do this for the rest of my life.
That's why I started writing.
It was something that I've always wanted to do and when I make up these other worlds and these other people, I finally feel like I'm not spending every minute of every day in a cage.
I finally feel free.
Emma comes back when they take our plates away and sits down across from me.
Her hair falls softly in her face and she puts her elbows on the table, holding her hands in front of her.
“Is everything okay?” I ask.
“Yes,” she says, but I'm not sure if I believe her.
There's something different about her. It's hard to pinpoint exactly what it is, but she seems almost… Rattled.
She was upset by my lies only a little bit before and now, she seems almost sorry for me.
“Tell me about D. B. Carter,” she says quietly.
I look from her intertwined fingers up to the curve of her neck, pausing briefly at her lips, and eventually meeting her eyes.
“Why did you make up that you were this writer?” she asks. “Why did you lie to me about that?”
These questions hit me like a sack of bricks in the face. I sit back against the back of the chair and tilt my head slightly to the side, looking at her in disbelief.
“This is what you really think?”
“Of course. Do you think I'm an idiot?”
I shake my head and think to myself that I’m the idiot.
What the hell am I doing here? I can’t trust this woman. I don't know anything about her.
I'm putting everything on the line and she doesn’t even believe me.
I open my wallet and stand up. I toss four twenties on the table and start to walk away.
“What are you doing?” Emma rushes after me. “Where are you going?”
She finally catches up to me near the entrance and tugs on my arm, pulling me into the hallway leading to the bathrooms.
“I need to go,” I say, pulling my hand away from hers.
“Why? What did I say?”
I swallow hard. I should explain, but I'm so insulted by the fact that she thinks that I would be the kind of person who would make up being this writer that I can't even bother to bring myself to say a word.
“You clearly think that I'm someone that I could never be,” I finally say.
“I don't know what you mean,” she whispers.
“You think that I am someone who would make up something like that. I mean, why? Why would someone do that?”
“For ego. Because they secretly want to be a writer and can't. There are millions of reasons why people pretend to be someone famous. To catfish a girl and get her to bed?”
I shake my head again.
“No, I can't believe that I was this wrong about you,” I say quietly. “I have to go.”
34
Liam
I walk away from her because I realize that she doesn't know anything about me.
If she thinks that I'm capable of lying about being a famous author just to stroke my own ego, she doesn't know me at all.
She catches up with me again outside of the restaurant. She grabs my hand and again I pull myself away from her.
Coming here was a mistake.
“Wait, stop,” Emma says. “Talk to me.”
“Talk to you about what?”
“Who are you?”
“You already know.”
“Are you D. B. Carter?”
I look down at my phone. Without saying another word, I open the pages app and scroll through all of my novels.
I don't have to do this.
I don't owe her anything.
I just don't want her thinking that I'm capable of being this deceptive.
I click on a document with a novel from a few releases ago and turn the phone toward her.
She scrolls through and her face falls.
She hands me back the phone and I open another one and another one and another one.
I keep doing this until she tells me to stop.
“Okay, I understand,” she says, throwing her hands up.
“I have to go,” I say quietly.
Again, she follows me.
“I believe you, okay? What else do you want me to say?”
“It's not about that,” I say. "I shouldn’t have lied to you, but I only did that to protect myself and that's why I'm going to walk away now.”
“Please don't,” she says.
Her voice is small and meek.
I make a move to walk away from her, but something pulls me back.
The truth is that I love her.
I haven't told her this and I probably can't, but this is true. I haven’t loved anyone in a really long time and that's why I said and