Crazy In Love (Secrets of Suburbia #3) - Ivy Smoak Page 0,90
hurl. He’d sat in the basement saying he loved me. That he’d never cheat on me. He’d pressured me into believing. He’d said it all with my husband’s face.
But this man was not my husband. And I had no idea who the hell he was or what he wanted with me.
“It’s okay,” he whispered. “We’ll figure it out together.” When he leaned down for a kiss, I let instinct take over again. I bit his lip so hard I could taste blood, and then I kneed him right in the junk.
He groaned and leaned forward, grasping at the front of his tiny elf shorts.
And then I ran as fast as I could.
Chapter 28
Monday
“Ensley, stop!” Noah screamed through a slur of curses.
I ran faster, which wasn’t that fast when my hands were still cuffed behind me and I didn’t want to topple straight onto my face.
I reached the back door in the kitchen and turned around to work on the lock with my hands.
Snuggle Muffins was still sleeping in the middle of the kitchen floor, as if my assaulting a detective and kneeing Noah in the crotch was uneventful.
My hand paused on the knob. I couldn’t leave Snuggle Muffins behind. He was more than just my accomplice. He was…all I had left. “Come, Snuggle Muffins. Now.” I couldn’t lift him up with my hands behind my back. He needed to get up and run to me. Run to Mommy.
His ears twitched up but he stayed exactly where he was. Eyes closed and all.
Noah came barreling into the kitchen with a terrifying scowl on his face that didn’t match the joy of his costume in the slightest.
I opened the door behind me successfully, but I couldn’t leave without Snuggle Muffins. I refused to.
Noah reached me and slammed the door closed. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?” He kept his hands on either side of me, caging me in.
And in a flash I saw my husband again. Angry and cruel. I cowered beneath him. Waiting for the sharp pain of his palm hitting my skin. But it didn’t come in.
Because he wasn’t my husband. He was… I looked back up at him. “Who are you?” He was too close to me. He looked too similar. And my mind loved to play tricks on me when it came to my husband.
“Are you kidding me? You knew I wasn’t Noah this whole freaking time?” He took a step back and ran his fingers through his dyed hair. “You’ve been calling me Noah for days. You had me believing I was your husband after you knocked me unconscious. All of this could have been cleared up a lot earlier if you didn’t keep acting like I was your husband. Messing with my head. You had me believing everything.”
And I just stood there staring at him. “You know you’re not Noah?” Part of me had been playing along with him being my husband. It had been so easy to get lost in that fantasy. To hope. To believe I hadn’t done something terrible.
“I didn’t realize the truth until this morning. I was looking all over the place trying to piece together what happened. Trying to figure out why the hell I couldn’t remember my own family.”
Family. He thought we were a family. Wasn’t that all I’d ever wanted to be? Part of a family?
I looked past him into the ransacked family room. I knew he had been searching for something. But I had no idea he was trying to piece together his past. Or that I’d confused him into thinking he was actually my husband. When he was confusing me back by acting like my husband. And having my husband’s face. We’d done the ultimate role-play, all completely by accident.
“And when I found your phone, with all those appointments with Dr. Collins, I lost it. You’d been saying I was cheating on you. When really it seemed like you were the one cheating on me.”
I nodded. All the Dr. Collins notes in my calendar were just me tailing my husband. Trying to figure out where he was going. Where he was at all times. “But then I mentioned Sophia. And her face looking like mine.” I remembered his hands falling from my skin. The angry look on his face. I thought he was angry with me. But…that must have been when he remembered the truth. That he wasn’t Noah.