Page 50 of A Smile Full of Lies (Secrets of Stonewood #1)

You’re writing the story of what happened with Knox’s family, as a true crime book, aren’t you?

I’ve got a whole lot of material here from the investigation – back then, and now, after we went through Thayer’s stuff – Hale says I can give you a copy, for the purposes of the book, so long as you don’t make any of it public until we say you can. Should I email it to you?

I’d sat and stared at that message for half an hour, a cup of coffee going cold on the table in front of me. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to see it. But, then again, if I was going to write this story, do it justice, make it as true to fact as I could, then what choice did I have?

Me

Yes please. That will be helpful for the book.

So Alyssa had emailed me a zipped folder, full of all sorts of things — scanned pages from Thayer’s journals, flagged and timestamped. I opened it thinking it might help. Something to ground the narrative. Something to make it easier to write the truth about the Stonewood Slaughter.

But I wasn’t ready for what I found.

The first entry Alyssa had flagged for me read clinical, cold, and smug. It was dated August 27, seven years ago. When I saw that date, something twisted in the pit of my stomach.

Every time I walk into a room with Philip Henry Knox — who insists on just going by Knox — it’s the same goddamn thing. Heads turn like he’s the fucking sun and I’m just orbiting debris.

He doesn’t even have to work for it. It doesn’t matter what I do, I’ll never measure up, somehow. Doesn’t matter how sharp I look, how smooth I talk, how many connections I’ve lined up like dominoes. He opens his mouth, laughs that easy laugh, and the whole room rearranges itself around him.

We’re “friends”. That’s the script. Teammates. Boys. Brothers-in-arms. People believe it because they want to, because we fist-bump after games and pass around bottles at the same parties. But underneath, it’s all measurement. Him against me. Me against him. And I always end up looking smaller.

My family’s rich. Influential. We’ve got our name on plaques and programs, our hand in pockets from Mobile to Montgomery.

But his family? His is a fucking Stonewood legacy.

Old, unshakable, built on bourbon older than we are and mansions with white columns that people still whisper about.

My people climbed and clawed and scratched their way to the top.

His were born already at the peak. And everyone can feel it.

I’m handsome. I know it. My jawline’s sharp, my smile is devastating, I could pull pussy anytime I want.

But I also know this: every single one of them would ditch me without hesitation if Knox so much as looked their way.

Doesn’t matter if I work harder, fuck better, play smarter. They’d crawl over me to get to him.

That’s what kills me. He doesn’t even try. He doesn’t have to calculate every move, doesn’t have to map the chessboard ten steps ahead like I do. He just exists — and the crown gets handed to him.

Meanwhile, I’m strategizing my way through every conversation, every room, every handshake, making sure I’m seen, remembered, wanted. And still — still — he gets it all without effort.

It’s a joke. A fucking cruel one.

But here’s the part he’ll never understand: I’m a patient guy. I’m sharper than he is. Hungrier. I see the fault lines under his perfect golden world. And one day, I’ll find the crack and pry it open underneath him.

I don’t know when. Not yet. But it’s coming.

And when it does? Philip Henry Knox — perfect fucking Knox — will finally know what it feels like to lose. More importantly, he’ll find out how it feels to lose to me.

I started shaking. Still, I didn’t cry. Not until I hit the page dated November 1st, seven years ago. The day after my eighteenth birthday.

Knox fell in love with a girl at first sight last night, at the Stonewood Prep Halloween bonfire, but he didn’t get the chance to speak to her before he had to go save his little sister’s ass from daddy’s wrath over her wrecking her brand new car.

If I find her first, I win. It’s not about the girl. It never will be. It’s about him. Always.

I swallowed hard, fingers going numb on the trackpad.

Knox talked about her like she was a dream. A witch costume with a birthday girl sash. Boots. Blue-green eyes. Said she wrecked him. I smiled. Filed it away. All I had to do was find her first. Take her first. And I did.

I felt sick.

Knox stayed behind after class and told me all about the girl who captured his attention last night.

The dumb motherfucker gave me every crumb of information I needed to hunt her down on social media and find her first while he was still reeling from spotting the “love of his life” across the bonfire but having to walk away to save Ava’s ass before he got the chance to get her name.

I scrolled through her Instagram like it was a catalog. Found her in ten minutes. Bonfire. Birthday sash. @ros_coop. That velvet dress really did fuck him up. Idiot. Game on.

Next was an entry dated a week later.

I saw her at Heather’s today. She didn’t see me. Not yet. But I saw her smile at someone’s terrible poem, and I knew Knox wasn’t going to win this round.

Then there was an entry dated two days after that, and my mouth went dry as I read it.

She wasn’t even hard to charm. Smart girls rarely are.

They’ve got this little-girl-like ache to be seen.

To be chosen. All it takes is the right compliment at the right time.

A few stolen glances. A little mystery. She’s mine now, and soon enough, I’m going to rub Knox’s nose in the fact that I have the one thing he wants most in the world.

I flinched and scrolled faster. The next entry got worse.

Every time Rosalind Cooper looks at me, I think: you don’t even fucking know whose game you’re playing. You think I’m in love with you? You think I picked you because you’re my type? Fuck no. You’re leverage… a means to an end. That’s it.

Stupid girl, you were intended to be collateral damage in the war between me and Knox from day one.

My stomach twisted. I slammed the laptop shut, bolted to the back door, and pressed my forehead to the window, chest heaving.

Outside, the sun was dipping behind the trees, streaking the sky with gold accents on ash gray clouds. And something about the stillness — about the quiet — broke me open.

I slid to the floor and sobbed until I couldn’t breathe.

Grief. Rage. Betrayal. Guilt.

Because I hated him. Because I grieved him. Because some part of me — some shameful, stupid, bleeding part of me — still wanted to believe he’d actually loved me once.

But he hadn’t. He never did. And the only person who ever truly had? He was the one who was livid with me because I nearly died trying to protect him.

When I could finally breathe again, I took my laptop to bed with me, opened the manuscript, and changed the title. The Stonewood Slaughter just didn’t hit right anymore, even though that’s what the media had called it for years.

I changed it to What We Buried in Stonewood. Because that’s what it felt like. A grave. A secret no one had wanted to exhume until now.

Knox’s voice echoed in my head. Write the truth.

And fuck, I was trying, but the truth wasn’t neat. It wasn’t tidy. It bled all over the page, soaking every line with the weight of grief and guilt and everything I never meant to feel for the man I used to love.

Not Knox. Thayer.

I hated him. I hated him for taking three years of my life and warping them into a fucking trophy. For using me. For touching me. For holding me in bed and laughing with me and looking me in the eyes and calling me baby… all because it pissed Knox off. Because it hurt him.

He didn’t love me. He wanted to win, and I was just a move on the board.

Alyssa’s photos of his journal pages sat in a folder on my desktop, each one timestamped and damning. Some entries were calm, methodical. Others dripped with jealousy and venom, like the words had festered before they ever hit the page.

Knox never fucking loses. That’s the problem. Everyone loves him. Everyone hands him things. So I took something. I took her. And he hates it. It feels so good watching him squirm.

Another, dated just weeks before the murders:

They deserve it. All of them. Living like fucking kings while I claw for every inch.

Maybe I won’t stop at the safe. Maybe I’ll burn Stonewood Manor to the ground after we steal the tech in Henry Knox’s safe and sell it to the highest bidder, just for good measure.

Wouldn’t it be fucking great to see that whole family come home from a trip to Atlanta only to find a burned-out husk where their big, gaudy-ass mansion used to be?

I’d probably enjoy it more if they were all inside it when I lit it on fire.

All except Knox… I’d rather watch him suffer through life without his family to back him up.

But sometimes we don’t get everything we want.

That’s life. I’ll just have to settle for stealing Henry’s tech and living like a fucking king after I auction it off to the highest bidder.

I clenched my jaw reading it. He knew what he was doing when he went into that house and found them at home, rather than vacationing in Atlanta.

He chose it.

Maybe it started as a robbery. Maybe he thought he was just going to scare them. But it turned into murder. It turned into butchery. And the blood on his hands didn’t just belong to Knox’s family.

It was my blood, too. Because he would’ve stabbed me again, he would have kept going, and he wouldn’t have stopped until the life left my eyes if Alyssa hadn’t busted in and pulled the trigger when she did.

I hated him. I hated what he did to Knox. What he did to me. What he did to Ava, and Henry, and Victoria.

But I couldn’t hate Thayer’s mother. That’s the fucked up part.