The Promise (Darkest Lies Trilogy Book 2) by Bethany-Kris (fiction book recommendations .txt) 📕

cold water on her face at the sink, and took a moment to stare at herself in the mirror. Soon, in only a few hours, Roman would be gone and then she’d be alone. She couldn’t escape the thoughts, the creeping fears slithering around her spine, or even the deep sense of impending abandonment that wouldn’t leave her fast-beating heart. No matter how many times someone tried to assure Karine those feelings weren’t real, another fight she’d been battling for most of her life, she didn’t listen.

How could she?

She felt it.

Rational or not.

It was still there.

Sure, she’d have Masha, Michelle, Claire and even the handful of bodyguards who were supposed to keep her safe—none of them would make her feel the way he did, though. That was thing, and she didn’t know how to explain it.

Would it even matter if she did?

Had she been wrong in trusting Roman, in getting so wrapped up in the way he made her feel that she forgot he was still just a man? And every other man in her life, well ... they had all taught her the same in one way or another. In the end, the lesson never really changed—but goddamn, it always hurt.

She pressed her eyes closed, and searched her mind for those conflicting voices that sometimes warred within her. The voice of Katee, soft and mellow, telling her she just needed to forget. The commanding, older, more authoritative Katina who would say she should fight. Hurt people only hurt people, Karine. That was the only way for her to survive.

Yet, as much as she searched for those voices, she couldn’t hear them. Even the fractured fragments of her mind, a mess of her own making, didn’t seem to want to help Karine today.

Just my luck.

The only thing she found when she opened her eyes again was the face staring back at her in the mirror. Her own.

Sadly.

If even the identities meant to protect her from pain wouldn’t save her, Karine wasn’t quite sure what could. All she wanted, more than anything, was to make her way back to bed, hide beneath the blankets, and stay there for the rest of the day.

Or forever.

Either worked.

What did it matter?

“Karine, dear?” In her distraction, Karine hadn’t noticed Masha coming to stand in the open bathroom door. She met Masha’s eyes in the mirror, already shaking her head when she asked, “Sweetheart, are you okay?”

No.

Not at all.

“I don’t want him to go,” she said softly.

Her lips quivered.

Even her hands shook.

Karine just felt ... pitiful. All over, from top to toe. She didn’t even want to be stared at by her long-time friend, and caregiver.

Masha inched forward, opening her arms to offer comfort. Not that Karine took it. In fact, she slipped around the woman when she came too close, and darted for the door where she could see the safety of the bed willing to greet her, and take it all away.

She still heard Masha behind her, though, and what she said.

“I know you don’t want him to go, Karine, but he has to. We don’t always get to do just what we want, and it’s okay if you don’t understand it, but it won’t change what happens. Pretending doesn’t make it go away.”

But it did.

It had.

For a while.

• • •

Karine refused to leave her room all morning, dreading that first step out to face the day more and more with every passing second. The day that would end with Roman gone.

She’d somehow convinced herself that if she stayed in the bedroom, then she could just keep pretending he never left. That he was working—doing something important in another part of the home or property.

Reality had never been a very fun place for Karine to be. Masha knew her too well, and even though she called Karine out earlier in the bathroom, it still wasn’t enough to stop her from doing what she had always done when things were just too much.

Masha had left the room to go take care of the laundry—only after Karine insisted she would be fine by herself.

When a knock rattled against the bedroom door, she didn’t know who was waiting on the other side. Masha would have walked right in. She stayed quiet when a part of her dared to hope it was Roman.

Because at the very same time, she hoped it wasn’t.

When Karine didn’t respond to the knock, the door opened slowly with a quiet, “I do know you’re in here. Masha told me so.”

At the sound of Claire’s voice, Karine sat up in the bed, still surrounded by the sheets and pillows from the night before. She hadn’t even let Masha turn over the sheets and make the bed pretty and inviting again. At the sight of Roman’s mother standing in the open doorway, a vicious relief pulsed in her heart.

It wasn’t Roman.

Even though she had desperately wanted it to be, and it hurt that it wasn’t—that was fine. It meant one thing, and that was most important. She didn’t have to say goodbye.

Yet.

The whisper in her heart was cruel.

But not wrong.

“Can I come in—you don’t mind, do you?” Claire asked, not actually waiting for a response, and entering the room anyway. “I wondered where you were when you didn’t come down for breakfast.”

“I didn’t mean to worry you.”

Claire smiled. “No worries here, but I still wanted to check on you.”

“Sorry,” Karine replied, fingering the sleeve of the long-sleeved, oversized shirt she had worn to bed and not bothered to change since waking up. The fraying, black fabric took up her attention instead of the watchful, caring gaze in the doorway. She found herself trying to find the words that would serve as good enough excuses, but she couldn’t. She had no explanation for how she was feeling. Especially since this woman was the mother of the man she was falling in love with, and Claire couldn’t possibly know it. “I felt like being in bed today, I just ...”

Claire came to sit on the edge of