Fated Lies (Lies #3) - Ella Miles Page 0,2
in my face.
“Twenty more minutes,” I hear Maxwell say, but his voice sounds far off in the distance. I can hear him, but his words don’t matter.
I just lost everything.
I lost everything I’ve ever cared about. Everything I’ve ever fought for. Everything I’ve ever considered loving—I lost it all.
I’ve lost a lot in my life.
My parents.
My innocence.
My child.
Langston.
But this time—it’s different. This time I had a chance to love what I lost. This time I fought to try and save it. And I lost.
I need to shut out the pain. I need to push it away so that I can focus on what I need to do next, but I can’t. It’s in every muscle, bone, and nerve in my body. There is no hiding from it. It’s all I’ll ever feel again.
I see the shore in the distance.
I’m going to have to function like a human soon, but all I can focus on is how the waves launch our tiny speed boat into the air and then slam us back down. That’s my life. I get one brief moment of happiness, of joy, of positivity—only to have life slam me with the worst thing imaginable.
I don’t want anything positive, not anymore. Every good thing has been taken from me. I don’t want hope. I don’t want love. I reject it all. I will not allow myself to feel anything close to love ever again.
The boat stops.
I look around and see Maxwell tying the boat to the dock.
I should get out, but I can’t move. My brain can’t even function well enough to tell me to stand. My mouth is incapable of speech. My eyes don’t really see beyond the haze.
Maxwell must know that because he doesn’t ask me to get out. He doesn’t ask what’s wrong with me.
After he finishes tying the boat, he climbs back in.
“I’m going to lift you out of this boat and get you in a car. Just tell me if that isn’t okay, but otherwise, I don’t need you to speak at all if you don’t want to.” His words are soft and soothing.
How does he know exactly what I need?
I give him the tiniest of nods, and then he once again lifts me gently like I’m a broken doll, and one wrong move would end me. It probably would. That’s how fragile I am right now.
He carries me to a car. I don’t know how he got a car here, but he did.
He lays me sideways in the backseat before he closes the door. Then he carefully walks to the front seat and starts driving.
He doesn’t ask me for a destination, and I honestly don’t know where I would tell him. He just drives.
I close my eyes, trying to get a moment to breathe. But all I can see is the blood on my bed, Waylon’s lifeless body, and what that means.
The car stops suddenly, my eyes fly open.
Waylon drove me back to my apartment.
“I’ve got you,” he says, lifting me out.
He carries me into the lobby before he realizes he made a mistake.
Flashes blind us as reporters swarm us with their microphones and cameras.
“Jesus,” he curses. Maxwell is sweet enough, but he’s not the brightest. Of course, the media found out that Waylon is dead. A man running for governor showing up dead in my apartment makes for an excellent story.
“Miss Dunn, were you upset that your fiancé was cheating on you? Is that why you killed him?” one brave journalist asks me.
Maxwell growls. The reporters take the hint and back up half a step, but that’s as much room as they give us.
“Maxwell!” Nolan shouts from across the lobby.
Maxwell turns his head as Nolan pushes through the crowd to us. “Take her to my house. We have a whole team setup there. You can’t go to her apartment anyway; it’s a crime scene.”
Nolan looks at me with disappointment, like this is somehow my fault.
Quickly, Maxwell has me out of the lobby and back in the car. This time, Nolan sits in the passenger seat, and they both discuss me like I’m not even here.
“Has she been like this the whole time?” Nolan asks, like he can’t believe how weak I am.
“Pretty much. She’s completely distraught. But can you blame her? She thought she was going to marry Waylon and spend the rest of her life with him. Cut her a break. No one reacts well in this situation.”
“Well, I need her to do a press conference soon,” Nolan says.
“Why? Waylon is