Accidentally His

Chapter 2: POLISHED LIES

I thought I found something. It was just the spare button under his cloth that his arm rested on. Still nothing. Not on his chest. Not near his ribs. Not on his shoulders. I was starting to feel frantic. My hand moved again, slow but persistent, slipping down his arm like I was admiring his muscles, then grazing his back again. I angled my head slightly, peeking discreetly at the skin from the new angle. No mole. Just smooth, golden skin and a few faint freckles that taunted me. I rolled him gently, playfully, like I wanted to spoon. He let me. I pulled his arm around me and stared down the length of his spine with all the subtlety of a forensic investigator. Still nothing.

What the f**k.

I could feel something buzzing in my skull now, like a bee trapped behind my eyes, battering around every rational thought I had left. I wanted it to be there. I needed it to be there. I had waited too long, worked too hard, lost too much weight, killed too many versions of myself to be wrong about this. I couldn’t have been wrong. Not about him. My whole goddamn story depended on that mole being real.

Jynelle would’ve told me to triple-check before I spread my legs. “You never make a move without data, Scar,” she always said. “You’re hot, not stupid. Stop letting your v****a drive the mission.” But I didn’t listen. Not when it counted. I was sure. I was so f*****g sure. And yet, I was lying next to him... touching, holding, kissing... and I felt nothing but the hollow weight of doubt pressing against my chest. Was it trauma that made the memory so vivid? Did I just imagine it? Or had I been so desperate to be saved that I gave the boy who saved me a face he didn’t actually have? That would make this worse. That would make this madness. That would make me the girl who had invented a lover out of desperation, built an obsession on fiction, chased a man who had nothing to do with her drowning... and then f****d him anyway.

No. I didn’t want to believe that.

I kept scanning, carefully, obsessively, pretending to cuddle while my eyes darted over every visible inch of his body. Shoulder blades. Spine. Waist. Hip. Neck. I leaned in, kissed his jaw, let my fingers trace his lower back again, this time slower, more desperate. He turned his face toward mine and kissed me with such confidence it made my stomach turn. He thought I wanted him. And the cruel thing was... I did. I did want him. Just not like this. Not like this isn’t real.

He pulled me in tighter, arms wrapping around me like he was claiming something, and I let him. I let myself be held by the wrong man, still hoping something would click. That I’d roll over and the mole would be there and the world would snap back into place. But all I felt was dread, thick and sticky in my throat. If he wasn’t the one who saved me… then who was?

And worse... what if I couldn’t find him?

Or worse than that... what if I already had, and didn’t recognize him when I saw him?

I closed my eyes and buried my face into Jack’s chest, forcing my body to relax even though my mind was screaming. I had no plan now. No idea what the next move was. Just a growing, ugly suspicion that I had made a terrible mistake... and a beautiful man beside me who had no idea he wasn’t the person I’d been chasing all these years.

I was going to have to pretend. At least until I figured this out. At least until I could breathe without shaking. Until I knew what the f**k I was supposed to do with a dream that just cracked open and bled all over my white silk sheets.

Because right now, I had nothing but a blank back where a mole should’ve been... and a sinking feeling that the story I told myself all these years might’ve started with a lie.

I woke up to the sound of him humming.

Not loud. Not obnoxious. Just soft, aimless, the kind of careless sound men make when they think they’re safe. He was standing near the window in just his boxers, mug in hand, the city pouring in behind him like a movie set backdrop. Tall. Golden. Lit like the romantic lead in someone else’s love story. Not mine. I watched him through half-lidded eyes, feigning sleep, heart still lodged in my throat from the night before. My mouth tasted like regret masked in strawberry lip balm. My body still ached in all the places he touched. And the worst part? I wanted to touch him again. Even now. Even with the truth howling in my chest like a caged animal. He wasn’t the boy from the river. There was no mole on his back. And I had no f*****g idea who he was anymore... other than the man I’d already let inside me.

He turned and caught me looking. Smiled. The kind of smile that said I did good last night, and he wasn’t wrong. The s*x was incredible. The fantasy was perfect. But it wasn’t the right man. And now I was tangled in my own performance with no idea how to exit gracefully.

“Good morning, trouble,” he said, walking back to the bed, kissing my hair, brushing his thumb down my jaw like I belonged to him. I smiled up at him like I wasn’t dying inside. He climbed back into bed beside me, handed me a mug of coffee, and kissed my bare shoulder before stretching like a satisfied cat. “You hungry?”

I blinked at him. “Starving,” I lied.

He reached for his phone and ordered breakfast like it was a routine thing. Like I was already a regular fixture in his morning plans. Like this was going to happen again. And again. And again.

The thought made my spine lock.

I sat up slowly, pulled the sheet over my chest even though he’d already seen every inch of me, and pretended to check my own phone while casually, quietly, typed into Google: can moles disappear overnight?

No shame. Just quiet desperation.

The results were insulting. Laser removal. Skin bleaching. “Most moles remain unless removed by surgery.” My stomach twisted. I clicked image tabs like I was going to find his back in one of them. No mole. No sign. No miracle.

He looked at me and grinned. “Work email?”

I smiled like I hadn’t just typed the dumbest question in internet history. “Something like that.”

He kissed my cheek and said something about eggs Benedict and strawberries and champagne. My laugh came out tight and too bright. I excused myself to the bathroom again. Not because I needed to pee. Because I needed to scream into a towel.

I sat on the toilet lid, legs folded, holding my phone like it might give me answers the internet didn’t have. My thoughts were a f*****g minefield. Maybe I got the side wrong. Maybe it was higher. Lower. Maybe he had it removed for aesthetics. Rich men did weird s**t. But why would he do that? Why remove something that specific? That identifying?

Unless it was never there to begin with.

Unless it was never him.

Jynelle would’ve already ruled him out. Would’ve built a spreadsheet with timelines and side-by-side back photos from five years apart. She would’ve said, “Don’t confuse hot with history.” She always said I let my hormones narrate. I hated her for being right.

I pinched the bridge of my nose and tried not to cry. Or rage. Or throw his toothbrush through the mirror. I had waited too long for this. Had starved myself on celery and compliments, clawed my way into the kind of beauty that got you invited to exclusive parties and mistaken for actresses. I didn’t do all of that for nothing. I did it for him. The boy who saved me. The boy I turned into a man inside my head. The man I tracked down, flirted with, seduced, and finally, finally gave myself to.

But the mole was gone. Which meant the boy was gone. Which meant....

“Scarlett?” Jack’s voice floated through the door. “You okay in there?”

I straightened, flushed nothing, ran the faucet, smoothed my hair. “Yeah! Just touching up my makeup.”

He chuckled. “Still flawless, babe.”

I almost screamed.

When I came back out, someone else was around.