Twisted Lies

“Like you’re the most beautiful, most remarkable thing they’ve ever seen.”

The words lit every molecule in my body and dissolved them into a pool of exquisite, unbearable warmth.

We weren’t talking

Once upon a time, I hadn’t believed in love.

Now, I realize that love was the last piece that’d been missing in the puzzle of my life.

With it, I was finally whole.

She wasn’t the only light of optimism around me, but she was the only one that mattered.

every rule, and seeing her so strong and clear-eyed with conviction lit a match of pride in my chest.

I was so startled I almost flinched before I caught myself.

Something warm and foreign moved in my chest, eating away at the steel barriers I’d erected.

No one had defended me before. Ever.

I didn’t need or want them to, but Stella had always been the exception to my

Her conviction was misplaced because I was exactly what her father accused me of—a snake in the grass, a monster with bloody hands and a bloodier past. But after seeing myself through her rose-tinted glasses, I wished, for the first time in my life, that I was the man she thought I was.

and every fucking slight against Stella was a slight against me

Alex Volkov was a force of his own, and while he made me a bit uneasy—I was almost certain he harbored psychopathic tendencies—he would put his life on the line to protect Ava

She’d been in my house for less than two hours, and she was already wreaking havoc on my life

but to myself and the parts of me I hadn’t known still existed