Shame swamped me, and I slowly got off her. She climbed up, sitting against her jewel-toned satin pillows, her long, elegant legs stretched so they nearly met me at the foot of her bed.
“We didn’t have sex, Abigail.”
I glared, wiping my nose. “Do you think I’m an idiot?”
“Kind of.”
She climbed atop her pillows at the look on my face. “Did you actually see us fucking, Abigail?”
“I saw your dress. I saw your lingerie. I saw you kissing. I saw the photo and the marks you left on him. I saw the condom. Don’t fucking try and say that wasn’t something.”
She paused, like she was struggling with something deep, but all she said was, “We promised not to talk about what happened, but I didn’t have sex with him.”
He’d made a promise with her? I didn’t know my heart could break anymore, but I felt some last clinging edge chip off, crumbling to ash.
“I don’t believe you.” Still, doubt sewed its way into my mind.
She threw up her hands. “You got me. I’m secretly in love with Theo Hound. Tonight I’m going to confess my love for him at a Walmart or something.”
“That’s not funny.”
“It is, because it’s so ridiculous.”
“I can’t believe you, Gemma, because what does that mean? He left. He… he fake fucked you, and he left. After obliterating me with a lie for no reason.” It didn’t make sense. Why would he lie? Why would he say he slept with her when he didn’t?
“Sister, the day I have sex with someone like Theo Hound is the day this family is really and truly fucked.” Gemma stared at me with her bright blue eyes, unblinking.
A Crowne didn’t lie… at least, a good Crowne didn’t. Gemma was a good Crowne. Not like me, who got so messed up and tangled in her lies she could barely see the sunlight beneath their wicked, curving branches.
I fell to her bed, the truth sinking in.
That was so much more terrible.
She went through that night from her perspective. Theo had approached her, and she’d suggested a trade. They’d kissed, gone up to that room, where she’d changed into s
weats, and then she’d given him her dress.
“What did he give you? What could he possibly have given you?” Theo was nowhere near the street kid I’d found years ago, but Gemma was a Crowne. She had everything. If she didn’t, she’d buy it.
What could he have traded her?
She grew quiet, twisting her oversize sleep shirt between her fingers. The front of the white shirt read in black, blocky letters:
NO SOCIALIZING,
NO PANTS,
NO SHITS GIVEN,
GIRL’S CLUB.
“I have a debt,” she whispered. “I’m trying to repay it. Theo had what I needed.”
“But—”
“That’s all I’m saying!” Gemma went to her drawer, pulling out a jar of pills and a bottle of tequila. “Pick your poison.”
I pointed to the tequila. She raised a brow and shrugged.