by Tara Brown
“Some leader.” I laughed and took another drink.
“Well, here’s to a safe flight at least.” His father lifted his glass of wine.
I lifted mine and clinked it, touching everyone’s glass before taking a sip. “How long will you be staying?” I asked.
“We aren’t certain. We try to get back every year, but we haven’t made it the last couple,” his father owned. I knew he meant Ashley’s school costs were weighing them down. He continued, “We have a lot of repairs that have built up. So a few more weeks at least before he can travel back to the states.”
“And then back to America to prepare for the new semester for me and lots of rest for him,” his mom chimed in. “It’s lucky Ashley won that money with the robot wars. We were able to still have enough for his last year of school with Martin off. I’ll be grateful when this is over. I love you, but you’re expensive.” She leaned in and kissed Ashley’s cheek.
His reddened cheek. Red because he’d lied.
But he didn’t need to make eye contact for me to play along. His story was much better than how he got the money. Much.
“Yeah, his robots are pretty cool. I’m not a gadgetry sort of girl, so I get lost pretty fast. But if my brother is willing to bet on him, then it’s got to be good.” I smiled proudly. There might have been some lies mixed in with the truths, but no matter what, I was proud of the truths.
“I’m the same, Cherry.” She said my name for the first time since I’d introduced myself. “I haven’t a clue what he’s talking on about, and I don’t pretend to, not like this one does.” She pointed at her husband. “The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool,” she said, possibly paraphrasing Shakespeare. I sort of recalled that one.
All of us laughed but his dad.
“If we weren’t in his birthplace, I’d have some fresh words for you, missy.” He leaned in.
“Dad, you’re out of your league on this one.” Ashley patted his father on the shoulder. “They’ve made friends. Even just two women win against a hundred men if they’re each other’s ally.”
“Ah, true, son, very true.” He pretended it didn’t make him happy, but it did.
It made us all happy that I had somewhat won her over. I’d been skeptical, especially in the bathroom. But my bit of attitude in the bathroom had earned her respect. Or maybe it was my vulnerability. Either way, I seemed to be growing on her.
In a day of losses, this win was everything.
Chapter Forty-Three
FORGIVE AND NEVER FORGET
Cherry
I sat in the limo staring at Cait’s house. I hadn’t come through the gate this time. I wasn’t sneaking up through the back door. And I wasn’t alone.
I turned and looked at my friends, asking if they were ready with my stare.
“Let’s do this.” Laura got out first.
Cora and Erica climbed out behind her, leaving me and Sarah to climb out last.
“No matter what, we stand together.” Sarah reached for me, wrapping her hand over mine.
“No matter what.” I turned my hand over and squeezed her back.
We got out and hurried up to the house, knocking.
The butler answered, appearing a bit grim. “Sorry, Miss Cait isn’t home,” he lied.
“Yes, she is.” I knew she was because her Instagram had a photo from fifteen minutes earlier of her in her room. I pushed past the butler and marched up the stairs.
“I’ll have to ask you to leave, ladies. Don’t make me call the authorities. Or worse, your parents.”
I ignored him and ran up the massive staircase to Cait’s floor. We burst through the double doors, catching her in the middle of a hissy fit. She was shouting and tossing things from the closet. The burn box closet. She was looking for something.
“Cait!” Sarah spoke loudly, interrupting her fit. “You won’t find it.”
Cait emerged, her eyes glowing like the wicked stepmother in “Cinderella.” “What?” She was a mess. A scary mess. Her blonde hair was everywhere. Her mascara streaked down her cheeks, running along a huge pimple. She wore a thin tank top with shorts and a silk robe that was untied. Her nails were broken and chipped.
I’d never seen her like this.
She looked like the girl from The Exorcist, her skin mottled and pasty and her eyes filled with venom.
The black-and-white Instagram photo had been of a sunlit flower in her room. That flower was smashed on the floor now.
“You won’t find the pictures or videos. We took them,” I admitted.
“What did you do?” she screamed, continuing to scream for a full minute. “What did you fucking bitches do?” She spit the words, letting spittle fly from her lips. “Fuck!” she raged. She’d lost it completely.
I did the only thing I could think of. I rushed her and pulled her into my arms. I held her tight and whispered, “I know what Andy did to you. I know why you did this.”
She crumpled, not losing the rage, but losing the fight. She dropped, taking me with her until we lay on the floor together, and she sobbed.
She cried so hard that the girls behind me started to cry too.
They encircled us, pulling us in.
We group hugged as she rage-cried until she finally lost that too. She calmed to a simple whimper and shook, heaving still with the state she’d put herself in.
“I hate you.” She lifted her gaze. Her eyes stuck on me. “You and your entire family.”
“Okay.” I let her have that. I didn’t need her to like me. The water might have been under the bridge by now, but it had wiped out the town along the way, and I couldn’t look past the things Cait had done. But I wasn’t going to spend my life hating her. I was going to get past this, as past as I could get. I also wasn’t going to forget the last six years.
She’d made my life hell. I now knew why. I understood her motives. But I too was an innocent bystander in this.
“I forgive you, Cait. For all of it.” It was a lie. I wasn’t fully ready to forgive, but I was close enough that I could make myself say it.
“Don’t.” She winced. “You need to hate me.”
“No. You need me to hate you. You need me to be as miserable as you are. You need me to suffer so my brother pays. But I’m done paying for the terrible thing he did to you. My brother is a douche; I won’t ever take that from you. He acted like a pig. But you took this way too far.” I glanced around at the girls surrounding us. “And you hurt them. None of us did anything to you. We were victims in this too. We didn’t deserve this, the same way you didn’t deserve what Andy did. You owe us an apology, which I suspect we’ll neve—”
“I’m sorry.” She said it too easily and too fast.
“No.” Sarah shook her head, leaning in. “You just want your videos back. And that’s never going to happen. You made them. You alone. Andy didn’t do that. He might have been an asshole, but you tortured and tormented us and made us do terrible things because you wanted revenge. You took this way too far, Cait. Way too far. And like Cherry said, I forgive you. Because carrying this around is only hurting me.”
“I forgive you too.” Laura nodded. “It was sick and twisted, but I never thought you were anything but. Even when we were little, before the Andy thing. So this honestly comes as no surprise. But hopefully, you can let it all go and change as a result, Cait. You have a lot of work to do before you come even remotely close to being a decent human being, but you can’t possibly go on living this way. Spiteful and full of vengeance, using other people without empathy. That shit won’t fly in the real world.”
“I forgive you.” Erica said it through bared teeth. “But I never want to see you again. We are friends off. Forever.”
“I don’t forgive you.” Cora sat up on her knees, her eyes welling with hate and tears. “I hate you, Cait Landry. I will hate you for the rest of my life.” She leaned in and slapped Cait hard across the face. She got up and ran from the room.
Cait’
s cheek swelled with the handprint, but she hadn’t even flinched or recoiled. She took the hit. As she sat there, stunned and pathetic, the girls trickled out of the room. Abandoning their fearless leader. Until only I was left.
The queen bee sat across from me on the floor, dethroned and missing her crown, with her cheek bright red from the handprint she hadn’t even touched yet.
“I just wanted to get even.” She blinked tears down her cheeks. “I liked him so much. He dumped me because I cheated, but I was drunk, and I didn’t mean to. I kissed another guy, an Italian guy. I told everyone I dumped Andy—I think even he believed it—but he dumped me. I wouldn’t have sex with him, and then I kissed that guy and he lost it. I hooked up with Brom to make Andy mad; I still loved him. And then he told me he wanted me back so badly.” She started to sob. “Or I thought he did. Turns out he just wanted to make that video and harass me.”
My stomach turned over, imagining my brother doing that to her. I hated him, not just for her but for me too.
“He showed me a copy of it. He laughed and said that we were even. I’d broken his heart, and he’d robbed me of my virginity. And no matter how much I lied to everyone, he had proof.” She looked down. Her mouth moved and whispers came out, but I didn’t hear them. She was lost, cracked and broken and not going to be put back together anytime soon.
I stared at her, trying to understand how she had possibly gone this far in it and not noticed. How had she done this to herself and everyone else around her and not seen the end in sight?
Surely there had been moments of warning screaming at her to back off or stop.
But no, she’d pressed on, scheming on top of old schemes to cover the mess she was making. No matter what she did, she was always digging that same old hole for herself.
She twitched and whispered, and I realized she didn’t know I was there anymore. I didn’t know if she knew where she was. I got up and walked down the hall, seeing a maid and pointing. “You need to call her parents. She’s a mess.” As I glanced back one last time, I wondered if I would ever see Cait Landry again. If anyone would ever see her again. Or if that shell of a human her evil deeds had created was all that was left, like my mom and her fake joy.
I returned to the girls, huddled in the lawn like survivors of some epic battle. We’d lived through the reign of Caitlyn Landry. We were beaten and battered, but we were alive.
We got up together and climbed into the limo.
Those faces, those tear-stained faces and swollen, puffy eyes, were evidence of what this mess really looked like.
The limo filled with girls was my new everything. Them and Ashley.
As Hans drove away from the house and left the gates, none of us looked back.
We looked at each other; seeing each other this summer for the first time had sealed us as friends.
I wrapped an arm around Cora and kissed the side of her sweaty face. “We’re going to be okay.” It was the truth. “Better than okay.”
Sarah nodded, reaching over and squeezing my knee. “Better than okay.”
In the back of the limo, riding with my best friends, we created a new motto for our lives.
A motto we would need every day we had to spend out here.
The ocean and beaches and people vacationing from the real world tricked you in the Hamptons. They made you think this was a place where the rich came to play, but the truth was that we didn’t play around.
And I hoped deep down that our generation would be the end of that.
I hoped that the girls in this car would find truth and reality and end the games with me.
It all had to start somewhere, so why not with us?
Chapter Forty-Four
SECOND FIDDLE
Cherry
Two weeks later, I held my hand up, grinning like a moron because I had no poker face, even if this wasn’t poker.
“That good, huh?” Ashley grimaced. He looked adorable in his underwear and nothing else, holding the cards in his huge hands.
“That good.” I winked. I still had my underwear, shirt, and bra left. I didn’t tell him I’d gotten a cribbage app and was playing nonstop.
“Eight.”
“Fifteen.” I moved my peg two.
“Seventeen.”
“Nineteen for two.” I pegged another two for the pair of twos.
“Twenty-nine,” he said smugly, assuming I didn’t have another two.
He was right. I didn’t.
“Thirty.” I laid an ace.
“Go.” He narrowed his gaze.
“Thirty-one for four.” I giggled and moved my pegs the final four spaces I needed to win the game.
“Dammit!” He threw his cards down and got up on his knees. He tugged off his boxers as he stood, naked and gorgeous and all mine. “And what does milady demand of me this time?”
I’d won twice now. The last time he went down on me and delivered three orgasms, back-to-back. I could barely sit at the end of that night.
“I think this time I wanna see something a little different.” I got up and knee-walked to him, taking his cock in my hand. I squeezed slightly and leaned forward. I took his semihard erection in my mouth and began sucking, slowly stroking and making suction with my lips. I reached back and grabbed his ass as his hands slipped into my hair, wrapping his hands up in it.
“I thought you won?” He said it throatily and turned on, pushing my head to meet his gentle thrust as his cock doubled in size.
I would have laughed if I could breathe, but I really couldn’t as I worked his cock, getting him to the point he was pulling my hair a little.
Just as he began pumping, I pulled back, leaving him exposed to the cold air. He shuddered in the air-conditioned room. “Don’t stop.”
“Oh, but I won.” I got up and walked to the bed. “So I say how it goes.” I patted the bed. “Come lie down.”
He grinned like this was going to go far better than it was.
“Close your eyes,” I said as he lay flat on the bed.
When he did I tiptoed to my things, grabbed them, and headed for the door.
“Cherry?” he muttered, feeling with his hand into the air.
“Yeah?” I said as I slipped my shorts back on.
“What are you—” He sat up, opened his eyes, and then glared. “This again?” He shot up and ran for me as I shrieked and darted for the door, flinging it open and hurrying out into the hallway.
He didn’t consider that anyone walking past the little beach house we’d rented for him might see him or anything else; he ran into the hall chasing me, erection bobbing and all.
I was giggling and screaming as I headed for the stairs, trying to do my pants up.
He grabbed my arm and dragged me up the two stairs I’d made it down, lifting me into the air and hauling me over his shoulder. “I didn’t like it the last time we played this game.” He smacked me on the butt and stalked back to the bedroom, closing the door. He tossed me on the bed, his eyes filled with humor. “I’m gonna get a complex if you keep trying to escape my hard-on.”
“I like it when you’re hard and desperate.” I giggled more.
“You’re really gonna like it in a minute.” He dragged my shorts down, tearing my underwear from me, and dropped to his knees. He buried his face, sucking my clit and sliding his tongue in and out of me. I moaned, taking my turn to wrap my fingers up in his hair.
He pushed me to the point of orgasming, then stopped. He pulled back, doing exactly what I’d done to him. “See how it feels?” He wiped his mouth. “You’re just lucky I’m not you.” He dragged my butt to the edge of the bed and spread my legs, dragging his cock’s head up and down me. I shuddered from the contact with my clit, so ready to come.
He pushed inside of me, rubbing his thumb on my clit as he slid in and out slowly, driving me crazy.
I closed my eyes, wiggling into his thumb until the feelings rushed back in and I came. He pressed down, massaging ever so slightly but pressing hard until the wav
es of bliss passed. Then he grabbed my feet and placed them on his shoulders, lifting and cupping my hips and pounding into me. I cried out, moaning.
He pounded again.
“I’m going to fuck you so hard.” He gripped me and did just as he promised.
When I orgasmed again, I felt it everywhere. I got lost in it, letting him consume me and force words and sounds from me like no other person ever had.
It might have been the best orgasm I ever had.
He collapsed on top of me and sighed. “I think I might be in love with fucking you.” He said it exactly the wrong way. But then he lifted his head and stared me deeply in the eyes. “I mean, I know I love you as a person. But we might have to have more sex for me to be sure about the love of fucking you.”
“You suck.” I laughed at him, even if I was kinda swooning a little. “You can’t say you love a girl right after sex, firstly. And secondly you can’t say you love fucking her. Or love her as a person. That was terrible, all of it.” I laughed at him again.
“You want poetry?” He cringed. “I only know one by heart.” He cleared his throat and spoke in a perfect Scottish accent. “Not the bee upon the blossom / In the pride o’ sunny noon; / Not the little sporting fairy, / all beneath the simmer moon; / Not the Minstrel in the moment / Fancy lightens in his e’e, / Kens the pleasure, feels the rapture, / That thy presence gies to me.” He winked.
“You think Robbie Burns is what I want to hear?” I teased.
“You want real poetry?” He wrinkled his nose, looking handsomer than he ever had. “I’m afraid I haven’t got any of that. I save all my best verses for the robots. My true loves.”
“You shit!” I pushed him off and crawled up the bed. “You suck.”
“I mean, you’ll always be second fiddle to them. I think you should know that going in.” He tried to sound serious.
“Sort of like how you’ll be second fiddle to whomever my mom makes me marry?” I asked, being a cheeky ass back. His meeting my mother was still being delayed. I wasn’t ready to show us to the world. We were the fish and the bird that fell in love, and currently we were living in a world we made our own. One we could survive in with no outside influences. A safe place.