Double Deception

Chapter 8: Shattered Bonds

The day after Emily's confession, the world felt quieter — but not in a comforting way. It was the kind of silence that presses against your skull, as if the universe itself is holding its breath.

I couldn't stop replaying her words: Emma isn't real. Not really.

The tears, the trembling hands, the way she said she didn't know where one version of herself ended and the other began — it all haunted me. She had stripped herself bare before me, yet I felt no relief. If anything, her honesty had made everything worse.

She had been living as two people, loving me as one and betraying me as the other.

And somewhere in that divide, I'd lost the woman I thought I knew.

By noon, I still hadn't eaten or slept. My phone sat heavy in my hand. I stared at her contact photo — the one where she was smiling in the sunlight, her hair tucked behind one ear — and wondered if that version of her had ever existed.

Finally, I typed the message.

We need to talk again. Tonight.

The reply came within seconds.

I'll be there.

A Fragile Reunion

When she arrived, the first thing I noticed was the tremor in her hands. The second was how small she looked — her makeup smudged, hair unbrushed, eyes swollen and red. The woman standing before me wasn't Emily, the composed perfectionist. She wasn't even Emma, the flirtatious, reckless ghost that had nearly destroyed us.

She was something in between — raw, stripped of pretense, trembling under the weight of everything she'd become.

She sat across from me, her shoulders hunched, her gaze fixed on the floor. The air between us felt brittle, like one wrong word could shatter it.

"You said there was more," I said quietly. "I want all of it this time. No half-truths."

She nodded, her voice trembling. "You deserve that."

Her fingers twisted in her lap. "After last night... I remembered things. Pieces I'd buried so deep I didn't even know they were gone."

"Then start there," I said, keeping my voice even.

Emily swallowed hard. "I used Emma as an escape. From my life. From myself. And... from us."

Her voice cracked on the last word.

I felt something inside me twist, sharp and cold. "From us?"

She looked up finally, her eyes glassy with regret. "You were the first person who ever made me feel seen. But that also made me terrified. I thought if you really saw all of me — the chaos, the cracks — you'd run. So I built this version of myself for you. Polished. Perfect. Manageable."

Her words hit harder than I expected. "So I fell in love with a lie."

"No," she said quickly, shaking her head. "You fell in love with the best parts of me. I just didn't know how to keep them alive."

Memories Like Broken Glass

She leaned back, her breath unsteady. "At first, Emma was just... a mask. A way to breathe. I'd go out as her, drink too much, flirt, dance until I couldn't hear the noise in my own head."

Her voice softened. "But then things started happening I didn't remember. I'd wake up in places I'd never been, with people who knew me — her — like we were old friends. Men would text me things I didn't understand. I told myself it wasn't real. That I was being paranoid. But then... she started leaving things behind."