by R. K. Lilley
I was helping her because she'd asked, it was my day off, and I was trying to act how I normally would. Normal me rarely said no to shopping.
We'd been at it for a few hours, and Farrah had circled back to the same question five times. I knew she wasn't going to let it go, and I knew why.
Now that I was looking at her with nothing but suspicion, it occurred to me that she was always asking me too many questions, always curious, prying, nosy, with friendly nudges about everything in my life that I'd always just thought was part of her outgoing personality.
I tried to behave as if I didn't know how she'd hurt me and found every good memory I'd ever had with her had turned sour.
Some part of me, the part that gave too much of myself to friendships, was still trying to make excuses for her. Maybe she needed the money. I had no doubts Adelaide could afford to pay well. Maybe she'd agreed to spy before she'd known me, and maybe she didn't share everything with Adelaide. Maybe she'd come to care for me. Maybe she felt bad about what she was doing.
When I wasn't making excuses I was still trying to deny what was becoming more apparent, more undeniable, with every exchange, but even I could only rely on denial for so long.
"Come on!" Farrah nudged me playfully as we sifted through dresses. "Who is he? Dish it!"
I sent her a weak smile and tried to lie convincingly, though I had no energy for it. "Me and Anton, but listen, it's nothing serious. We're just killing some time. It's not worth going on about."
I could tell that wasn't the answer she'd expected, and she gave me a strange, probing stare for it, but at least it got her to drop the subject.
We were done and driving home before she brought it up again. "Does Demi know you're hooking up with Anton?" she asked me, tone careful.
I thought it was a strange question, but I was preoccupied so I just said, "No. Like I said, it's not a big deal."
The irony was I'd been avoiding Anton lately. He'd always been an overprotective friend, and I knew he'd never understand that I was currently shacking up part-time with the enemy. I barely understood it myself.
When we arrived home, I went straight to my room and locked myself in. Since I'd found out there was a spy amongst my roommates, I'd come to hate the apartment.
I felt trapped there whenever I had to stay, because it was simply not a choice anymore. On top of that, I felt like I was being watched all the time, that everything I did would be noticed and reported to someone I'd despised my whole life.
All of that was bad enough, but add to it my pathetic heart, my incessant, weak longing for all the time I was missing with Dante (hadn't we missed enough?), and it was damn near torturous to put in time at the home I'd once found comfort in.
I'd pilfered several soft white shirts of Dante's to sleep in, and like a deranged addict I made sure that they smelled like him. I wanted reminders of him even when I slept. Needed them. Needed, when I woke up in a panic alone, to have some sort of proof that I wasn't still existing in that old hell where he was completely lost to me.
It used to be that when he was away I could talk myself out of him. We'd gotten way past that point. It was scary how attached I'd become in such a short time.
If I was honest with myself though, and sometimes I was, we'd never really been unattached, not even at the worst of it. I'd hacked at that attachment with a machete more times than I could count, but that didn't mean I'd severed it.
Far from it. Obviously.
I had just changed into one of my stalker Tees when the doorbell rang.
I went to get it myself. If it was someone for me, I preferred to beat Farrah to it. I'd become almost obsessive about keeping as much as I could private from her.
No such luck. She hit the entryway just a beat behind me, which was not good.
I opened the door to find a tired-looking Bastian.
He glanced behind me at Farrah, then back to me. "Have time for a cup of coffee?" He cleared his throat. "Down the street."
"I do," I said without hesitating. I didn't want Farrah to overhear one word of whatever he had to say.
I stomped into some Toms and left the house as is, baggy T-shirt, cutoff shorts and all.
"Mind if I join you?" Farrah asked behind me, sounding frankly curious. Nosy.
How had I not seen her for what she was before? It was so obvious to me the longer I knew the truth. She wasn't really even trying to fool me.
"Sorry, but we need a bit of privacy," Bastian replied because he didn't know who or what she was.
This is going to blow up in my face, I thought as we shut the door on her.
"She's a spy for Adelaide," I said quietly when we'd been walking for a few minutes. I glanced behind my shoulder, paranoid enough to check if she'd blatantly followed us.
"Your roommate?"
"Yes. It goes way back, apparently. Trust me, I was as shocked as you are, but Farrah doesn't know I'm onto her. I'm trying my hardest to keep it that way."
"Dante told you," he observed, tone neutral.
He didn't know, or at least I doubted that he did, that Dante and I had started playing house again. "He did. I guess Adelaide has been getting information about my day-to-day life that only someone living with me could have known. Farrah unwittingly outed herself as the one that must be doing it a few days ago. It hasn't been fun, let me tell you."
"I can imagine," he said, tone so warm and sympathetic that it made me shiver. If the Durant men could bottle their voices and sell it, they'd be rich. Oh wait. "You know Adelaide hates me, obviously," he continued. "She despises all of Leo's bastards, but the loathing she has for you is on another level. Don't you find it strange?"
We were still walking, side by side, but I managed to send him an eloquent look out of the corner of my eye. "She always has. But then again, I've always been in love with her only son, so maybe it's just that simple. It had to be her worst nightmare, him falling for the town trash." No one got the joke more than I did. The town's golden boy and its trashcan girl had never made sense to anyone but us.
"My God. When I think of what she's done to you two. You were always so attached to each other. It was apparent. He's been in love with you since the first time I met him. I think he was ten. That she found a way to poison something like that . . . that shit is evil."
That was certainly an apt description of Adelaide.
"You know," he continued, tone lightening. "Dante and I have been talking a lot lately. We have some common ground now. We're even working together to try to get to the bottom of some of Adelaide's schemes. But there's one thing he won't budge on."
He seemed to be waiting for me to say something, but I just kept walking in silence. I didn't want to bring up anything I didn't have to.
"No matter how I pry," he eventually forged ahead, "how much it would help if I knew, he will not tell me what she's blackmailing him for."
Ah. That. I wasn't surprised. Of course Dante wouldn't share that with anyone. It wasn't his secret to tell. It was mine.
My knight-errant had been brought low with his only weakness. Me. It was so glaringly obvious that I couldn't believe I'd allowed myself to miss it for so long.
Even Bastian seemed to catch on without effort. "I figure it's something about you. Something you did. He's been protecting you, hasn't he?"
I stopped walking, eyes shutting tight. God, it hurt. A new pain, worse even than the old one.
When he started talking again, I made myself open my eyes and meet his. "Let's look at it simply. You and I can figure this out, with or without Dante's help. Obviously, we can't know what she has on you or him. All we can do is assume she has everything. We have to think in worst-case scenarios. So tell me, Scarlett, what's your deepest, darkest secret?
I shook my head, blank eyes staring straight ahead. "You don't even want to know."
I could see him out of the corner of my eye. He was wearing a small smile, trying to lighten the mood. "How bad could it be?"
I turned my head and met
his eyes steadily. "You don't even want to know," I repeated, because it was the truth.
"What? Did you kill somebody?"
He was clearly joking, but my reaction was not a joke. I tensed up, every part of me arrested, automatically going into auto-save mode, still as a statue.
He studied me, eyes widening. He began to curse and did not stop.
Yeah, that.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-ONE
"No one worth possessing can be quite possessed."
~Sara Teasdale
PAST
SCARLETT
We lasted two years in the apartment together.
The plan was always this: We would live in Cambridge until Dante finished school (and he was working very hard to finish as soon as possible), and then, together, we would move to Hollywood so I could pursue acting.
It was a sacrifice for us both. I didn't want to wait for my ambitions, and thanks to some memorably horrible trips with his father when he was younger, Dante hated L.A.
But that's what you did when you loved someone. You sacrificed. And that's why I made it two whole years in Cambridge.
It wasn't all bad. In itself, living with him was everything I could have hoped for. Sometimes we fought, but sometimes the fighting was necessary. Sometimes it was all that made me feel alive.
Dante was wonderful. It was never about him.
It was about me and the way I felt about myself. At the two year mark I began to see that if I spent much more time being useless I was certain I'd never shake it, that I'd just become some bitter, pointless thing. Like my grandma.
I couldn't do that, not even for him.
I needed to find my self-worth, and for that, I needed to leave him.
"I feel like I'm stuck here," I told him over a dessert I'd made special just to soften the blow. "Like I'm giving up my life for yours. Like the longer I stay here, the more I'm just going to shrivel up into someone I don't recognize."
He stared at me. "You said you'd wait for me," he said simply. He didn't even sound upset yet. He was still in denial.
"I did, and I'm sorry. I just can't stand it anymore. I can't stand myself. I need to be doing something besides serving drinks to a bunch of entitled pricks day after day."
That riled him. "That was your idea. I never wanted that. Quit! Just fucking quit! It's that simple. There's no reason for you to be working, especially at a job you can't stand."
I'd gotten off topic, I could see. "That's all beside the point. It's this place. It's being put on hold. I just cannot stand it, Dante. I'm starting hate myself, and I need to find a way to change that. Can't you understand?"
His soulful eyes were tormented on mine. "You're leaving me?"
I could barely stand it. I looked away. "I'm not breaking up with yo—"
"Was that a really an option for you?" he asked, incredulous. "You say it like you thought it over, like it could have gone either way?"
"No." I saw the discussion getting away from me. It was going as badly as I'd anticipated. "No. I never thought of that. We'll be together, of course, but long distance. Until you finish here. Then you can come live with me, and in the meantime, I'm not putting my dreams on hold for yours."
It was bad. He didn't take it well. In fact, he refused to talk about it for days, simply telling me it wasn't an option.
Gently but firmly, I replied that it wasn't a question either.
It's an awful thing to realize that even the love of your life can't make you complete, not when you're as fucked up as me, but I was resolute. It would be torture to be away from him for such a long time, but there was no doubt in my mind that we would find our way back to each other. I had absolute faith in that.
A month later I was packing my things, a sullen but resigned Dante hovering over me.
Just setting up the move made me feel a little more hopeful. I'd saved all of my waitressing money—every cent because Dante never let me pay for anything, and put it toward first month's rent on a small studio apartment in an area I couldn't have paid for by myself. Dante put down the last month's rent. Yes, he was helping me. That was the only way he'd let me go without a harder fight. That and weekend visitations whenever he could manage to fly out or fly me back. Money had its perks, that was a fact.
He came to visit exactly one week to the day I flew away. He came with Gram's ring in his hand and a proposal on his lips.
Well, it wasn't so much a proposal as him telling me that of course we were getting married.
I put on the ring and didn't so much as consider turning him down. This had been a long time coming. Some promises are made before you ever say the words.
"Your mom is going to lose her mind," I told him later, after our third round of celebrating.
He stiffened, the chest under my cheek going stiff, and I knew I'd struck a nerve. "I won't be telling her. No reason to."
I couldn't blame him but a part of me wanted to tell her myself just to see the look on her face. That part was quickly overruled by any common sense I might have had. Even I knew better than to tangle with his mother.
For a time living apart didn't seem to so much as put the tiniest crack in our foundation. I missed him, of course I did, but I had a purpose now. I started to land small roles my first week, and just kept at it, feeling certain that it was my destiny.
And when he did visit, or I visited him, the reunions were a powerful, heady thing. We were combustible together on a normal day. Add a little deprivation to that and it reached atomic proportions. Addictive stuff, that.
We lasted over a year like that. I can't sugarcoat it. We had our ups and downs. It was as tumultuous as we were volatile. Two insanely jealous people living apart while engaged did not make for a smooth romance. More often than not when he left me or I him, he had scratches on his back from shoulder to ass.
It wasn't that I thought he'd be unfaithful. It was about ownership, marking my territory.
I trusted him almost blindly, but it took a lot less than the thought of actual infidelity to get me hot with temper. Him talking to other girls, being friends with them, popping up in pictures with them on Facebook, studying with them, you name it, I lost my mind.
Needless to say, he was just as out of hand.
If Dante had had his way, we'd have been married the day we were engaged, but I wanted to wait until we were living together for good. Some strange last throwback to hold onto, I guess, something to save special for after the wedding.
On his birthday weekend, roughly a year after the move I'd saved up enough money to buy my own airline ticket and surprise him with a solid three-week visit starting the Friday before his birthday. I had to be crafty to surprise him, so I showed up at his apartment unannounced and let myself in.
I wasn't certain of his everyday schedule. I could guess based on experience, so at six p.m. I figured he'd be home soon, and I simply waited.
And waited. It was midnight when I decided to go out to find him. I was still trying hard not to ruin the surprise. One text inquiring where he was would surely do that.
I started with the closest bar, the rowdy little place I used to work, and there he was.
But whom he was with could not have shocked me more. He was sitting a table, drinking a beer, and sitting across from Tiffany.
I don't know how long I stood there and stared. I was so shocked that I wasn't even angry at first. What could this be? What could it mean?
And as it started to seep in, still, I wasn't angry. I was hurt. And confused.
It didn't take me long to decide to just walk in and confront them.
I wanted to see what he had to say for himself. Needed to.
He was facing the door when I walked in and the movement caught his eye. He glanced up and saw me first.
His reaction was gratifying. He stood up, moving to me, his happiest smile lighting up his face. He caught on right away. "You're surprising me for my birthday," he said, delight in his voice.
I didn't answer with
words, instead I waited until he'd moved close and rubbed up against him, pulling his face down to mine.
I brushed my lips to his, once, then again, until he groaned and started kissing me.
I took it further than I meant to. I'd meant to take it somewhere, sure, but what I did was more than I should have, using my mouth on his ruthlessly, my tongue, my body, making him forget where he was, forget that we weren't alone, forget that he couldn't take me right there, making him lose all sense, intoxicating him relentlessly.
It wasn't un-calculated. Of course not. Territory. Marked. Simple but irresistible.
And all the while, something inside of me had begun to rage, incessantly, powerfully.
Oh yes. I was jealous.
When I finally wrenched my mouth away, he bent and started kissing my neck, his hands rubbing my ass, over and over, our groins flush, his stiff erection digging into me.
Okay, yeah, I'd let it go a touch too far. We hadn't seen each other in a month. Clearly with that much time apart we shouldn't have had our first meeting in public.
"Dante," I said quietly. I was going for composed, but even I could hear the desire in my voice.
He groaned and kissed his way up to my jaw.
Gently but firmly, I pushed him away.
His glassy eyes just stared at me, dazed, for a solid thirty seconds before they began to clear.
He blinked a few times and started to curse, dragging a hand through his hair.
I gave him and myself some time to compose ourselves before I finally spoke. "I've been at your apartment since six. Waiting for you. How's Tiffany?" I let my tone say what my words didn't.
He seemed to realize for the first time that he was in some deep shit.
"Scarlett!" Tiffany called out cheerfully, still sitting at their table. "So happy you could join us!"
Us. The sting of that would linger.
Don't let her see how she affects you, I told myself.
Don't let her see how he weakens you. Don't give her anything.