Page 35 of Depraved

One hand keeps my wrists captive. His other gently encircles my neck, thumb hooking beneath my jaw to hold me immobile.

I wriggle beneath him, but I’m utterly helpless.

At his mercy.

I glower up at him, my eyes burning into his with pure rage.

His eyes…

One is the same dark brown I’ve fallen into so many times in the last few weeks since I met him as Rand.

The other is blue.

I must’ve knocked out his contact lens when I hit him with the clock.

He wasn’t just wearing the slutty little glasses to conceal who he really is. The contacts are fake, too.

His eyes are blue.

The exact same hue that haunts my nightmares.

The way he’s holding me is achingly familiar. It always has been.

The truth clicks into place.

I go utterly still.

“Brandon?”

10

KAROLINA

He recoils as though I’ve burned him, releasing me from his careful but unbreakable grip.

I sit upright and peer at him, studying the impossibly handsome face of my professor. He looks nothing like the boy I loved.

Except for the blue eye peering at me.

And the guarded way he’s looking at me tells me I’m right.

I’ve figured it out.

He’s been lying to me for so much longer than the last few weeks in York.

Rand is Bones. And Bones is Brandon.

My first love.

My dead first love.

My hand cracks across the perfect plane of his cheek, and my palm smarts.

He’s real.

He’s alive.

He blinks hard.