Know Me (Truthful Lies Trilogy - Book One) by Rachel Dunning Page A

“Trev’s huge. Not me.”
    “ So what’s the answer?”
    “ Football. Weights. Work?” He
shrugs.
    I park that one for later. I don’t
care how , I just
care that .
    “ You said something when I came
in.”
    “ No, uhm”—I laugh—“it seems I’m an internet
sensation...”
    “ Really?” He takes the phone from my hand.
After reading for a bit: “Who is this fucking asshole?”
    “ Oh, that Skitz-O prick? Forget him. Read the others.”
    After a few seconds, he smiles.
    “ What?” I reach for my phone, he snaps it
away. “What!?” He holds the phone in the air and looks up at it,
and I can’t reach it! “Hey! What are you smiling at?” I jump up but
the phone is still too high up. He’s so tall!
    With a grin, he reads out loud:
“ ‘Hot? More
than hot. I’d do her. Oh yeah baby.’’ ” He cracks up laughing, then fixes me with his
glorious gaze. “I’d have to agree.”
He eases down to my lips and manages one peck before I slide away
and snatch my phone
back!
    “ Hey!” he says.
    I run! He chases me to the back of the
loft and lifts me off my feet. I start kicking! We’re choking
crazily with laughter. My phone’s slipping from my hand. “Let me
go!” I say as a joke.
    “One kiss, then you can go.”
    I instantly flush hot with heat. I don’t
even bother putting up the façade of a fight. “Fine, put me down
and kiss me then.”
    He does put me down, and when his lips
touch mine, my fingers and hand relax. And my phone falls to the
ground. My nipples harden.
    He eases away gently, licks his lips. He
looks as dazed as I feel. “Deck?”
    “M-hm?”
    “ You look like you’re in a dream.”
    In a deep rumble of a voice, he says:
“ Feels like
it.”
-5-
    I pick up my phone (grateful as hell that
it’s got a sturdy cover on it) and I scroll through the rest of the forwarded
messages from Xavier. For a short, confused moment, my mind takes
me back, and seeing the name XAVIER next to all these unread messages throws up images of the
past which I don’t care to look at. And for an almost indiscernible
second, I even expect to see Savva’s or Patryk’s name in amongst
the messages. Something like, Hook up at ten tonight? Or Awesome set, love, S.
    The mind is a funny thing. If it could
just let go of things, maybe we wouldn’t all suffer so much.
    But the messages I’m reading now, although
from his phone, are not from him, they’re other people’s messages.
Each one lifts my mood up more and makes me forget Skitz-O ’s crappy
comments (although, not completely.)
    The last one he writes is:
    Xavier: Need 2 talk money. Call
me.
    I call him.
    “ Ola, baby. Get a good night’s
rest?”
    “ Uh-huh.”
    “ Get all my messages?”
    “ Uh-huh.” I’m waiting anxiously for the
money subject.
    “ So, Randy said he gonna give you da full payment for both the other DJs. Now these are
small parties, so even the top DJs don’t get paid a lot, but how’s
two Gs sound to you?”
    “ Two... grand ?” If I’m getting two, I wonder what the other DJs
were really getting,
seeing as Xavier wouldn’t be Xavier if he wasn’t lining his own
pockets at least a little.
    “ Dass right, baby.”
    Pause.
    “ Blaze, you there?”
    “ Uh-huh.”
    “ Good news, right?”
    I’ve hardly ever even made two Gs in an entire month before... Cut
or no cut, it’s a mountain of money to me. And I’m not ungrateful
for it. “ Amazing news,
Xavier. Thank you.”
    “ Yeah. Well. Now, our brains are too fried
today, but stay by your phone. Randy’s keen on getting you into a
few clubs. If you generate enough interest, maybe he’ll get you on
the label. He wanted to know if some of the stuff you mixed was all
your own. I told him yes because I remembered you creating all that
EDM stuff on your computer back when we used to hang. So, was
it?” EDM is
Electronic Dance Music, the equivalent of our crowd’s Rock n
Roll .
    “Was it what?”
    “ The stuff you played, was some of it