Blatant wrath shifted Nash’s hazel eyes from golden brown to green, like aragonite and emerald gems had battled inside a kaleidoscope and neither had won. With his aquiline nose and too-full lips, he looked too pretty to touch. Still, I couldn’t pry my fingers from his forearms if I’d tried.
Tufts of jet-black hair stuck up in several directions on his head, like he couldn’t be bothered to tame it. Cropped closely at the sides, he kept it long on top in silky, uncultivated waves.
Cafuné, I thought, disconcerted when I realized I’d whispered it.
Cafuné—the act of running your fingers through the hair of someone you love.
The word came to me at the speed of an earthquake, sudden and unpredictable, shaking my already cracked foundations.
It didn’t make sense.
I was staring at the wrong Prescott.
“Your mom sent us to grab the tiara,” Reed explained from beside his brother.
Reed. My best friend. The school’s golden quarterback. A blond-haired, blue-eyed, All-American Southern boy with a charming drawl and a reliable smile. And those dimples. One on each side, gracing us each time he smiled.
Reed was here, and I was safe.
Time slammed into me until I teetered backward. It felt like an hour had passed since I’d bumped into Nash, but it was probably more like ten seconds. Nash steadied me as I registered Reed’s words.
Mom had sent them.
For the tiara.
Not me.
I said nothing.
I couldn’t.
Was this the type of truth—the type of ugly—Nash saw that had his lips permanently down-turned? For a second, I imagined my escape. No Eastridge Prep. No future at Duke. No designer threads laced with expectations.
Nash stayed silent. His eyes traversed a clinical path along my body—the disheveled hair, the mascara-stained cheeks, the ripped Atelier gown in Dusty Rose, a color that had looked cute when I’d left the house but just looked depressing now.
Tacenda.
Arcane.
Dern.
I mouthed words I loved to calm myself, letting them form on my lips without releasing them into a universe that destroyed.
My fingers clasped Nash’s button-down, one I recognized as my dad’s, but I couldn’t let go. Even as my torn dress made a slow descent down my torso.
“Whoa, Em.” Reed reached out and adjusted my corset.
Whatever he had done fixed it enough that it stopped slipping, and still, I couldn’t let go of Nash’s arm.
“Emery,” I corrected Reed. My tone spoke of a calmness I didn’t feel. A detachedness I desperately sought.
Some distant recess of my mind remembered Reed had always called me Em.
That this was normal.
That I was safe.
You are Em.
You are Emery.
You are okay.
“Emery?” The concern in Nash’s voice sounded real.
I clung to it like my hands clung to his suit. My dad’s suit. It still smelled like Dad, a mix of Cedarwood and Pine that settled in my chest. A balm to my nerves. I pressed my face against the shirt and inhaled until I sucked it dry of Dad’s scent, and the only thing that remained was the distinct smell of Nash Prescott.
Citrus. Musk. A heady vanilla that should have been feminine but wasn’t. Anarchy displaced rationale and rendered me speechless. I couldn’t speak. So, I focused on Nash’s scent, even when all I wanted to do was hide under my covers from mortification and never leave.
“Emery,” Reed started again, but the office door slamming open cut him off.
Wincing, I curled my head down, bracing for a hit.
Stop, I ordered myself. Able didn’t hit you. He tore your dress, touched your flesh, and pitched you onto the desk, but he didn’t hit you.
I snapped out of it when Able groaned. Swiveling in time to see him stumble past the doorframe, I scowled at the sight of him zipping his pants up and yanked myself away from Nash.
Anger fueled me, thrumming along to the beat of my pulse until my palm twitched with the need to hurt Able back. I needed to slap him. Punish him. Rob him of his dignity. Embarrass him like he’d embarrassed me. I considered how I’d look in an orange jumpsuit, doing twenty to life, but I lunged for Able anyway.
I parted from Nash, bridged the space between me and Able, and slapped him across the face. Twice. Nash stepped in front of me when I went in for a third slap. He captured my hand and released it.
Without a word, he pulled something from the jacket and shoved it into his pants pocket so fast, I only caught a glint of brown. He slipped off my dad’s suit jacket and slid it over my shoulders. I’d never felt more like a child than I did now.
“Take her home, Reed.”
Nash pressed the car keys to his 90s Honda into Reed’s palm and curled his fingers around it when he wouldn’t grab it. Reed had once said Nash’s car was quite possibly the only thing he’d ever formed an attachment to. It didn’t seem like it as he gave the keys to Reed without so much as a flinch.
Behind Nash, Able dragged a foot back, trying to slip away, but Nash gripped his shirt and tugged him back to us.
“Nash,” Reed tried to argue, his eyes blistering angry and streaking a flash of violence I’d never seen in him before.
The ferocity excited me, though a part of me feared it made him look too similar to his brother. The boy who used to stumble into my kitchen to steal ice for his bruised fists and black eyes.
“You should see the other guy,” Nash always said with a half-assed smirk before he vanished out the back door, and I’d have to pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating.
I’d been too scared to narc. Even the temptation of eating a bowl of ice cream without fielding Mother’s judgment couldn’t lure me back to the kitchen. I’d stopped the midnight munchies trips until one night, Nash had been arrested and Reed told me Betty Prescott had made him swear to never get into trouble again.
And he hadn’t. I’d been safe to eat my ice cream in peace, and our ice had been safe from Nash Prescott’s blood. I’d also never talked to Nash Prescott again until tonight, not that today nor back then constituted as talking.
“Take. Her. Home.” Nash gave Reed a long stare-down, and one, two, three seconds passed before Reed finally nodded his head.
I let out a pent-up breath, realizing I didn’t know what Nash would do if Reed disobeyed him, and I didn’t feel like sticking around to find out. I liked Reed’s face arranged exactly as it was, thank you very much.
“Fine.” He spared Able one more glare. “Yeah, okay. Fine.”
I felt like I was coming up for air as Reed interlaced his fingers with mine. That choking feeling evaporated, and another feeling took its place. Like something had grabbed my chest and dug its claws inside.
“I’m okay,” I promised Reed.
But I wasn’t.
I’d realized what this feeling was.
Love.
It always felt wrong that people chased something so fickle. Something that could be there one day and gone the next.
Love reminded me of Nash’s car—scattered with bruises from a past owner; well-cared for by its current tenant; and still ticking as it awaited its fate, abandoned in some North Carolina junkyard.
The shrink Mother had sent me to when I was eleven and caught Mother a little too close to Uncle Balthazar would tell me I was examining life too carefully again. Mother also paid her to keep my mouth shut by all means. I had overheard that particular conversation on my way back from the restroom.
The whole thing was pointless.
It didn’t matter if I told Dad. The maids gossiped about my parents’ fights, saying he’d leave her as soon as I graduated high school. I believed them. Dad and Mother rarely talked, and when they did, their conversations revolved around business.
During my sessions, my shrink told me Uncle Balthazar was my mind’s representation of my demons. My mother was supposedly an analogy for strength, if you could beli
eve that. Strength.
And the proximity between Uncle Balthazar and Mother? According to North Carolina-certified psychologist Doctor Dakota Mitchum: strength slaying my demons.
Dad was a planner. He anticipated moves like a Chess grandmaster and countered them with a ruthlessness I envied. I figured if I rebelled too hard against Mother before she and Dad divorced, I’d set off a butterfly effect. So, I kept my mouth shut, attended the shrink sessions, and spent the full hour wondering how Doctor Mitchum would rank in the Hunger Games.
I had learned something from Doctor Mitchum, though. She’d told me I needed an outlet for my creative mind. One for my emotions, too. She’d suggested drawing. I had taken up putting people on blast instead.
The t-shirt printer Dad had given me on my sixth birthday had laid dormant in the back of my closet. I’d pulled it out, brushed off the thick coating of dust, and printed a Winthrop Textiles shirt that read, “Horizontal Sundays.” When Mother asked what that meant, I had insisted it was an indie band she’d never heard of.
Shirts became my way of dealing with life, and eventually, they became Reed’s way of helping me deal with life. Fitting for the Textiles Princess of North Carolina. Mother had no clue. All she knew was she hated the tees, and she forbade me from leaving the house in anything but designer threads.
But Dad? My brilliant, attentive Dad… He always noticed the T-shirts of the Day—TSOTD, as Reed called them—meant I was dealing with something.
“Ready?” Reed waved his white shirt like a flag, hiding the front of it. It was my favorite cut that Dad’s factory manufactured, something snug and soft that made me want to curl up against Reed and turn on a scary flick.
I’d already slipped out of my ruined dress and into a freshly-printed tee. My knees pressed against my chest. I sat on my bed, covering the words I had placed on the shirt ten minutes ago.
The adrenaline had fled during the drive home, and I’d spent the rest of the time since pretending I was okay when all I wanted to do was turn back time and make Able Cartwright pay.
I was not a forgiving person. I latched onto grudges and raised them like a favorite pet, never forgetting to feed them, entertain them, and keep them company. I needed revenge, or I would spend every second obsessing over every detail of Able’s touch.
Reed flicked off the t-shirt printer and unbuttoned his button-down. I pretended to look away from the sinewy muscles no boy his age should have and waited with actual closed eyes as he slipped the fabric over his head and down his torso.
“I’m ready.” I ran my fingers through my knotted hair before covering my chest with both palms and scrambling off the covers.
The desire to roll my eyes at this childish game we often played gripped me, but I didn’t because the idea that a day would come when we wouldn’t do this scared me. I wanted to be old and gray, making ridiculous shirts with Reed.
Reed stepped closer to the bed. “1… 2…”
On three, he flipped his shirt over and I dropped my hands with practiced synchrony. We fell onto the sheets, snow-angel style, laughter filling our veins and happiness staining our cheeks as we realized we had printed the same sentence on our tees.
Able Cartwright has a small dick.
It was funny, but not that funny. I knew what he was doing, though. Getting my mind off of what had happened in the only way he knew how. I appreciated it, but nothing short of Able suffering would ease my shaky fingers.
“You’re my best friend, Reed.” It escaped as a breathy sigh I should have chained inside me.
I waited for myself to regret it, but the feeling didn’t come.
Instead, the one from earlier fogged the room. I didn’t dare give it a name as it possessed me, nudging my hand closer to Reed’s. Our fingers brushed, but I pulled mine back and played it off like an accident, flicking fake lint nearby.
Subtle.
Reed flipped onto his stomach and studied my face. Those golden locks matched mine, though his were natural, and he had two blue eyes, unlike my single one. I wanted to brush my fingertips against his eyelids until he closed them and press a kiss to each one.
Holding back had never been my strong suit, but I did with Reed because I had too much to lose. Even when I craved to grip, claim, kiss, I held back.
His fingers toyed with the ends of my hair, bringing them up to my cheek and using them to tickle me. “Are you okay, Em?”
I tugged at his ear until he stopped and considered ignoring the question but didn’t. He would ask and ask until I spilled.
The Prescotts were a relentless bunch.
Betty could interrogate a terrorist armed with nothing but a gap-toothed grin and homemade apple pie.
Hank’s kind eyes doubled as weapons of mass confessions.
Reed had never heard the word “no” in his life.
And Nash… Well, Nash was Nash. All he had to do was breathe, and people tripped over their feet to please him. He possessed a presence money couldn’t buy.
“Sheep gravitate to likable people. Likability is not a quality you can learn, but one you are born with,” Mother once informed me after Basil had invited everyone in our grade to her tenth birthday party except me. She looked down her nose at me, disappointment staining her voice. “I am likable; you are not. I lead the Junior Society; you are an outcast. Perhaps you should learn to be like sheep.”
Nash’s existence poked holes in Mother’s theory. He was simultaneously unlikeable and magnetic. Fuck the sheep. When I grew up, I wanted to be like him.
“Are you okay?” Reed repeated.
No.
Yes.
I didn’t know. Physically, fine. Mentally? A little shaken and a whole lot of bloodthirsty. But Reed was a pacifist at heart, and I had no clue what he would say if he knew what I would do if I ever got my hands on Able.
The adrenaline had pacified me in front of the office, but now that I was home, my body demanded I fight or I would shake and never stop.
“Yes,” I finally spit out. When Reed continued to study me, I shoved my hair out of my face and sat up. “I promise. I’m okay. I wouldn’t lie to you.”
But a lie of omission…
It occurred to me that my lies had piled up like an intersection crash. One after the other after the other. I needed to stop, but the alternative—a.k.a. the truth—appealed to me less.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Stop asking, Reed.” I shot him an exaggerated eye roll, glanced at the clock, and slipped under the covers, hoping he would drop the subject.
After a minute of staring at me pretend-sleeping, he did. Truthfully, Able Cartwright didn’t bother me. I had fought him off. I had stopped him. I had won.
Able Cartwright was a cockroach. It might take a ridiculous amount of attempts to crush him, but make no mistake—life will crush him.
Cockroaches die eventually.
This crush, on the other hand?
I’d tried everything from dating other boys to kissing Stella Copeland in her closet during seven minutes in heaven.
And still, it had a heartbeat.
Vibrant. Loud. Pulsing with life.
And I didn’t want to kill it.
“I don’t understand!”
“What is happening?”
“Stop, please! I’m begging y’all.”
An argument pervaded my dreams. I reached out, my hands finding empty sheets in the starless dark. Reed had left. I crossed my fingers and hoped Dad hadn’t found him sneaking out of my room. I would sooner lunge on a blade than let Reed take the fall for making me happy.
Slipping into drawstring shorts under my oversized shirt, I forced myself out of bed and into the hallway. My arms found their way across my chest, and I shivered in the cold, cursing my mom and her need to keep the AC at sixty-five degrees.
“Only poor people suffer in the heat, darling.”
I followed the voices into the living room. A yawn in my mouth died down the second I caught sight of both my parents, Hank and
Betty Prescott, Reed, and Nash. They stood wrapped around the walls of the room like an exhibition at Madame Tussauds, frozen in varying degrees of rage and anxiety.
The Winthrop mansion comprised of cold marble with a farmhouse twist. Reed joked Dad was the farmhouse, and Mother was like the cold marble.
Tonight, the marble had taken over, and we stood inside a tomb of statuario, gold, and silver—mummified, waiting for life to move on and forget about us.
I rubbed my bleary eyes and took in the scene as quick as I could. Mother wore that frozen stare of hers. Dad stood like a Hummer, imposing, arms crossed as if daring someone to talk to him.
Tremors rocked Betty’s round frame. Hank stared between Betty and Nash, whose relaxed shoulders spoke of boredom, but instinct demanded I not be fooled. He was more alert than the rest of us.
It made the baby hairs on my arms stand up as I brought my focus onto Reed. Handcuffed beside his brother, his fury left no feature of his unscathed. I barely recognized him through his scowl.
In front of the fireplace with hands on their hips, two detectives took turns speaking, police badges proudly displayed. I’d been transported into a Dirty Harry flick, except instead of Clint Eastwood, I got cheap suits and a frantic Southern mother. (Betty, not Virginia. My mother couldn’t give two shits.)
“Reed?” My voice halted the yelling.
The two detectives scrutinized me in unison. I didn’t want to think of how I looked with the mascara-stained cheeks and bed head, my arms clenched around my chest to fight the chill and feet shoved into the hot pink bunny slippers Reed had gotten me as a gag gift last year.
Instead, I turned to Reed. “What’s going on?” My eyes dipped to the cuffs interlinking his wrists. “Why are you handcuffed?”
“Able is in the hospital.” The voice belonged to Reed, but it didn’t sound like Reed. It sounded like rage, thinly veiled, looking for a target. “He woke up long enough to tell the police I beat him up.”
One detective approached Reed. “Is that a confession?” His eyes lingered on Reed’s Able-Cartwright-has-a-small-dick t-shirt, and I realized we’d never taken them off. Great.
Devious Lies: A Standalone Enemies-to-Lovers Romance (Cruel Crown Book 1) Page 3