It is the first real thing that I have experienced in a long time and I'm desperately trying to hold onto it.

I could have made up another reason for all of those names. I could have lied to cover up all of those other lies.

Instead, I decided to trust her.

I don't know if she's trustworthy.

Most journalists aren't.

They are only after one thing and once they have a good story, they will burn all their bridges to get the opportunity to print it.

Emma is different, isn't she?

First of all, she works for a magazine and not a newspaper. They have more leeway. Second of all, the magazine isn't particularly interested in hard news.

So why would they care about my story?

I hope they don't.

When Emma excuses herself to go to the bathroom, I hope that I didn't make a mistake.

At the same time, part of me suspects that what I just told her, she already knows.

I made a barrage of mistakes. When I ran into Alex, I agreed to come to his engagement party. Alex is the only person who knows my real name. I talked to his ex-fiancéé and later I slept with her.

I stop myself in that train of thought. I know that she's not going back to him. What I don't know is how she feels about me.

We still haven't talked about D. B. Carter. I still haven't told her the extent of my uncle's empire and the extent to which I had betrayed him.

She doesn't know any of these details and I'm not really sure if I should go into them.

Right before I came here to this meeting, I did a brief search on Liam Linville on Google.

The article by Samantha Lind came up and I figured that this is the one that Emma found. Everything in that article is true and I added a little bit to what I told her to elaborate on the story.

There is still so much that she does not know and that I should probably not tell her.

It's hard to describe what it's like to live a new life. I've been given this identity, a new name, a new location, and a new biography.

But I'm not an actor.

This is a lot more complicated than pretending to be someone for a day.

I have to pretend to be Peter Schmidt for the rest of my life.

An actor immerses himself or herself so deeply within a world that they basically embody the character. Other people around them say that they become difficult to deal with and impossible to live with.

The point is to be so authentic that you stop pretending and simply melt into someone else.

This is called method acting and those who practice this, do it for a month or two at the most. I have to do this for the rest of my life.

That's why I started writing.

It was something that I've always wanted to do and when I make up these other worlds and these other people, I finally feel like I'm not spending every minute of every day in a cage.

I finally feel free.

Emma comes back when they take our plates away and sits down across from me.

Her hair falls softly in her face and she puts her elbows on the table, holding her hands in front of her.

“Is everything okay?” I ask.

“Yes,” she says, but I'm not sure if I believe her.

There's something different about her. It's hard to pinpoint exactly what it is, but she seems almost… Rattled.

She was upset by my lies only a little bit before and now, she seems almost sorry for me.

“Tell me about D. B. Carter,” she says quietly.

I look from her intertwined fingers up to the curve of her neck, pausing briefly at her lips, and eventually meeting her eyes.

“Why did you make up that you were this writer?” she asks. “Why did you lie to me about that?”

These questions hit me like a sack of bricks in the face. I sit back against the back of the chair and tilt my head slightly to the side, looking at her in disbelief.

“This is what you really think?”

“Of course. Do you think I'm an idiot?”

I shake my head and think to myself that I’m the idiot.

What the hell am I doing here? I can’t trust this woman. I don't know anything about her.

I'm putting everything on the line and she doesn’t even believe me.

I open my wallet and stand up. I toss four twenties on the table and start to walk away.

“What are you doing?” Emma rushes after me. “Where are you going?”

She finally catches up to me near the entrance and tugs on my arm, pulling me into the hallway leading to the bathrooms.

“I need to go,” I say, pulling my hand away from hers.

“Why? What did I say?”

I swallow hard. I should explain, but I'm so insulted by the fact that she thinks that I would be the kind of person who would make up being this writer that I can't even bother to bring myself to say a word.

“You clearly think that I'm someone that I could never be,” I finally say.

“I don't know what you mean,” she whispers.

“You think that I am someone who would make up something like that. I mean, why? Why would someone do that?”

“For ego. Because they secretly want to be a writer and can't. There are millions of reasons why people pretend to be someone famous. To catfish a girl and get her to bed?”

I shake my head again.

“No, I can't believe that I was this wrong about you,” I say quietly. “I have to go.”

34

Liam

I walk away from her because I realize that she doesn't know anything about me.

If she thinks that I'm capable of lying about being a famous author just to stroke my own ego, she doesn't know me at all.

She catches up with me again outside of the restaurant. She grabs my hand and again I pull myself away from her.

Coming here was a mistake.

“Wait, stop,” Emma says. “Talk to me.”

“Talk to you about what?”

“Who are you?”

“You already know.”

“Are you D. B. Carter?”

I look down at my phone. Without saying another word, I open the pages app and scroll through all of my novels.

I don't have to do this.

I don't owe her anything.

I just don't want her thinking that I'm capable of being this deceptive.

I click on a document with a novel from a few releases ago and turn the phone toward her.

She scrolls through and her face falls.

She hands me back the phone and I open another one and another one and another one.

I keep doing this until she tells me to stop.

“Okay, I understand,” she says, throwing her hands up.

“I have to go,” I say quietly.

Again, she follows me.

“I believe you, okay? What else do you want me to say?”

“It's not about that,” I say. "I shouldn’t have lied to you, but I only did that to protect myself and that's why I'm going to walk away now.”

“Please don't,” she says.

Her voice is small and meek.

I make a move to walk away from her, but something pulls me back.

The truth is that I love her.

I haven't told her this and I probably can't, but this is true. I haven’t loved anyone in a really long time and that's why I said and did all those things.