Just a Game

And so I Agreed

Alice // chapter forty-four

"S L O W down, E, what's going on?" Jace reached out to her fast, probably worried something had happened to her.

But she shook him off and headed towards me, pulling Jace with her. "She lied, Jace."

His brows furrowed. "Who, Alice?"

She sighed, shaking her head. "No, you idiot, Tanya."

He took a step back, staring at his sister with such question and bewilderment that it was a wonder how those two emotions can even go together. "What are you talking about?"

"Tanya lied to you about everything from start to end. This whole time," she chuckled bitterly, "she's been playing you like a damn puppet and I didn't even know."

"Wait, so what exactly did she lie about?" I stepped in, curiosity killing me.

"The baby-actually both of them."

"Evelyn, for the love of God, speak clearly and just tell me what you know," Jace said, closing his eyes in that way he does when he's getting frustrated. I wanted to reach out and hug him, preparing him for whatever news Evelyn was about to expose. But I couldn't. And that killed me.

I'm guessing she didn't feel like talking back to him as she usually does, because she spilled everything right then and there. "When you and Tanya were together years ago and she got pregnant, there really was no baby. It was all to make you stay. Apparently, one of her friends overheard you talking to your friends about leaving her. It freaked her out and she whipped up the plan with her friends to trap you. She was going to fake a miscarriage a few months in, but you got into that accident with her before she could carry out that plan. So, I guess she readjusted the timing and used the accident to cover her miscarriage story. This time, however, she is really pregnant and she's not lying about the due date nor when she got pregnant either. The only lie here is that the baby is not yours."

Every word she spoke flew past my mind; I was unable to catch them all to make sense of what she was saying. I felt like I was listening on a foreign conversation, feverishly trying to understand what was being said and continuously failing. Jace, however, got everything. His breathing had hitched and there was tears streaming down his face with such strength that I questioned how long he'd been bottling up his emotions. Then he spoke oh-so-quietly. "Whose is it?"

Evelyn took in a shuddering breath and looked at me. "Damon."

My heart dropped to the deeps of the Earth. I couldn't even blink. My hand covered my mouth, my brain unwilling to let me speak in my current state. There was no doubt in my mind that she was lying, because why would Evelyn lie to me and to Jace, her own brother. There had to be full, if not some, truth to what she was saying.

"Damon as in Alice's Damon?" Jace asked, his voice tight.

She nodded. "Look, I'm so sorry, but the premises under which you got back to her is untrue. You two broke up for no reason."

"But he slept with her when were together, Evelyn, before she even told him she was pregnant," I whispered, closing my eyes with my hand as the ache in my heart traveled up to my head.

"What do you mean-" she started to ask but understood soon enough. Surprised for some odd reason, she turned to Jace. "You never told her?"

"Told me what?"

"That he really-"

"Stop, Evelyn. You've told her enough," Jace stepped in, interrupting the revelation.

Nervousness took root in my shattered heart, creating its own gravity to pull it all together. "Why are you cutting her off, Jace? What are you not telling me? You did sleep with Tanya during our relationship, did you not?"