Was I Ever Real (Was I Ever #2)

by Naomi Loud

I should have compassion for that younger version of myself. The one who was brainwashed from the time she took her first breath. Instead, I hate her. I can’t stand her. I would kill her if I could.

“You are dancing with the devil, Penelope.” Before scrambling to his car. Penelope?

“I need your help,” she says in a near-whisper. Fuck.

“This is going to be fun,” he growls.

“I hope it’s as far away as possible from yours, you insufferable twat,” she grumbles under her breath, spinning on her heels and heading for the stairs.

Watching Connor drive manual does things to me that I would rather die than to admit out loud.

“His reputation is what first attracted me to him, isn’t that right Connie baby?”

Nothing good ever comes from me peering into the darkness staring back at me.

All I know is that I’ve danced with the devil before and I know I will dance with him again. Especially when he’s dressed in infuriatingly dapper suits, with eyes so dark I could lose my way by simply staring back into their bottomless depths, and be led straight down to hell.

“I know you’re hiding something from me. And I know it’s bigger than just your piece of shit ex.” His other hand lands on my hip, pushing me into the mattress and holding me there. I swallow hard. “I don’t care how long it takes. But I will find out. And when I do?” he growls low, his eyes shining purposely in the dark. “I’ll kill them all, darling.”

“Fine. But I won’t stop at just the dress.” He gives me a lazy shrug, turning his back to me and starts to make his way out of the kitchen. But before turning the corner and disappearing from sight, he gets the last word in from over his shoulder. “Spend my money all you want, darling. It turns me on.”

“My… my… sounds like I need to repent then,” he muses, dark eyes hooded and glinting with vice. “Maybe I should fall to my knees and ask my wife for forgiveness. Would that please her?” Before I can even breathe out a yes, he lowers himself in front of me, and I can practically see his eyes dilate into black obsidian the lower he gets. His knees finally hit the floor and I’ve never seen something so beautiful.

Of a diner in the middle of nowhere. Of Martha, and boysenberry pies. And a girl in a wedding dress.

“He was a dead man walking the moment he touched my fucking wife,” he rasps.

Let go of this memory haunting you. Let go of this piece of you. Let go of your control.

He takes the same fingers that were just splayed over my yearning tongue and squeezes my cheeks, spitting the tequila into my gaping mouth.

“Let’s go home,” he says softly and my mind is so fried that I just nod. Unable to really understand the weight of what he just said or what it might mean.

But one thing did change. She’s mine now. And I’ll burn the whole fucking city down in my wife’s name.

Byzantine stays silent until we’re left alone, his eyes hard and serious. But then an evil smile slowly appears on his face. “Let the fun begin,” he says.

There was no way for me to know. How could I? But the guilt doesn’t lessen. It only fuels the fire burning in my chest. The promise that now that I do know… well, those fuckers are going to wish their fucking God would smite them where they stand, instead of suffering through what’s coming to them by my hand.

She falls asleep not long after, and I find it hard not to stay up all night just to count her slumbering breaths while I plot out my next kill.

“How does it feel to know he owns you—mind, body, and soul?”

Feeling ridiculous doesn’t even begin to cover it. Mortified feels a lot closer to the truth. I force myself to finally snap out of it. I just flayed the Governor of California, I think I can handle some half-pint witch lady.

She is Lilith personified. And I am the devil at her feet.

“I need you, my darling,” I rasp.

Fuck. I’ve got it bad. It somehow feels like karma for all the times I made fun of Byzantine and how whipped he became after meeting Sunny.

“Listen carefully to what I’m about to say.”

“This,” he says, while pointing to me and then him, “is real, Lenix. And it’s for life. I adore you. I love you so damn much that it feels like I’ve always loved you, but I’ve just been too much of an idiot to realize it until now. It doesn’t matter how it started, the only thing that matters is that there’s no end between us.”

I put on an innocent face. “You’re the one who asked for a secret, Connie baby” I purr with a mock pout.

From the very beginning—it’s always been real. I’ve always been real.