Fable of Happiness (Fable #2) by Pepper Winters

I collapsed deeper into Storymaker’s wingback, wedging my elbows onto my knees and cradling my pounding head in my hands. My broken arm throbbed and the cuts on my hands that I couldn’t recall earning stung as I dug fingernails into my scalp.

Every part of me hurt.

I’d woken this morning, shivering my ass off in damp clothes with stairs cutting into my body, and for a flicker of a moment, I pictured a bath. A star-studded sky. A kiss...

But then, it’d vanished.

Just a dream.

Nothing important.

Until I’d found her in the library, and she told me otherwise.

She’d looked different.

There’d been a light in her eyes. A welcome. A warmth. When I’d first stepped into the room, she’d blushed and given me a smile that summoned me to her. The overwhelming sensation of affection tugged me forward, promising comfort after the disastrous sleep I’d had on the stairs.

I’d wanted her.

Her smile said she could soothe my aches, stitch my wounds, and grant me peace that I couldn’t seem to find anywhere else but with her. She looked as if she was excited to see me. As if she wanted to hug me, kiss me, touch all my scars and share pleasure with someone who’d trapped her.

How was that even possible?

The last interaction we’d had was...

It was...

Wait, it must’ve been...

No, it was when...

Ah, hell.

I groaned under my breath, tugging at my hair, raging at my crippling headache.

Why can’t I remember?

This wasn’t like before.

This wasn’t like all my other memories, skulking and slithering behind armored doors, just waiting for sleep or distraction to punish me.

This was...blank.

A blank emptiness that spread like cancer, chewing up pieces of my day, my night, and everything in-between.

Think!

I grunted as my head throbbed harder, and my balance believed I lived on the bow of a ship and not in an ivy-smothered mansion.

I’d been cruel to her, I knew that. I’d been nasty, purely because having her say things like “making love” and “friendship” had fucking terrified me. I’d spewed all that shit about my past. I’d given her pieces of me that no one should ever know.

Why?

What had driven me to confess things I’d so firmly locked away? Things I’d trained myself to forget?

It’d been her. Her softness. Her empathy even while I denied her.

The way she spoke of pleasure and togetherness—she made it seem as if we’d changed our path last night and had committed to one another.

Committed what exactly?

Had she said she wanted me?

Had she said she loved me?

Because she’d looked at me as if she did love me...and that can’t possibly be true.

I choked, stumbling upright and swaying on the spot. Loving another person would destroy me. I wasn’t prepared to let someone have that much power over me again.

Never again.

I’d learned that lesson, and I can’t fucking do it again!

But you feel something.

“Fuck!” Breathing hard, I collapsed back into the chair.

Despite not remembering last night, I knew I was lying to myself. What I felt for Gemma had transcended just the need for a sexual release a while ago. I knew that. That conclusion was written in black and white. But the difference was, those memories were real. They hadn’t been planted there by her words. Those memories came with feelings and knowledge, not blank and empty.

She’d fought to convince me pretty hard that what she said truly happened last night.

But what if something completely different had occurred?

What if I’d caught her running and fucked her on all fours in the forest as punishment? What if she’d tried to kill me with the dinner she’d made, and I’d smelled the poison, only to smash the food all over the carpet? What if she’d begged me to let her go, and I’d said yes? Wouldn’t that make her look at me as if she cared? Only to hate me when I woke and reneged on such a promise?

So many scenarios.

So many stories, just like all the paper ones glowering at me from their bookshelves.

I trembled as I closed my eyes, commanding my thoughts to stop playing hide and seek. Instantly, walls soared into place, chains clunked tight, and rusty padlocks loomed in my mind’s eye.

No.

I didn’t want to wade through the shit shackled behind those doors, I just wanted to know what the hell happened last night for Gemma Ashford to look at me as if I was good.

As if I’d shown pieces of myself that made her fall.

“I’m not yours forever, Kas. I’ll never be.”

Her voice came and went.

A phrase that sounded familiar, but I couldn’t remember when.

I scrubbed my face with my hands, itching at the hair on my cheeks.

A whiff of papaya crawled up my nose—

Bubbles.

Bath.

Breasts.

I gasped, rocking backward, inhaling my fingers, doing my best to trigger whatever recollection just came and went.

Oh, God, what if she was telling the truth?

What if I had given her a bath last night?

What if we slept together?

What if I’d actually earned her heart?

Me!

The kid who was worthless. The boy who was abused. The man who was forgotten.

Me!

Ah fuck, why can’t I remember?