Read Know Me (Truthful Lies Trilogy - Book One) for Free Online Page A

don’t
mind.”
    I hand him my backpack and we start
walking.
    My eyes blink in rhythm to my footfalls.
Music plays in my ear. I remember what it used to be like, coming
home tripping or rolling after a night like this, music slamming so
hard in my cranium that
I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep until three in the afternoon. And
even though the sound is as loud in my head now as it had been
then, I know that when I hit the sack I’ll be out like a blown
speaker.
    “ So, seven hour set,” Declan says, “that’s...wow. That’s freaking unheard
of.”
    “ Did I really mix for seven
hours?”
    He clutches the strap of my backpack,
turns to look at me. “Yes, seven unbelievable hours of unbelievable music!”
    “ Th—thanks.”
    “ No, I freaking mean it. Hot —HOT!—music.”
He looks up at another gutted warehouse, on our right.
    I s neak a look at his ripped bicep, his chest popping out
under his tank. Trev is pure size, smoothed out and even. But
Declan is ripped and solid. Unadulterated strength.
    I decide to change the subject about the
music, because praise
makes me uncomfortable. “So when did you start getting your sleeve
done?”
    He stretches out his right arm, looks at
the top of his forearm, then the bottom. I see some of the
images close-up now. The
gaping mouth of a tiger, bright orange, on the forearm. The
voluptuous nude on its head. Riding it like she’s in charge. Higher
up are vines, so that the tiger’s head and its rider are riding
through the vines, surrounded by them.
    There’s a name in between all of that. I
don’t quite make it out.
    “ Well, it all started out with this
one— Priscilla —that
was my mom’s name.” He pauses, looks at it for a bit. “That was
almost four years ago.”
    Was her name, I note...
    “ Then I figured she should be remembered
with beauty, so that’s when I got the leaves and the vines and the
tiger’s head done. The naked woman”—he laughs—“well, that’s the
male in me coming out. That’s like Superwoman or something. I don’t
know. It just looked cool. Or maybe it’s symbolic. Who cares. It
just seemed bad-ass. And, well, I kinda wanted to be a bad-ass in
those days. Fuck the world and all that shit, you know? The
tiger—it’s a Fuck the World kind of thing. Charge against it no matter what. Something
like that.” He turns to show me the inside of his arm. LIVE IN THE
NOW , it says, surrounded
by intricate tribal lines of different colors, wrapping up all the
way to the top and around his shoulder.
    Did I really say that his tats
didn’t turn
me on?
    “ They’re...beautiful.”
    I don’t ask him how his mom passed.
    He stops and takes my left wrist and
starts turning it. It makes me feel naked. All the ink on there has
a meaning, starting from the joy I felt when getting my first one
with Savannah, on my shoulder—the one Patryk had designed for
me—and then the ones I got later. After she was gone.
    Declan looks at the red rose covering my
shoulder, surrounded by glowing green leaves. Blood falls in a
single line from its stem. I added that later. After Savva.
    He lingers on the intricate lace bracelet
underneath it, around my lame excuse of a bicep. When he looks at the darker,
deadlier pieces lower down, he says, “This must’ve been a heavy
time in your life...”
    He’s looking at the skull surrounded
in bright red and orange
flames, a knife going through its head. I think of
Savva...
    He turns the arm over, sees the leafless
tree, the wolf behind it. The wolf which, when I got it done, I
took as being death and failure. Always lurking, always watching,
inevitably there. So, make the best of your time. Because you can’t outrun
the wolf.
    In my discomposure from the
all- night exertion, and
maybe because of hunger and dehydration as well, the emotions
burgeoning within me are too strong to fight down. Savva’s lifeless
body and blue lips stare at me now, a dirty needle in her arm, dark
and blackened eyes looking up at