Page 54 of A Smile Full of Lies (Secrets of Stonewood #1)

Chapter

Thirty-Five

KNOX

She didn’t attend the service. Not officially, anyway.

She stood at the edge of the cemetery, black dress clinging to her curves, arms wrapped tight around herself as if holding everything in by force.

Her heels sank into the grass, and the wind toyed with the hem of her dress, lifting it against her thighs.

She didn’t have an umbrella, though the sky looked as if it might rain.

She didn’t stand with the others. She just… watched.

I stayed further back. Beyond the line of oaks, half-hidden behind the family mausoleums near my family’s headstones. Watching her. Always watching her.

Thayer’s family never looked her way. Not once. His mother sobbed against her husband’s chest like she was mourning a saint, not a fucking sociopath. A folded memorial program with his face on it trembled in her hands. I watched Rosalind flinch at the sight of it.

She didn’t cry. Not yet.

Her jaw clenched. Her grip on the little black clutch in her hand went white-knuckle tight. When the priest’s voice faded and the final prayer was said, the family carried the urn into the mausoleum, heads bowed. Rosalind lingered.

Only when the crowd began to drift toward their cars did she finally move. She didn’t go near the mausoleum. She came to me. To my family’s graves.

I watched from the other side of the magnolia tree behind the marble angel marking Ava’s plot as she sat down on the bench like her legs couldn’t hold her anymore. Her hand curled into a fist and pressed to her mouth as the tears came hard and fast, shaking her shoulders.

She looked so fucking small, curled in on herself like she could make the grief quieter that way.

Like if she folded tight enough, maybe the guilt wouldn’t claw at her throat so viciously.

I saw it in the way her shoulders shook, the way her chin tucked down, the way she tried to muffle the sound behind her fist.

But it was no use. The sob that broke from her chest tore something open in mine.

I should’ve gone to her. Should’ve wrapped my arms around her, kissed her temple, told her none of this was her fault.

But I couldn’t. Not yet.

She still didn’t know what I’d done. Who I was. What I’d become just to keep her tethered to me.

And if I touched her now, if I crossed that line too soon — I might not let her go.

So I stayed hidden, watching the love of my life unravel in front of the funeral plot that should’ve held my body right alongside those of my mother, my father, and my little sister.

Her lips moved. A whisper. Maybe a prayer. Maybe a curse. I didn’t know which.

I watched her reach out with trembling fingers and touch the edge of Ava’s headstone. Just barely. Like she was scared to ask forgiveness from a girl she never got to meet. From a sister who should’ve been her family, too.

My throat tightened. She shouldn’t have been here alone.

Thayer should’ve never touched her. Never gotten close. Never stolen those years from her, or from me.

She sniffled and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, breathing through the wreckage like she didn’t deserve to break. Like she didn’t just spend three weeks writing a book that was surely going to destroy the illusion Thayer’s family was clinging to.

My eyes burned.

Fuck. She was so brave it hurt.

And Thayer’s family had no idea what was coming. But I did because I was the one who had planned every second of it.

She stood slowly.

Wiped at her eyes again like it hadn’t broken her to cry in front of strangers’ names etched in stone. Like she hadn’t just torn herself open beside graves that never should’ve been dug.

She pressed a kiss to her fingertips and touched each name — Victoria, Henry, Ava — and my fucking knees nearly buckled.

You don’t get to do that , I thought savagely, fingers curling into fists at my sides. You don’t get to do that and not belong to me completely, irrevocably. And you do belong to me, sweetheart, even if you don’t know it yet.

She started walking toward where she’d parked the new SUV I bought her, her steps slow, like her body didn’t want to leave mine behind.

Good. She shouldn’t.

She got in the car slowly, pulled the door closed, and just… sat there. For a second, I thought she might scream.

Instead, she just gripped the wheel and stared through the windshield like she was trying to anchor herself to this moment — this grief, this fury, this betrayal.

I could practically hear her thoughts unraveling as I watched emotions play out across her perfect, expressive face. She was thinking about what she’d written. What she dug up. What she exposed.

She was thinking about Thayer’s family, and how none of them knew the truth — not yet. Not the way she did. Not the way I did.

And maybe, just maybe, she was thinking about me, too. The man who’d brought her home from the hospital. The man who’d sent her to the river house for her own good. The man who hadn’t touched her since.

The man she didn’t realize was about to be waiting at home with a mask in his hand and a plan in his head.

I watched her put the SUV in gear, and I followed her into the storm she didn’t know she’d set in motion.

I trailed her through the shadows, always a few cars behind, always far enough back to stay hidden. But I didn’t lose sight of her. I never did.

She didn’t go straight home. Of course she didn’t.

I watched her pull out of the cemetery, headlights sweeping over the wet pavement like a searchlight, then veer left when she should’ve gone right. Her hands were tight on the wheel. White-knuckled.

She didn’t even know where she was going. Just that she wasn’t ready. Not yet.

I let a few cars slip between us, giving her space she didn’t deserve.

You should’ve come to me , I thought. You should’ve come home, baby.

But instead, she was stalling.

She took the long route through town. Passed the bookstore she used to browse with her grandmother. Drove past Heather’s coffee shop. Pulled into a gas station, didn’t pump anything, just sat there.

She was unraveling, and I fucking loved it.

Because even now — even after the funeral, after the words she’d written, after the three weeks she’d spent trying to bury the truth she didn’t want to face — she was still avoiding the one thing that scared her most.

Me.

She thought she could control this. Thought she could press pause on the inevitable. Delay the moment she stepped back into my orbit and everything changed.

But time’s up, princess, I thought . This isn’t a delay. This is foreplay.

She pulled out again, circling aimlessly. Her window cracked halfway. Her hair curling in the humidity. Her jaw tight. She looked like she wanted to scream.

I drove behind her. Calm. Focused. Steady.

Every second she made me wait only sharpened the edge. Every mile brought her closer to the moment I was going to ruin her.

Every mile out of the way was still one step closer to the house she thought was still safe.

Every second ticked closer to the moment her world would split wide open, and she would finally see what I’ve always seen.

She was never meant to be free of me. She was always meant to be mine.

She took the turn for the overlook.

I watched from three cars back as her blinker flicked once, then twice, before she veered off the main road and followed the winding path through the trees.

I didn’t follow her in. I didn’t need to.

I knew where that road ended. Knew she was going to sit on that lonely little bluff, high above the delta, and stare at the black water like it could give her answers.

Like the thick, humid air could rinse the weight of everything she’d done from her skin.

This was where, ever since I’d known her, she used to come, every time the world got too much for her, where she let time flow past, until she got her courage up about whatever was worrying her.

She didn’t want to go home because she already knew what was waiting there.

Me.

I peeled off at the next turn and headed back.

The house was still and quiet when I stepped inside, but the second I crossed the threshold, something shifted. The air stretched tight. The walls held their breath.

She would feel it when she finally walked in. The moment. The presence. The inevitability.

I didn’t turn on the lights. I didn’t need them.

The moonlight mingled with the glow of street lights filtered through the blinds in thin silver slashes, sharp enough to cut with. I took off my jacket and rolled my shoulders. My nerves were electric, twitching under my skin.

She was out there, dragging her feet, buying herself time she didn’t have. I knew her well enough to understand the pattern — this delay was her version of bracing for impact. But it wasn’t going to save her.

Nothing would.

I sat in the chair facing the living room entrance. The one with the best vantage point. The one she’d see first.

And I waited.

I let the silence stretch long and tense around me. Let the shadows move across the floor like hands reaching for her.

I was done being patient. Every minute she made me wait added heat to the hunger already coiling in my chest.

I’d given her time. Twenty-one fucking days of it, to be precise. She was out of grace now. She just didn’t know it yet.

Her location hadn’t moved in twenty-two minutes.

I stared at the blinking dot on the map, glowing like a middle finger on my screen, hovering just off the waterline where the overlook curved out above the delta.

Still sitting. Still stalling. Still pretending like she had a fucking choice.

I leaned forward, elbows braced on my knees, phone clutched so tight in one gloved hand I could feel the pressure building in my knuckles.

The part that killed me?

She wasn’t running from me. She didn’t even know she should be.

She was trying to gather herself. Catch her breath. Convince herself she hadn’t destroyed everything between us with that wire, that idiotic gamble she took with her life.