Thief (Love Me With Lies #3)(16)

“If you climb into my lap while wearing a skirt and kiss me like that again, I’m going to pull off your panties and f*ck you.”

Her face blanched. Good. I needed her to be scared enough to not do that again. I wasn’t Superman. I was a man — a man that very much wanted to make love to his girlfriend.

She didn’t let go of my hand, if anything her hold on it tightened. I looked at her out of the corner of my eye. She was biting her bottom lip, staring straight out of the windshield with glassy eyes.

I choked back a laugh. By God, I think I actually turned her on. My little Duchess — always the surprise.

From that day on, Peter Pan was our code word for — what are you thinking?



“Peter Pan.”

“Leave me alone.”

“You invented this game.”

We were lying on her floor, supposedly having a study session. Her lips were still a little swollen from our kissing session.

“I’m covered in Cheeto dust and trying to study. You’re annoying me because for the last forty minutes you’ve been staring at me, and it’s breaking my concentration.” She put another Cheeto in her mouth and let it melt. I grabbed her hand and stuck one of her fingers between my lips, sucking the “Cheeto dust” off. It was a new Oliviaism.

Her eyes glazed for a second, and I dropped her hand.

“Since when do you read the paper?” It was slightly buried underneath her body. She raised her ribcage to let me pull it out and I rolled onto my back.

“I saw it when I was checking out at the grocery store.” She looked half guilty. I unfolded it and looked at the front page.

“Laura,” I said. I didn’t mean to say it out loud, but seeing her picture caught me by surprise. I got a sick feeling in my stomach whenever I thought about it.

“New leads in the Laura Hilberson case,” I read. The paper said that one of her credit cards had been used at a gas station in Mississippi. Since the gas station had no video surveillance, they weren’t able to get a shot of who was using the card. The teenager behind the counter was high at the time and didn’t remember anything at all.

“You dated her,” Olivia said. I nodded. She pushed her textbook aside and rested her head on her fist. “So, what was she like? Do you think she would just disappear? Do you think someone took her?”

I scratched my belly. “It was like a week. I didn’t know her very well.” That isn’t true. Why am I lying?

Olivia knew I was lying.

“Tell me,” she says.

“There’s nothing to tell, Duchess.”

“Caleb, you’re one of the most perceptive humans I’ve ever met. Are you really telling me that you have no insight into this situation?”

My brain locked and I wasn’t sure which way to send my tongue. This was such a touchy subject. I was about to tell another lie — or maybe it was the truth, when Cammie came barreling into the room, saving me.

“Oh my god! Did you guys have sex?”

I propped my hands behind my head to watch as they started their usual playful arguing.

Where was Laura? This was crazy.



Laura Hilberson was a compulsive liar. I knew it within three dates. She was a pretty girl, shy for the most part, but everyone seemed to know who she was. It might have been because her parents owned a yacht and she invited everyone on the weekends. Our college was a private one. Olivia was one of the handful of students who attended on full scholarship. No one else really needed a scholarship.

I asked Laura out after we were assigned to a group project in Speech class. Date one included her telling me about her best friend dying from a four-wheeler accident three years earlier. She cried when she told me, saying she was closer to the girl than she was to her siblings. When I asked her how many brothers and sisters she had, she paused only briefly before saying — eight. Eight siblings. Wow! I thought. Her parents must be stretched pretty thin. How did they even manage to hug everyone in one day?

Date two was spent on her parents’ yacht. For all their money, they were simple people. Her mother made us sandwiches for lunch, one slice of turkey, white bread and a tomato. They spoke about their church and the mission trips Laura had gone on throughout high school. When I asked if any of her siblings went with her, they stared at me blankly. Laura saw a school of dolphins just then and we all were distracted with watching them play in the water. Later we went back to their house so I could pick up my car. They lived in a modest two-story, the only indication of their money really being the yacht, which they called their splurge.

She showed me around the house while her mother got us some Cokes from the garage fridge. I counted the bedrooms: one, two, three, four. Each one had a queen, except for Laura’s — she said she preferred a twin. When I asked where everyone slept, she said that most of her siblings were older than her and had already moved out.

My internal alarm really went off when I said goodbye to her family in the foyer. On the wall to the right of the front door was a huge montage of family pictures. Grandparents, Christmases, birthday parties — my eyes scanned each one as we chatted about school and upcoming finals. When I finally said goodbye, I walked to my car knowing two things: Laura was an only child, and Laura was a compulsive liar.

Date three should never have happened. I was thoroughly turned off after I figured everything out. It was a group date and I landed up paired with Laura. We went on a road trip to see the Yankees play the Rays. Everyone knew it would be an embarrassing game for the Rays, but we wanted to get out of town and have some fun before finals killed us. Laura drove with me and one other couple. She sat in the front seat chatting about her last trip to Tampa, when her sister got lost at the beach and her parents had to call the police.