Into deception

Nicholas

📚

"What's less than hollow?"

The question comes to me so suddenly that I almost laugh.

Can anyone actually feel less than hollow?

"I never actually got involved with tracking you myself until two weeks before we met. When I did, I realised something wasn't adding up. Not with the way you carried yourself, especially not the way you smiled at passing strangers. I was going to dig deeper, figure out why someone would spend so much money just keeping tabs on you for that long, but then the flash drive got stolen and my attention was pulled elsewhere."

He stops.

For a moment, he looks like he might hate himself more than I ever could.

"I spent days dealing with that new problem and completely forgot about the job I was hired to do in the first place."

His eyes slowly find mine.

I can't imagine what I look like right now.

Job.

My life was a job.

My life was in his hands, and I was nothing more than a task he had been paid to complete.

"Then I got the call from Donte telling me there was an emergency. I dropped everything, knowing there was a possibility that you were the one in trouble. When I got there, there was a body at the front and Donte was practically in pieces, going frantic about a girl he had lost. I knew it was you, but I couldn't say anythi—"

I scoff, shaking my head as tears begin to surface.

"But then you showed up," he continues. "You showed up and put a knife to my throat, and Mia, I fell in love with you right there in that room."

He swallows.

"I was so in love with you that I forgot all about the deal. I just forgot. Until I didn't. That's when I called in and said everything was off. That I was done. I should've done it earlier. I know that—"

"No."

My voice comes out quieter than I expect.

"What you should've done was tell me."

"I know that, Mia. I know. But everything I felt for you wasn't a lie. Everything I ever told you was the truth."

"No, it wasn't."

I stir, inching closer across the table.

"It was your truth. I was a piece in your game that you forgot you were playing, but that doesn't change the fact that, at the end of the day, I was oblivious and you weren't."

My voice shakes.

"I fell in love with a version of you that was built out of lies. I never loved the real Nicholas. I never actually got to meet him."

I stare directly at him.

"So don't sit there and tell me our love was true. Not when the foundation of it was built on lies you were the one keeping alive."