BAD WICKED TWISTED: A Briarcrest Academy Box Set (111 page)

A pause. “Yes, it’s him. We’re together.”

I froze.
Geoff
.

“Thank you …” she said, her voice lower now as she walked out onto her balcony.

“V, get off the phone.” My hands were clenched now, and it wasn’t about the pictures so much as
him
. I didn’t like how soft her voice was … secretive.

She paused mid-sentence but then kept talking, her finger telling me to wait a minute.

I counted the seconds. Seventy-two. I was livid.

She said goodbye and came back in the room.

“Who was that?” I growled.

“Geoff, and before you go caveman on me,
you’re
the one I want to be with. Not him. He knows about us.”

Still hurt to hear her say his fucking name.

“I don’t want you talking to him.”

She reared back. “He’s my friend, the only link I have left to my parents.”

“He’s still in love with you,” I retorted.

Her brows came together. “Don’t jump to conclusions just because he called. You can trust me.”

Heat flushed over me. “We’re together, V. I’m not with anyone else. And if I even suspect you still have feelings—”

She stormed out of the room, headed downstairs.

“Wait,” I called, following her. “Don’t walk out on me.”

She didn’t stop, her shoulders stiff when she finally faced me in the den as I walked over to make sure the blinds were closed. I didn’t want any more photos taken of us.

I tried to rein in my anger. I was irrational when it came to her and Geoff, but it wasn’t something I could control easily. “Talk to me about Geoff. Explain.”

“He called to tell me that he’d turned in my application to the Manhattan School of Music.”

My whole damn world came to a standstill.

Of course she wanted to go back to school. She was getting her life together, figuring out what she wanted.

“You’re leaving?” My tone was incredulous.

“What if I did?” she snapped. “Would you really care? What we’re doing is fun, but we don’t have a commitment. You have your life here, and soon you’ll be on the road or going to a movie set.”

I found I needed air. I sucked in a sharp breath and blew it out. That didn’t help, so I sat down. “What matters is
he
will be near you and I won’t. You have a history with him. Do you think I like imagining you hanging out with him? Rekindling your friendship until it turns into something else? Maybe you get tired of me working on the road, and he’s there, so you find yourself spending more and more time with him? Why can’t you go to school somewhere here in California?”

She groaned. “Why can’t you trust me?”

I jerked up. “I want you
here
with me. I want you beside me, under me, in my bed, and so far up in my business that I can’t fucking move for bumping into you.” My hands fisted, pushing out my next words. I met her gaze, the old festering wound that was at the center of my heart rising up. “If you go to New York, we’re over.”

Silence.

Fuck!
Why had I said that?

“Shit, don’t leave me, V. Not-not when I just found you.”

She shook her head. “What does it matter? You’ll find another girl.”

Her words cut me, and I looked down at the photos. This would ensure she’d leave me.

“We have worse problems, V. Blair’s got photos of us.”

“
Then he came along, and like a twisted piece of metal that’s burned beyond recognition, I emerged from the fire. Different. Changed
.”

—from the journal of Violet St. Lyons

MY FRAGILE WORLD was collapsing.

I sipped on tequila that he’d poured me and looked down at the pictures again. He’d downed two shots of bourbon already, his hands unsteady.

Pics of me. Of us.
Of her
.

“These will be in the papers and on every social media site she can get to post them,” he said. “You are all I’m worried about, V.”

I gazed at them, my eyes stopping over one of us on my patio, him on his knees with his mouth between my legs as my body arched in ecstasy. My skin blazed at the memory, echoes of the passion we’d shared—and now everyone in the world would see. The society people in New York. Geoff. My old musician friends. Worst of all, the board of directors for the orphanage.

My stomach dropped when I saw the ones of him and Blair, her lips stuck out in that stupid duck face. Frozen, I stared at it. Unable to focus on anything but his face on a pillow next to hers.

My eyes flashed from one picture to the next, and I bent over to breathe better.

Inhale and exhale. Don’t vomit.

“I know what you’re thinking, but the one of Blair—it happened the night I came over here and Geoff was here. She showed up at my house when I was trashed and got in my bed. She must have thought I’d fuck her if she was there. Nothing happened. I woke up and she was just there. That’s the morning you saw her leaving my house.”

I swallowed. “
Something
happened. Her boobs are on your chest.”

He kneeled down. “V, I had no clue she was even in my bed until I woke up. You were the only thing I could think about that night. You and Geoff.”

I turned my head away from him and clutched my glass as if it were a lifeline, realizing the magnitude. The Mystery Girl and Sebastian Tate would finally be splayed out for millions to post, share, tweet, and crucify. Someone would probably write a song about it. It would definitely be fodder for the comedians on SNL.

I looked down at the pictures. “Remind me to pass on the makeup next time. And to not have sex outdoors. Obviously,” I said, forcing my shoulders to move in a nonchalant shrug like I didn’t care, but he knew the truth. I was devastated by these.

“If I can talk to her, maybe I can convince her not to go through with it. I’m so fucking sorry.”

I was barely listening.

She’d won. At everything. Because even if she didn’t have him, she’d have public sympathy and a career. I had nothing. Not even him. Not really.

He was willing to toss us away just because I suggested I might want to go back to New York. Of course, I’d never leave him if he wanted me with him. I could do music anywhere.

If
he could tell me he loved me.

He said my name in that husky voice of his, the one that sounded like sex, the one that made me want to rip his clothes off. “Violet—”

“Stop,” I said, clenching my fists. I stood and faced him, tossing back the last of my shot. “First off, I wish we’d never met.” I held my hand up. “No. Wait. I don’t wish that because then I wouldn’t know Spider or Mila. I—I wish I’d
never
fallen for you. Loving means losing, just like my parents.” I sucked in a breath.

He closed his eyes, a dazed expression on his face as if my words crushed him.

“You make me wish for things that will never be,” I whispered. “You want to be a star, and all I want is
you
.”

He scrubbed his face. “V, I’m sorry I got you involved with her. I’m going to do what I can to keep it out of the papers.”

“What? Go running back to her? Just to save me from public humiliation? What about your own reputation? How will Nora and Leo react to seeing their baby brother all over the media in the nude?”

More panic settled in me. Stares. Whispers. People who wanted to delve into my box of grief. “She couldn’t have timed this better. I’ll have to cancel the benefit. I can’t face those people.
I can’t.”

I wasn’t strong enough.

He’d stopped his pacing, a muscle jerking in his cheek as he leaned down until his nose was level with mine. “Then this is goodbye, Violet? You’re giving up on us already?”

Did I hear a break in his voice?
Impossible
.

“If I don’t say goodbye, then you will.” I walked past him, enjoying the hiss of breath when I let my hand drift over his crotch. “This moment is begging for a soundtrack, don’t you think?” I said, coming to a stop by the stereo system and cranking up Kurt Cobain’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Holding my hands up in the “horns rocking out” signal, I bobbed my head to the beat while he watched, anger flickering across his face. I danced and twirled around, closing my eyes, the music vibrating through my body, my fingers itching for my violin.

My eyes flew open. He’d strode over to me and clicked the stereo off, chest
still
heaving. He shoved his hands in my hair and dragged my face to his, and I groaned at the fire that blazed in my body. I felt the warm heat of his skin, and I pressed closer and inhaled. He smelled like bourbon and sex—a rock star’s diet—and I panted with need, cursing myself at the same time.

How would I ever get over him?

He pressed his thumbs across my mouth. Gentle. But his voice was angry. “You can’t wait to high-tail it back to your lawyer boyfriend, can you?”

“I plead the fifth,” I ground out, staring at his full lips. I licked my own.

We stared at each other until he exhaled heavily and put his back to me, his muscles as taut as the guitar strings he played. He verged on breaking.

Yeah, well, welcome to my world. For two years I’d been a prisoner of pain, and I’d be damned before I let him put me back there.

Yet at the same time, I reached my hand out to him. Stupid hand.

But of course, he didn’t see it.

“So long, V,” he said soft as a whisper, staring at the ground as if
I
was breaking
his
heart, when all along it was the other way around.

My lungs seized and words failed me.

Just look at me!
I wanted to scream as his broad shoulders faced his house as if ready to leave. In truth, it wasn’t me who was giving up, but him. I was merely pushing him toward the choice I already knew he wanted.

It happened. He took a step from me, then another and another until he was nothing but a speck as he crossed the grass between our houses.

I clutched my chest and wanted to fall to the ground and rail on it. Alone.
Again.

THE REST OF the morning passed in a blur. I drank more tequila and ended up on the couch. My phone buzzed on and off. I didn’t care, my head replaying pictures of me nude, pictures of Blair and Sebastian.

I refused to cry over him.

Mila came and banged on my door. I ignored her.

Wilson called and left me several voicemails.

Geoff called again, but I never picked up. Nothing mattered.

Mrs. Smythe called, and I immediately felt sick. How could I tell her that me as the public figure of the orphanage was in danger.

Should I step down as the spokesperson?

Should I give up on my dreams?

Where was the resolve and guts-over-fear attitude I’d adopted?

Where was Violet?

I walked around the house, running my fingers over things that belonged to my parents. A photo of us on vacation in Paris that sat on a table in the den, a scarf my mother knitted for me one Christmas that hung on a peg, my father’s astronomy journal next to mine on the coffee table. With a deep breath, I opened it and traced his slanted handwriting. I flipped to the last entry, made a few weeks before his death. Emotion clawed at my chest as I read it … as I had a million times before.