The Starkest Truth (A Breaking Insanity Novel Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page A

them. To everyone else who, by their nature, is useless to me…? They get the full extent of the asshole I naturally am. Oddly enough, it’s the cocky bastard that draws people in. I knew which persona to play with each person, and I was never the same person with every woman. It’s a talent. I’m a personality chameleon.  
    Women say they want the nice guy, but fantasize about the asshole. In truth, they want a little of both, shown at the perfect time, in the perfect dose. Funny thing, I never had to enact the charming version of myself before Nikki. Being that way with her—it did something to me I didn’t care for.  
    The clear separation between a magnetic individual and a contemptible person was beginning to disintegrate, which was a very, very bad thing for a man like me.
    “Is this one real?” Casper asked under the conversation of the others at the table.
    I gave him a half-smile and sipped my wine.
    “Fine. Fine.” He waved his hand at me, a little hurt I wouldn’t share. I usually told him about the ones who didn’t matter, which included almost every woman who had come into my life. “Keep your secrets.”
    I nodded to his husband. “I didn’t expect you to actually marry the guy. Correct me if I’m wrong,” I continued without an answer because I didn’t need one, “but weren’t you fucked out of your mind over a man who refuses to admit he’s bisexual?”
    “I don’t know what he is,” Casper sighed, “and believe me, I’m good at figuring those things out.”
    I curved a brow at him. “His cock was in your ass. More than once. What is there to figure out?”
    He snickered into his dessert, having trouble keeping my eye contact.  
    I studied Casper, finding an answer to a question I hadn’t asked yet. I didn’t need to. He was very obvious. “You’re still fucking him, aren’t you?”
    “He comes around every other weekend when his frigid wife is unable to appease his dirty little fantasies.”
    I pointed a glance at Timothy.
    “We have an arrangement.” He leaned across the table and whispered to me, “He’s old—older. His dick is volatile. Funny you should judge; it wasn’t until your interest in the newest Mrs. Brenton that you stopped sharing your cock with every beauty queen you came across.”
    “So tell me”—I effortlessly avoided his snide comment—“why are you still his boy-toy?”
    “Quid quo pro, my friend.”
    I darted my eyes to him. He knew better; if I didn’t like the conversation, I changed the topic. And if that person wanted to avoid pissing me off, they would follow along. Casper was different. He was the only person alive who knew me the longest, and he knew things I didn’t want him to know. It wasn’t because I personally told him. Through the process of deduction, he knew there had to be a tragically fucked up reason for the transformation from Ethan to Eric. I was gentler with Casper than anyone else until I met Nikki. No matter what went down around me, he never played the part of the pious friend, and he never annoyed me. I had never utilized him to his full potential; the things I asked of him were never to shave away at his emotional stability. Well…not too much.  
    Right now he was being used as an information broker for the dumbfuck lesser known as Preston.
    Tracing the rim of my glass, I glanced over to Nikki’s empty seat. “You never cared before.”
    “Well, I care now,” he replied. “She’s returning you to someone familiar. Someone I’ve missed.”
    I scratched my forehead with my middle finger. “Do you need a tissue to dry your tears so you can continue? Maybe you’d like some background music by way of a violin.”
    “I’d never tell you what to do, but…don’t fuck this one up. I like this you. I like her. I slowly watched the real you disappear before my eyes for reasons you never tell me about.”
    He was crossing the line in telling me what to do. Further fucking with the line by inferring that I’d