by L. A. Sable
The detectives exchange a look but don’t argue as they follow Carter out of earshot of the rest of the attendees. I follow more because I need to be as far from the performative mourning happening over an empty casket than because I’m actually interested in whatever the police have to say.
“Did you say you were from Major Crimes?” I ask, tripping slightly as my heels catch in the loose dirt. I can only hope that the ground is soft because it rained recently and not because we’re walking on freshly dug graves. “Trish died in a car crash.”
The one that I assume is Cicero catches my arm so I don’t fall and leads us to a patch of grass behind a tree so that the mourners several yards away are no longer visible. “That’s part of what we need to discuss.”
Detective Mabley pulls out a spiral-bound pad of paper that looks so much like something out of the movies it has to be standard issue. “The autopsy has not yet been completed, but we have received some preliminary results. Primarily toxicology.”
I close my eyes as a wave of nausea rolls over me. I don’t want to hear about how Trish was drunk as a skunk when she blew through that median. But Carter only raises his eyebrows in interest.
“And,” he prompts.
Mabley flips a page in his notebook. “No illicit substances were found in Tricia Bellamy’s system. Her blood alcohol content at the time of death was 0.04. She had consumed alcohol but was well under the legal limit for driving under the influence.”
A strange sort of fluttering kicks up in my chest and I can’t tell if it’s relief or dread. “So Trish wasn’t drunk?”
“Not enough that it should have contributed to her death.” The tone of Cicero’s voice has changed. “But when the forensics team processed the crash site, they found something concerning.” The detective hesitates, looking back behind him to where the casket is being lowered into the ground. He has to know that it’s empty and this whole thing is just for show, but still appears a bit uneasy. Trish will actually be cremated in a few weeks when the autopsy is done, but Grandma Patty would flip her shit if there wasn’t a casket to cry over and Carter won’t be back from Europe when her body is released.
“Spit it out,” Carter snaps, obviously done with prolonging things.
“The brake lines had been cut, with a knife or some other kind of serrated blade. We suspect foul play.” Mabley turn to a blank page of his notebook, pen poised to take notes. “We need the names of anyone who had access to your home that night. I understand there was some sort of gathering.”
“My birthday party.” I force the words out through a throat that has gone dry as a desert. That explains why Trish’s case had been kicked off to detectives from the Major Crimes unit. “You think someone killed her?”
Both detectives just stare at me for a beat before giving the slightest of nods.
Mabley’s voice is gentle but firm. “We really need those names.”
Because anyone at that party could have been the one to cut Trish’s brake lines. Because someone I know is responsible for this terrible loss. Because the police aren’t investigating an accident, but a murder.
My mother is dead because someone killed her.
“It had to be that fucker, Cardill.”
Asher is pacing back and forth across my room after bursting in almost as soon as I get back to campus. Carter must have called him as soon as those detectives gave us the news.
When I’d asked him why he didn’t make an appearance at my mother’s funeral, he’d said something lame about not liking to be reminded about death. It’s bothering me, for reasons I don’t quite understand.
But as I watch him wear a pattern in the carpet, strange feelings well up inside me. Maybe it’s just the clarity that comes with being sober, but in this moment I just know there’s something he’s not telling me.
“Liam doesn’t have a motive,” I tell him, with slightly more conviction than I feel. “There isn’t a single reason that he would want to hurt my mother.”
“As far as you know. I trust him about as far as I can throw him. That asshole has secrets, you can see it on his face.”
“The police want statements from everyone who was there.” I lean back on the bed as I watch for his reaction, imagining him crawling under my mother’s car with a switchblade to cut her brake lines. “Weren’t you the one who said Trish should go out for more food?”
“It was booze, actually. I like that trailer park shit that tastes like cinnamon.” He abruptly stops and turns to stare at me. “Wait a fucking minute, are you accusing me of something?”
“I just asked you a question.”
“Yeah, a damn loaded question. If you’ve got something you want to know, just come right out with it.”
“Did you kill my mother?”
The words land with the weight of a stone hitting still water. Asher doesn’t respond, staring at me like he’s been frozen in place by the question. I can’t decide if it’s a function of shock, guilt, or both.
Finally, he sort of collapses against the wall with a stricken expression on his face. “Tell me what possible motive I could have for doing that?”
I don’t even have to think about it. “Money. With Trish out of the way, you’ll be getting an even bigger piece of the pie.”
“But killing your mom doesn’t get me the money, just a step closer to it.” His eyes narrow as he stares down at me, expression full of challenge and danger. He pushes off the door and advances toward me, each step punctuated by his words. “By that logic, it would make sense for me to be coming for you next. If you really think I have it in me to kill Trish for a bigger inheritance, then being alone with me like this is pretty dangerous, don’t you think?”
Sparkles of awareness creep over my skin as he takes another step forward. Being alone with Asher Bellamy has always been a dangerous thing, and not because I think he wants to kill me. “Stop it.”
“Stop what? Being a murderer.” He takes another step forward, his legs within an inch of touching mine as I sit on the bed. “That’s what you mean, right?”
I refuse to back away from him, even though every cell in my body is begging me to make a hasty retreat. Asher has never looked more threatening than he does in this moment. “You got me hooked on pain pills.”
“You got yourself hooked,” he snaps. Asher grabs my arms and hauls me up to a standing position, glaring down at me as his hands squeeze me painfully hard. “I was trying to help you and you let it get out of control. You have no idea what I’ve done for you, what I’m giving up for you. And you have the nerve to stand there and accuse me of murdering your mother. What the actual fuck, Lily?”
I try to pull away, but his grip on me is too tight. The thought briefly crosses my mind to kick him in the balls, but that would just make him angrier. “Stop acting like you’re so innocent.”
“I didn’t kill your mother.” He hauls me against the hard planes of his body. “But I never said I’m innocent.”
His mouth crashes down on mine with the force of his anger and some hidden shame that he refuses to put into words. He kisses me like I’m an ocean he wants to drown in, but I’m the one who is suffocating. It goes long enough that I truly can’t breathe, his mouth robbing me of precious oxygen. But I don’t push him away, instead I drift away with the tide. The sharp edge of his teeth pressing into the tender flesh of my lips brings me back.
I want to throw him on the bed and climb on top of him. And I also want to claw his eyes out and never see him again. That insane juxtaposition has always been the nature of our relationship, fighting it is like trying to fight off the urge to breathe. Pointless and impossible.
A loud banging on the door finally breaks the kiss, but whoever is on the other side doesn’t wait for a response before shoving open the door. Asher takes a step back, but it is still much closer than something platonic.
Jayden steps into my room and slams the door shut behind him. His heated gaze moves from Asher’s stony face to my kiss-swollen lips with a
frown. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
Like always, Asher doesn’t bother with even pretending to feel shame. “Same thing you are, I assume.”
The enmity between them is obvious as Jayden glares Asher down. I almost feel bad because I recognize that I’m part of what has come between them, but then I remember that I don’t know who’s guilty of the most heinous crime imaginable and get over it.
“I got a call from some cops in New Haven.” Jayden makes a point of dismissing Asher before turning to me. “Something about coming down to make a statement and then get fingerprinted.”
“They’re calling everyone who was at the party. I had to give them a list of names. Turns out, my mother wasn’t just drunk and a bad driver. Her brake lines were cut, and that’s what caused the crash.” My voice is emotionless, as if I’m talking about something that’s happening to someone else. But I can’t let the emotion through, not now, otherwise I’ll never get through this in one piece. “You don’t have to worry too much about it. The cops just need to rule everyone out who had access to Trish’s car that night.”
“Why bother doing all that when you have your primary suspect right here?” Asher’s voice is full of hurt and anger, to the point that it’s impossible to tell one emotion from the other. “Lily has always decided that I’m the one who did it, so let’s not waste anyone else’s time.”
My mouth opens, but I know that I’m not quick enough with a denial. His sea-green eyes widen just a bit, as if he just took a body blow that he wasn’t expecting. Then those same gorgeous eyes squint again in anger and he’s up and moving toward the door.
Jayden steps out of the way before Asher can shove past him, wincing as the door slams shut.
“Do you really think he did it?” Jayden asks finally, voice soft in the heavy silence.
“Yes. No. I don’t know. None of the above.” I scrape the wooden floor with the toe of my shoe, thinking distantly that it needs to be refinished. It’s amazing the details you notice, when you’re trying so hard not to think about something. “I just want him to get fingerprinted. I want everyone to get fingerprinted.” The look I cast him is pointed.
But Jayden doesn’t seem offended as he comes to sit next to me on the bed. “No, I get it. It was your mother and you want to know what happened to her. Anyone without a guilty conscience shouldn’t have a problem with that.”
“Yeah, tell that to everyone else that was there.” I’ve already been seeing messages on Inner Circle about how I narked to the police about underage drinking at my birthday party to keep myself from getting arrested. Nobody knows yet that the police are investigating Trish’s death as a homicide, not an accident. “People are already calling me a snitch for giving their names to the police.”
“Not everyone,” Jayden replies easily. His body is close enough that the line of his thigh presses into mine, sending a skitter of awareness running through me. “Not anybody who matters.”
My laugh is completely devoid of humor. I pick up my phone and toss it into his lap. It lands with the screen up so he can see the dozens of notifications from the Inner Circle app clogging up my lock screen. “Everybody cares about this shit.”
“Not you.” He glances down at my phone, before handing it back. “You probably won’t even respond to most of those. People talk, but it isn’t like you listen. Even though you’ve made it to the top, somehow you’re still an island.”
“Yeah, one that’s slowly sinking into the sea, never to be seen or heard from again.”
“You’re stronger than all of this bullshit.” His voice is pensive, as if the words are something he didn’t realize were true until he said them out loud. “This place has done it’s best to change you, to make you as bad as the rest of us. But you just won’t let it.”
I make a scoffing sound. “I am just like the rest of you, probably worse. You have no idea what I’ve done since coming here.”
“You mean all that shit with Chloe?”
“You know that was me?”
He laughs. “Everyone knows that was you. Why do you think so many people voted to make you Diamond? Half the school wanted to see her get what’s been coming to her. You did us all a favor. Although, I’m still trying to figure out how you gave her chlamydia.”
“It wasn’t chlamydia,” I admit, with equal parts pride and shame. On the one hand, Chloe had done way worse to me but I didn’t exactly feel good about sinking down to her level. “I rubbed poison ivy in her bathing suit and then changed the picture on the Wikipedia page for chlamydia so it would look the same.”
“Genius. Remind me not to get on your bad side.”
I roll my eyes, shoving him good naturedly with my shoulder. “And what were you saying about this place not changing me?”
“You did what you had to do. Chloe would have ground you under a Manolo Blahnik stiletto heel if you hadn’t gotten to her first. That was self-defense.” He pushes me back hard enough that we both collapse back on the bed, his head resting on an exposed bit of my stomach where my shirt has started to ride up. “But you saw the way her friends turned on her as soon as she became socially inconvenient. You see through this all this bullshit.”
A shiver works over me as his fingers dance around my belly button. “But I’m just as caught up in it as everybody else is. I’m still here, falling in lockstep, even though it’s destroying my life.”
I feel inexplicably near tears as I think about the reality of my situation. My mother is dead, likely because someone killed her, and I still have a mysterious blackmailer out there who hasn’t made it clear what they want.
Jayden seems to sense the direction of my thoughts.
“I haven’t heard from our blackmailer in days,” he murmurs, pressing a gentle kiss on my belly that makes my legs shiver. “Have you?”
“Nope, just ominous silence.” My hand catches in his curls and I stretch one out before letting it spring back. “I don’t know if I should be more relieved or afraid.”
“Maybe they heard about your mom and are cutting you a break.”
“Somehow I doubt that.” The words come out in a sigh as his hands coast down my thigh to play at the edge of my skirt. “But it’s only what I deserve after everything I’ve done.”
He inches the skirt up excruciatingly slowly. “I know everything you’ve done. Nothing you can say will change what I think about you. You’re amazing.”
“I’m not amazing,” I grouse, even as a fire slowly builds under my skin at his touch. “And you don’t know about everything I’ve done.”
“Challenge accepted.” His fingers just barely trace the line where my panties curve around my hip. “Tell me something about you I don’t already know.”
Maybe it’s because his touch makes me feel so good when I know that’s the last thing I deserve. Or maybe I want to say the one thing that will make him walk away because I don’t have the strength to do it myself, because I know I’m not good for him.
“I started screwing Asher before my accident.”
As they leave my mouth, the words feel like a bomb being dropped, but Jayden barely responds. He bends to kiss me softly on the lips but doesn’t linger, pulling away before I can respond. “I know that.”
My body tenses as I stare down at his bent head. “How do you know? Did Asher talk about me, sharing stories about how he got laid?”
“Nope. He never said a word, didn’t need to. That kid has been my best friend since grade school. Other people might not notice how differently he’s been acting, but it’s obvious to me.” He shifts until his body hovers over mine, head at the same level as my upper thighs. “I have to admit that it bothered me at first. A lot. Not just because he can be a total asshole to girls, but because I felt like I never really got my shot. But then I realized something, you didn’t give Asher a shot. He took it. So maybe I should take a page out of the same playbook.”
“What does that mean?”
He flips up my skirt with the ease of someone
who's had a lot of practice maneuvering around clothing. His hands squeeze my thighs as he pushes them apart and his face lowers to the crotch of my panties. “I’m not going to stop, unless you tell me to.”
Chapter 13
My fingers dig into Jayden’s scalp, catching in the blonde-tipped curls as his head lowers until his breath blows across the tender skin at the juncture of my thighs. My first thought is that his hair is somehow even softer than it looks, like the downy fuzz on a puppy’s belly. Then one of his hands reaches up to pull my underwear aside while his mouth finally touches my bare skin and I don’t have any room left in my head for thoughts at all.
A strange feeling rushes over me and I realize too late that it’s pleasure. Pleasure that hasn’t been adulterated by pain or suffering. Everything fades from my awareness as he teases me with his tongue, gliding down my outer lips and then pushing inside me, but avoiding the spot where I need him most.
I lift my hips off the mattress, grinding against his mouth. Or at least, I try to. His hands grasp my hips and shove them back down on the bed so I’m forced to accept whatever it is he wants to give me.
“Please,” I beg.
“Please what?” He raises his head enough to meet my gaze, amusement curling the corners of his lips. “Please go slower? You want me to go slower?”
“No…” The word turns into a groan as his mouth lowers again to nip at my inner thigh. “You know what I mean.”
His hands slide underneath me to cup my ass, then he’s lifting me up to force my lower body against his mouth. I grind against him as my hands pull at his hair hard enough that I’m surprised that I don’t rip any of it out. He laps at me like a cat trying to get the last trace of milk out of a bowl.
I’m barely conscious of the frantic sounds I make as he pleasures me, they’re loud enough that I can probably be heard by my neighbors. If I didn’t want so badly to come, I might actually feel embarrassed about it.
“You’re almost there,” Jayden says, breath hot against my over-sensitive flesh. “Once I’ve watched you come under my mouth, there won’t be any stopping this. Speak now or forever hold your peace.”