Betrayed By Desire

The Untangle

• CHAPTER 4

She cuddled herself up with blankets on her sofa, feeling deserted and scrolling endlessly through her phone. She felt like a prisoner in her own home, a confinement of her own design. It was a pathetic attempt to find a version of herself that hadn’t been so colossally naive. She stopped on a selfie she’d taken at Amelia’s, just before the fateful night. She was putting on a red gown, spinning and dazzling for the camera with her face filled with hope and excitement. She looked like a child playing dress-up, the impending doom she was about to face was something utterly unaware about.

The image was a physical ache. She swiped away from it, a frantic gesture to erase the memory, and her photo gallery shuffled to a new picture.

It was a photo from the Brooks Foundation’s charity gala several weeks prior. She’d saved it from the company’s PR feed. In it, Hayden stood amidst a crowd of investors, looking devastatingly handsome in a tailored black tuxedo. His expression was polite, focused, a model CEO indeed. She had a short recall of how she admired and crushed on him in silence in that, staring at him in the mist of the crowd. But at the moment, her eyes cleared by heartbreak and paranoia, weren’t on Hayden.

They were locked on the large, dark window behind him. A man’s reflection was half hidden in the gloomy dim area far end of the ballroom by the shadow of the pillar he leaned against. He was gazing directly at Hayden. Not with admiration or professional curiosity. There was nothing but cruel intent in his eyes, his eyes held a bitter poisonous ill will. A withering glare that made skylar’s hairs stand.

Her breath hitched. The man was identical to Hayden. The same body features: height, sharp cut on the jaw, broad shoulders but the similarities ended there. Hayden’s style was flawless and ideal, this man’s dark hair was longer, falling over his forehead in a messy, careless way. He was in a dark blue suit which was a little rumbled, his neck tie loosened ignoring the formality of the event. His posture was all coiled tension, a predator observing its prey and the utter hatred etched on his face was so severe it made her skin crawl.

She was suddenly hit by a memory feeling like an actual physical blow. Her hair blew in the wind, the feel of worn leather under her fingers, the raw, unfiltered intensity of the man on the motorcycle.

*That’s him.*

Another memory, more recent, more intimate: the dim light of the minimalist house, the rough kiss, the shadowed angles of a face she had been so desperate to believe was Hayden’s.

*The man from the secluded house.*

*The man she had slept with.*

Her sense of reality shifted dramatically and an ear splitting sound filled her ears, the sound of her entire reality shattering and crumbling. Her phone slipped from her shaking hands, hitting the wooden floor surface but the screen didn’t crack whereas something inside her did.

It wasn’t Hayden.

It had *never* been Hayden.

She had given herself to a stranger. A twin. A doppelgänger who looked at her boss, the man she truly loved, with murder in his eyes.

The room spun. Fragments of the last week flew at her, rearranging themselves into a new, horrific mosaic. The "blunt and fierce" behavior that was so "out of character", it wasn’t Hayden loosening up. It was someone else entirely. The coldness at the office wasn’t regret; it was Hayden’s genuine confusion and hurt over *her* sudden, inexplicable shift. She had been cold to him, rejecting his subtle overtures, the book, the coffee, while secretly berating him for a cruelty he had never committed. She had thrown away *his* roses, a gesture she thought was defiance against a cruel lover, but which he saw as a brutal rejection of his own careful, confused affection.

He had no idea what she had done. What had been done to her.

She had been a pawn. A puppet in a twisted, malicious game orchestrated by a man who wore the face of her love. She felt so devastated and morally ruined, the violation was so profound it felt like a sickness.

She finally let out an overwhelming cry which she has been holding back, sound of pure agony. She almost wanted to let out a scream, she was engulfed with rage and shame. The feeling of tearing up her apartment and shattering her surroundings consumed her. How was I so naive and oblivious?

As if her escalating fear manifested, the issue intensified. Her fallen phone screen flickered on, its casing buzzing against the floor. The light from the phone illuminated the dark room. She picked up the phone and it was a call from an unknown number, it was the imposter calling.

A white-hot fury, purer and more powerful than her despair, surged through her. She snatched the phone from the floor, her hands trembling so violently she almost dropped it again. She didn’t think. She just reacted, fueled by a rage that demanded a target.

She picked up the phone to her ear, responding to the call.

“You monster,” boiling with her trembling voice, her poisonous words barely audible. “You lying, disgusting monster! I know what you did! I know who you are! How could you? How *dare* you!”

The line went dead for a moment. A lengthy , eerie silence that was nerve racking and gut wrenching. She expected a laugh, a taunt, more lies in that familiar, yet subtly different, voice.

But it didn’t come.

Instead, a voice spoke. It was Hayden’s voice. But not the rough, intense version from the texts and the secluded house. This was the real Hayden’s voice, the one from the office, cultured, calm, and now laced with a confusion so genuine it turned her blood to ice.

“Skylar?” the voice said, hesitant and utterly bewildered. “What… What are you talking about? And why are you calling me… a monster?”