I’ve changed my mind. You psychos are both made for each other.

Tell me this. Do you regret anything? Not with your dad and stuff, but anything to do with us?” “I don’t regret a second, because they led me to you.”

“You think I send weekly unanswered postcards to just anyone? You’re my daughter, Emery Winthrop. Always have been. Always will be. We don’t need blood to bond us when we’ve got love.”

You may not need me, but fuck, I need you.

Durga: Tell me your favorite thing in the world. Nash: You and whatever brought me to you.

Out of all the lies, my favorite was you and me.

And if I could give you anything, I wouldn’t save you (from yourself or me). You’re more than capable of doing all the saving. I’d give you the ability to look at yourself through my eyes. You’d see that you are not the storm. You are lightning in the storm. You are what pierces through the clouds and shines brightest. You’d see exactly why I love you.

When I didn’t see myself, you still did.