The Lies We Leave Behind Novels & Stories

“I had no intention of doing that.” Silence stretched tight between us. Her eyes flicked to mine, unreadable. “Was that all?” she asked. I stepped back, hand on the doorknob. “Yeah. That was all.” I left without another word. Didn’t look back. Because the worst part the part I couldn’t admit, even to myself was that for one second, I almost believed the lie we both told. Almost.

I cursed. "If you let us talk and we settle things amicably then, I would leave here but you are not ready to have this conversation with me so I am sorry, that means I can't leave just yet," he said firmly. I took in a deep breath and exhaled. "You want to talk? Fine, let's talk okay?" "Let's start with you lying about being a married man," I began. "And as I said, I never told you I was married nor did I tell you that I was single," he countered and I nodded my head.

Karen stood behind her, their eyes meeting in the glass, a private ritual of undressing that went beyond everything. “I am tired of the chase, Karen,” Lara confessed, letting her bra fall to the floor. “The relentless pressure to prove loyalty to a system designed to discard us. The phantom heat of Rahul’s touch… it was always a lie. It was always a transaction. But this..." she gestured between their reflected images, stripped bare of their corporate personas. “This is clarity. This is the absolute truth.”

My words sent a shockwave through Derick and Jasmine, their faces a picture of pure horror. With a sly grin, I hit play on the recorder for all to hear. Jasmine's moans and Derick's breathy gasps were not the only things captured; their treacherous whispers filled the room. "Thanks for swapping the kids, darling. Our little one's destined to rule the roost now! "Lily's boy is your own blood. He's sick, and we're just leaving him to suffer. Doesn't that break your heart?"

“Because when I had nothing and no one left, I was forced to leave everything behind. Maybe I have you to thank for that.” When she looked back at him, Nathaniel was running his fingers through his hair again, a habit she remembered, one he only had when something had unsettled him deeply. She shook her head, saying, “I don’t expect you to believe me—” “I’ll believe you,” he said firmly, looking up at her with determination in his gaze. “You don’t have to prove anything to me.” “What if I’m lying?” Serena calmly said. “It doesn’t matter,” he said evenly. “Just don’t shut me out.”

The resignation she left. Two stories. Two versions of the same nightmare. We’d been blaming each other, but for what? Who had fed us these lies? And why?

I wasn’t going to fall for that. “You are lying, Jake. You are nothing but a liar. You wrote that letter, that was why you left without saying goodbye to anyone, because you already broke the only person who was close to you.” I cried out. “Keisha, please, believe me. I didn’t do any of these things you are accusing me of. I know nothing about the posters and the letters, and trust me, I had a reason for leaving back then. If you would just give me a chance to-“

His voice remains calm. Controlled. That somehow makes it worse. I stare out the glass windows of my office. The city stretches endlessly below. Busy. Loud. Alive. Meanwhile my heart suddenly feels too loud inside my chest. “You left,” I say quietly. Another pause. Then— “I did.” No excuses. No lies. No attempt to deny it. And somehow that annoys me even more. “You don’t get points for honesty now.” “I know that too.” God. Why does he sound like this?

At some point, Gerald's fifth leaf caught the lamplight in a way that made it look, briefly, gold. She fell asleep somewhere around eleven with her head against his shoulder and the unread poetry book open in her lap and the city outside doing its permanent indifferent thing. He stayed. Not because she'd asked him to. Because leaving felt like the wrong direction. He sat with the lamp on and her breathing and the book open to a poem he read once and then again and then let it sit. He thought about Marcus's offer. He thought about Brooklyn. Manhattan. The question of what things were waiting rooms and what things were destinations, and how you knew the difference.

John had agreed very quickly and said he respected my choice, and that he did not like kids either. However, that was a lie from him, too. My mother held my hand tightly and looked at me in concern. She seemed like she was afraid I would be touched by John’s flowery words. However, they had underestimated my courage. I stared at him calmly. “John, stop lying to me. No matter what you say, you’ve broken the vow of our marriage. It’s over between us. “I’ll send you divorce papers through my lawyer.” John kept shaking his head.