Page 178 of The Villain We Tempt

Lochlan

As a reminder, final Shadow vs Persona reports are due in class on Monday.

Lochlan

Meet me in the classroom tomorrow at 8 am promptly.

A small grin pulls at the corners of my lips.

It's comical, honestly. The concealer, the formal texts, the way he's careful to keep "Lochlan" and "Ghost" in two separate boxes.

Like I don’t know.

Like he doesn’tknowI know.

I could easily end this. I could tell him to his face, or even right now over text, that I know he’s the one I’ve been losing myself in.

I could stop pretending I don't recognize the hands that make me whimper in the dark, or the voice that he hardly bothers to alter anymore.

I could tell him I'm ready for the mask to come off.

…So why don’t I?

I already know: because I'm terrified of what happens the second I do, and that maskdoescome off.

We see each other almost every night now, and not just for sex.

We talk and laugh. We bring new music for the other one to listen to while sharing headphones. We look at the stars. He tells me about the constellations.

It’s the kind of thing I’ve read about in books but never felt in the real world.

And that's precisely the problem.

The mask isn't just hiding his face. It's the only thing standing between this glorious fictional MaskTok “reality” andactualreality.

Rita Hayworth famously said, “Men go to bed with Gilda, but wake up with me,” regarding her hyper-sexualized Gilda Mundson character inGildaversus the stark brightness of reality.

What if Ghost only wants me as Velvet Villainess—a sexy, masked femme fatale to match his sexy, masked bad boy? What ifthat’swhat draws him to me, and waking up with Galina the mafia princess with two wildly overprotective fathers and a fuckton of normal-person issues, hangups, and habits shatters it all?

What ifIjust want the masked stranger who stalks me and pushes me to explore all my darkest fantasies, and the jock underneath is just not as exciting?

“You okay?”

“Hmm?” I look up, realizing I’ve been staring at the phone in my hand like a psycho the whole time Bella’s been talking to me.

She grins. “I asked if you wanted to go watch the next fight.”

I blink, clearing my mind. “Uh, yeah. Sorry.”

Bella's gaze drops to my phone screen, still open to Lochlan’s texts, and she rolls her eyes. “He wants you to come to class ateight a.m.tomorrow?”

I smile. “Yeah… We haven’t finished our final interviews with each other for the Persona vs Shadow thing. It's due Monday.”

She rolls her eyes again. “Saturday morning at eight. I'm sorry, what a dickhead.” She groans. “Also, sorry you’re not done with that stupid project yet.”

“Yours is all finished?”

She snorts. “Oh, my shocking exposé on Trevor Cohen?” She holds up her fingers to her temple like a gun and makes an explosive sound as she jerks her head to the side. “Oh, it’s a real thrill ride of plot twists. Turns out, underneath the exterior Persona of an overly horny creep with boundary issues and an addiction to Japanese hentai porn, Trevor’sShadowself is…wait for it…an overly horny creep with boundary issues and an addiction to Japanese hentai porn.”