Page 43 of Devious Lies (Cruel Crown)
The photos in her wallet told me nothing of Gideon’s location. A Polaroid of a field of stars with the word balter written in Sharpie under it. On the back, she’d drawn a small animal that resembled a tiger, but it had no stripes, and crayon wasn’t the best art medium for precision. She’d scrawled, of all things, “ride me” beneath it, and I swore, if Emery weren’t rich, her quirks would land her in an asylum.
The other Polaroid featured a Valentine’s Day card that compared love to shit. She had glued another picture to the back. Reed smiled at me, his arm around Emery’s shoulders while she held a tattered football.
I remembered when Ma had taken the photo. A row of red maple trees grew near the garden on the Winthrop estate. Reed had gotten his football stuck in one, and Emery climbed up the tree, limbs moving with no grace yet no hesitation, even when she fell to the ground in a bed of sanguine leaves and twisted her ankle.
Reed had screamed for Ma although I stood thirty feet away in the garden, tearing out weeds since Dad had popped his hip and couldn’t afford to get fired by Virginia. Ma came running, and Emery refused to see a doctor until Ma took a picture of her with the football. She wore a toothy smile on her face, looking nothing like Virginia despite the matching dyed hair, sharp bob, and single colored contact.
Shoving the photos into the trifold wallet insert, I pocketed the whole thing, keeping it as leverage. She’d want them back, I was sure. Two years ago, I’d wired a cool twelve million dollars (a small fortune for a home in North Carolina) to a shell company. In exchange, a discrete broker had transferred ownership of the Winthrop estate to me.
The purchase had set me back a pretty penny, and I loathed the idea of Gideon profiting from me, but I’d tried to track the payment to his location. That failed, and now I owned a mansion I refused to step foot in.
Point was, the real estate agent informed me I’d be buying the house as is, including everything in it. From the listing images, Emery’s room appeared untouched. She had taken nothing with her to college that I could see.
Her pictures of her and Reed still decorated the walls. Her photo albums remained on the shelves. The Polaroid camera she loved peeked out from beneath her bed. I’d pegged her as the sentimental type, and now I owned every memory of hers, including the ones in my pocket.
I shook the purse upside down until another cracker packet fell out. Ripping the seams with deft fingers, I fished around the hole, sliding my finger beneath the fabric until I was sure she had hidden nothing inside before discarding the clutch a foot from her snoring body.
Figuring Emery was passed out for the foreseeable future and the storm didn’t seem to let up, I loosened my tie, pulled out my phone, checked a few emails, and began crushing candy. Twenty minutes later, I’d eaten all of her crackers and paid my way through a couple dozen levels of the game.
A groan that could awaken a bear in hibernation was the first indicator she had woken. The second indicator came as she swiveled her head to take in her surroundings and realized the lone light originated from my phone—and I’d set it on the lowest brightness to hide my face.
To her credit, she didn’t gasp. She pawed at the back of her head and sat up. I watched as she blinked rapidly, unadjusted to the dark, and swiped at the mess of sweat, tears, and mascara.
She faced my direction, staring at me crush two more rows of candy. The words “cold,” “emotionless,” and “bastard” left her lips, a rapid mutter—in that order. I ignored her, letting her sweat it out a few more minutes.
“How long have we been in here?” No hesitation seeped into her voice.
I allowed myself to wonder if anything could shake her before remembering the night we’d accidentally slept together. Wide, innocent doe eyes that made me want to fuck her all over again.
Now I was hard as a rock, and despite the darkness, adjusting myself would bring attention to it. Plus, the Winthrops might have abandoned their morals, but I hadn’t. Getting hard at the thought of someone who’d been an adult all of two seconds was all sorts of fucked up.
“About two-and-a-half hours,” I responded, voice level, though it was closer to thirty minutes.
Amusement lined my lips as she jerked upwards and flung toward me, barely stopping herself from launching completely at me. I was quick to shut my phone off, so she couldn’t see me with the light. The darkness blanketed me, concealing my identity. Concealing our past.
Her heavy pants brushed her chest against my abs. I could only hear her. Feel her. So close, she had my jaw ticking and my pulse racing. Her energy mobbed me, chaotic like the storm. Unpredictable, despite fifteen years of knowing her.
She didn’t back away even though I heard one of her feet slide back like she wanted to but couldn’t bring herself to show weakness.
“Two and a half hours?!”
The vodka on her breath assaulted my senses, but she sounded more sober than I had given her credit for. That, or the situation had sobered her up quickly. Beneath the alcohol, a rich scent hit my nostrils.
Citrus.
Mango.
Vanilla.
Musk.
Almost masculine.
Something familiar.
The scent invaded my space.
She tried to get into my face, probably on her tiptoes to reach it. “I was knocked out for two-and-a-half hours, and you didn’t think to check for my pulse? To see if I was still breathing?”
