Page 49 of A Smile Full of Lies (Secrets of Stonewood #1)

Chapter

Thirty-Two

ROS

The river was black glass, swallowing the reflection of the moon.

I had my blanket wrapped tight around me, tea cooling in my hand, when the woods lit up.

A faint purple shimmer at first, like lightning behind clouds.

Then sharper. Steadier. The glow of neon, pulsing through the trees as if the forest itself had a heartbeat.

My chest seized. I knew that color. That mask.

The Nox Obscura mask. My mug of tea shattered on the porch planks as I stumbled backward, breath caught sharp in my throat.

For a second I swore it winked at me, that sickly purple grin hovering in the treeline, patient, waiting.

My pulse throbbed at the base of my throat and roared in my ears.

“No,” I whispered to the dark.

Knox was gone. He was overseas. Which meant if the mask was here, if he was here, then I was alone. I was vulnerable.

Fuck.

I bolted for the door, heart hammering, and slammed it behind me, twisting the locks with hands that shook so violently I was sure he’d wrench the door open and grab me before it finally clicked into place.

The silence pressed in, broken only by the frantic thud of my heartbeat.

I dropped the bar across the back door, tugged curtains shut, killed the porch light.

Shadows folded tighter around the cabin until I could hardly breathe.

My phone was in my pocket, slick in my sweaty hand.

I hit Knox’s number. It rang once, then went straight to voicemail.

“Goddammit,” I hissed.

He’d said he’d be unreachable, overseas, meetings stacked for days, but some stupid part of me still expected him to pick up.

I wanted to hear his voice telling me to calm down, that I was safe.

Instead, all I got was silence and the echo of my own panic.

I pressed my forehead to the wall, eyes shut tight.

Get a grip, Ros. Get a grip.

I opened my laptop on the kitchen table, the screen casting pale light across the wood. My fingers flew, typing into the forum, a desperate DM to StrayDog777. He always answered. He had to.

Please… please answer me, I prayed.

The forum looked the same as always — anonymous avatars, threads sprawling in the digital dark. Except tonight it felt hostile. My DM sat there unanswered, my plea hanging like a confession in the void.

GraveyardGirl93

Are you there? Please. I think Nox Obscura followed me to my boyfriend’s river house, and I’m here all alone. I don’t have a car. I can’t get away. Please tell me I’m not alone.

I refreshed. Nothing. Refreshed again. Still nothing.

My throat burned. The internet was supposed to make me feel less alone, but right now it only made the silence heavier.

The cabin creaked under the strain of wind off the storm front I’d spotted rolling in from the other side of the river.

Every sound felt amplified, the tick of the wall clock, the hum of the fridge, the occasional shiver of branches against the roof.

And then came the ping. Not in the anonymous forum. Not StrayDog777 like I hoped it would be. My chest squeezed tight as a DM slid across my phone’s screen, from a screen name that made my stomach turn.

Nox Obscura

You look good when you’re scared.

I swore and almost threw my phone across the room, but I already knew it wouldn’t matter. He always found another way in.

The phone rang, screen black except for the two words: Unknown Number. My stomach dropped. I let it ring once, twice, then snatched it up before I lost my nerve.

“What the hell do you want?”

My voice cracked.

A low chuckle spilled through the speaker, deep and distorted.

“That panic in your throat… I can almost taste it, even from out here. Did you miss me, baby?”

Heat curled low in my belly, treacherous and shameful. I clenched my teeth.

“Fuck off. I chose Knox. I love Knox.”

His laugh dragged through the line, slow and cruel.

“Love him all you want, little writer. You’re still wet for me, and we both know it.”

I squeezed my eyes shut, bile rising in my throat. He wasn’t wrong. Fear and want twisted too close together until I couldn’t untangle them from each other. My free hand pressed hard against the table edge. I was trying so hard to ground myself.

“You don’t get to come in here and rewrite my choices,” I snapped. “I almost died for Knox. That should tell you everything you need to know.”

Silence stretched, thick and choking, until he finally breathed, “And yet you picked up when I called. Good girl.”

I stifled the urge to flip the table and scream my rage loud enough for him to hear me all the way from where he lurked in the woods.

“I will never betray Knox, so you might as well give up and leave me the fuck alone.”

His distorted voice rasped, soft and cutting: “You don’t think you betrayed him already? Running off to confront his family’s killer without telling him? You stole his vengeance out from under him. That’s a slap in the face, baby girl, a wound he might never forgive you for.”

My knees buckled and I slid into the chair, clutching the phone like I could choke him just by squeezing it.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

But he did. Of course he did. The words hit too close to home.

“You stabbed him in the back, and you almost got yourself killed in the process. Why?”

I tasted blood where I bit my tongue.

“I was protecting him,” I whispered, hating the tremor in my voice. “From himself. From what it would have cost him.”

His laugh was quiet, humorless.

“No, sweetheart. You just couldn’t stand not being the one to hold the knife. Don’t lie to me about that. What I want to understand is why you’d put yourself between Philip Knox and a motherfucking lunatic with a knife.”

“Because I’m in love with Knox, and I was afraid he’d kill Thayer.

I was afraid he’d fuck up and get caught and go to prison, and I won’t allow that to happen.

I refuse to do life without him now that I finally know how good it feels to let him in, rather than holding him at arms’ length all the fucking time.

Now that I’ve had a taste of what it can be like to be with him?

I’ll never let that go without a fight.”

“Big words from a girl who still wants me, too?—”

“I don’t want you,” I ground out, forcing steel into my voice. “You’re just a mask. A shadow. Whatever itch you scratch, it’s not real.”

“Bullshit. There’s nothing more real than the way I made you come for me after I hunted you through your pretty little millionaire boy-toy’s childhood home.”

My reflection stared back at me in the dark laptop screen, wide eyes, hair falling into my face.

“Knox is real. He didn’t walk away when you threw me under the bus and told him everything you pulled out of me during your sick little game the last time we spoke on the phone. He didn’t let me burn. He still wants me, no matter what you told him.”

Another low laugh curled through the line, indulgent, like he was humoring me.

“And yet here you are, panting on the phone with me, locked up all alone in a secluded house on the river, picturing my hand around your throat.”

Heat roared through my traitorous body, and I pressed my thighs together so tight it hurt, trying to banish my pussy’s insistent throbbing.

“I said fuck off,” I snapped, voice breaking. “Leave me alone.”

Silence hummed between us again. I thought he’d hung up until he whispered, “You’re never alone when you see the glow. Don’t forget that.”

I opened my mouth to tell him to go fuck himself, but the line went dead before I could say a word.

I dropped the phone and shoved it away like it might bite me. My pulse still skittered wild in my throat, my stupid body betraying me in every possible way. I hated it. Hated him. Hated the part of me that leaned into the terror and found comfort in the edge of it.

I staggered to the window and yanked the curtain aside.

Nothing. No glow. Just dark trees swaying in the wind and the Tensaw river running silver in the moonlight.

The storm clouds approaching from the opposite bank hadn’t reached this side of the river yet, but they would any minute now.

Lightning lit up the sky, and thunder rumbled soon after.

Nox Obscura could have been anywhere. He could have been nowhere.

My skin still buzzed with the echo of his voice, the scrape of his laughter.

Knox’s name pulsed like a mantra in my head — Knox, Knox, Knox — like if I repeated it enough it would armor me against the masked bastard stalking me.

I wrapped my arms tight around myself and sank down against the wall.

Not for the first time since he’d left me here, I hated that Knox wasn’t home, that I couldn’t just call him and tell him to come get me, because I didn’t feel safe.

By the time the sun crept pale through the trees, I hadn’t slept. Every noise jolted me upright, every flash of lightning, roll of thunder, or flicker of shadow dragged my gaze to the glass. I kept my phone on the bedside table, its dark screen taunting me.

He hadn’t called again. Maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe he was done. But my chest still throbbed with his words, the accusation I couldn’t shake.

You took away his chance to get even.

My stomach knotted. Was that betrayal? Or was it mercy? I didn’t know anymore. But I knew this: if Nox Obscura thought he could crawl into my head and pull me away from Knox, he was wrong.

I pressed my palm to the cool glass of the window, staring into the woods where the glow had been. My voice was raw when I whispered it aloud, just for me: “I chose him. And I’ll keep choosing him. No mask, no monster, no stupid sexual fantasy come to life is going to take that from me.”

I didn’t cry the first three nights, but by day four? I fucking cracked.

It started with the photos. Well, no, really, it started when Alyssa messaged me.

Alyssa