Page 27 of Devious Lies (Cruel Crown)
Tap.
Each click-clack of his keyboard sent my anxiety skyrocketing.
“Okay.” He let out a heavy breath. “Headline: Emery, prepare for your successful repayment.”
Next door, my neighbor’s chihuahua barked as if he could sense my anxiety. I heard my neighbor yelling at the puppy through the thin walls, but he barked louder. My spirit animal was a three-month-old chihuahua who weighed one pound and three ounces and responded to the name Muchacha.
(Muchacha was not, in fact, a young woman but a male dog with a very real penis I’d witnessed him licking on occasion.)
I switched my phone off speaker and drew it to my ears.
“I know what the headline says,” I snapped after Muchacha finally stopped barking. “Fuck. I’m sorry.”
Here’s something people often say about being poor but you never fully understand until it happens to you: being poor is stressful.
Unpaid bills always found a way into your mind, and when you stood in front of a grocery store cashier, holding up the line as she read out a number you were a few bucks short of, the desire for the ground to open up and swallow you whole became a permanent fixture of your life.
In reality, I knew what the email would say. I’d graduated a semester early, and my six-month student loan grace period would end soon. I needed a job. Preferably one away from home, not that anyone in the state would give me one.
The Winthrop name was radioactive in North Carolina. For good reason. Too many lives had been lost, including—I reminded myself for the millionth time—Reed’s dad.
“You good, Em?”
I could never thank Reed enough for his patience, especially when I got Hulk-like, which was often lately.
“Yeah. Continue, please?” I toyed with my hair, which I’d let grow back to its natural roots. For starters, I had no money for highlights and hair dye. Also, I’d never thought I looked good as a blonde carbon copy of Mother.
“Once your loans leave the grace status, your Monthly Payment begins. Blah. Blah. Blah.” I waited for him to finish reading. “Basically, your loan payments start in about two weeks.”
“Shit.”
I cursed myself for getting a degree in design when the present market for clothing designers in the South was practically non-existent and for not accepting the minimum-wage job I’d been offered last week. In my defense, at those rates, I might as well work for Daffy Dee’s Diner as a waitress on rollerblades, which was my current hustle.
“You could work for Nash,” Reed suggested, but I could gather how much he hated the idea.
I didn’t understand what had happened between them. I didn’t feel like it was my place to ask either. No matter how curious I was. A part of me always wondered if it had to do with me, but no way.
I shook my head, even though he couldn’t see me. “Nope.”
“Why not?”
Because four years later, I’m still mortified.
I hadn’t talked to Nash Prescott since that night in Reed’s bedroom. Not that we’d talked much before that. He was always Reed Prescott’s older brother to me. Unattainable. Forbidden. Something I’d never even considered.
Until he had given me the best sex I’d ever had, and I still revisited that night in my head when the Alabama nights got too cold and I had nothing but fantasies to keep me warm. One night, when Ben had sent a slew of dirty messages my way, I’d come to the image of Nash over me.
I shook my head and picked at the cheap threads of my swap meet sheets. “Because he’s your brother, and that’s weird. Plus, you hate him.”
I hate him, too.
“I don’t hate him,” Reed lied. “As for the rest, that’s a horrible reason to deny an opportunity most would kill for.”
I loathed that check-your-privilege tone of his, something he’d picked up from being my best friend during my high society days. The worst part was, he was right.
I’d left my parents and their money as soon as I’d turned eighteen, but that unshakeable guilt nagged me. It reminded me I was still more privileged than I deserved. I had a roof over my head, a bachelor’s degree, and a few Hamburger Helpers in my cabinet.
Truthfully, there were signs I’d ignored, conversations I’d overheard, and pieces I should have put together but didn’t. The way Mother never wanted me to visit the factory. The way Dad forced me out of the room every time his business partner Balthazar visited. The secret argument I’d heard between Mother, Dad, and Balthazar just weeks before the F.B.I. and S.E.C. raided our home.
