Lie To Me
Sexual Misconduct
Volume Three
Bethany Bazile
Copyright © 2014 by Bethany Bazile
All rights reserved.
Warning: No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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About Lie To Me
It was all too much. There was no way I could keep piling up these lies without it all tumbling down.
I was desperate to keep her, even if it meant I had to lie to her. But when everything unravels, the only thing that can save us is the truth in our love.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Mother May I
Turnabout is Fair Play
The Walls Have Ears
Lie To Me
Make it Stop
We’re Done
Who Are You?
Your Mom for Mine
Atonement
Lunchmate
Houseguest
Drunken calls
Hangovers
Mended Bonds
Irreversible
Anything
More Sessions?
Epilogue
Part Three
Prologue
Avery
The house was unusually cold as I crept down the stairs. It was pitch dark, the glow of flashing blue-and-red lights outside the window illuminating my way. I paused at the stairway landing, my grip tightened on the handrail, and a chill spread, pebbling gooseflesh on my skin.
I stood there staring at the two silhouettes framed by the glass partition in the door for several minutes. I was stuck, frozen in place. My parents were three hours late, and police officers were knocking at my door. I was old enough to know something tragic happened, and the preemptive fear gripped me.
“Do you think they left her with someone?” The question was slightly muffled through the door.
“The nurse who worked with her mom said they didn’t have any family around here. The girl has to be home,” a second voice replied.
One of them banged on the door more aggressively and shouted, “Avery.”
My heart pounded as my bare feet slid across the wood floor. When I swung the door open, both officers looked at me with an expression I’d never forget. The look I spent the rest of my life eluding.
Pity.
I always thought my parents were all I needed in this world. My mom’s parents passed before I was born, and my dad’s parents passed away within years of each other before I turned five, but we were happy.
My parents were both only children, so that meant our small family had become miniscule. But it was all right because our love made it feel like we were a world full of loving people in one home.
But on this one rare night, I decided to stay home, curled up with a book and leftovers from the night before instead of joining my parents at the movie. Before they left, I joked about them needing time alone—a date where their thirteen-year-old daughter wasn’t sitting in the middle.
I spent the night in my room with calming rain pattering on the window and my favorite weathered novel as a companion. That night someone took them away from me. In a matter of hours, I was alone in the world and suddenly missed what I never thought I needed. Family. Anyone who could help me find my way out of the dark hole my life became.
I was angry and bitter, but all that stemmed from the loneliness I felt. I spent nights wishing I’d gone along with them. Then we could still be together. I changed that night, and I don’t know who that girl would’ve grown up to be if she still had her parents. It took a lot of years to become who I am now—to let go of the anger and hate. Especially the hate I felt for the driver who took them from me. For years, I thought that person had paid for the drunken accident with her life. Turned out, I was dead wrong.
Mother May I
Xander
I sped down the road toward my mother’s house. The night had stretched out as I watched Avery snuggled up against me in my bed. I hadn’t slept at all. I hadn’t even tried to.
In the last twenty-four hours, everything started to fit—pieces of a scattered puzzle coming together in my scrambled mind. How my mom knew Avery. Why she was so nervous when she saw us together. Why she’d never mentioned Avery to me in all the years she knew her.
Things came together in my head, but I still had questions—gaps in the scenario that needed filling. And my mother was the only person who could give me the answers I needed.
I pulled up to my childhood home, cut off the engine, and looked upon the large, updated white colonial. It was passed down for centuries and given the name Pierce Manor by my great-great-grandfather. Living in that house, I’d always felt protected, maybe even overprotected, and Ian hated me for it.
Even as children, our relationship had been strained. On the rare occasion when Ian would let me in, even the slightest bit, I was hopeful our relationship would change. But that never happened, and I gave up trying over a decade ago.
I couldn’t understand why my parents always felt like they needed to protect me from things. Ian thought they loved me more, but I always felt they thought I was weaker, and that shit never sat right with me.
At this point, I was tired of it all. I would always live with the consequences of what I’d done, but I wanted nothing more than to move on from it all and attempt to be happy.
I used my key to get into the house. I called out to my mother but got no answer as I walked through the foyer, down the hall, and into the large kitchen. It still had the same rustic feel from when my grandparents used to live here, only with a modern flare.
The French doors leading to the back of the house were pushed open, so I walked through them and found my mother on the patio, facing her garden. She sat at a small wrought iron table that was set against the back of the house. I quietly took the seat across from her, leaned my elbows on the table, folded my hands, and gazed at her through narrowed eyes.
She frowned, her smile fading, eyebrows furrowing as she tried to interpret my body language. “Good morning, Xander,” she said cautiously.
I nodded but remained mute.
She tilted her head as she stared at me. Then her frown deepened. “Have you eaten anything yet?”
I shook my head, and she began to gather her tea cup and newspaper as she rose. “Mother…” I glanced up at her, but she continued to fuss with the items on the table. Then she scurried inside to make me a breakfast I never asked for.
She’d obviously read my expression correctly and was attempting to avoid the conversation we really needed to have. She’d held back for weeks. No… years. This thing with Avery’s parents was no secret to her, and I needed her to answer some questions and figure out how tangled up we were in this web of deception.