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He didn't know, or at least I doubted that he did, that Dante and I had started playing house again. "He did. I guess Adelaide has been getting information about my day-to-day life that only someone living with me could have known. Farrah unwittingly outed herself as the one that must be doing it a few days ago. It hasn't been fun, let me tell you."
"I can imagine," he said, tone so warm and sympathetic that it made me shiver. If the Durant men could bottle their voices and sell it, they'd be rich. Oh wait. "You know Adelaide hates me, obviously," he continued. "She despises all of Leo's bastards, but the loathing she has for you is on another level. Don't you find it strange?"
We were still walking, side by side, but I managed to send him an eloquent look out of the corner of my eye. "She always has. But then again, I've always been in love with her only son, so maybe it's just that simple. It had to be her worst nightmare, him falling for the town trash." No one got the joke more than I did. The town's golden boy and its trashcan girl had never made sense to anyone but us.
"My God. When I think of what she's done to you two. You were always so attached to each other. It was apparent. He's been in love with you since the first time I met him. I think he was ten. That she found a way to poison something like that . . . that shit is evil."
That was certainly an apt description of Adelaide.
"You know," he continued, tone lightening. "Dante and I have been talking a lot lately. We have some common ground now. We're even working together to try to get to the bottom of some of Adelaide's schemes. But there's one thing he won't budge on."
He seemed to be waiting for me to say something, but I just kept walking in silence. I didn't want to bring up anything I didn't have to.
"No matter how I pry," he eventually forged ahead, "how much it would help if I knew, he will not tell me what she's blackmailing him for."
Ah. That. I wasn't surprised. Of course Dante wouldn't share that with anyone. It wasn't his secret to tell. It was mine.
My knight-errant had been brought low with his only weakness. Me. It was so glaringly obvious that I couldn't believe I'd allowed myself to miss it for so long.
Even Bastian seemed to catch on without effort. "I figure it's something about you. Something you did. He's been protecting you, hasn't he?"
I stopped walking, eyes shutting tight. God, it hurt. A new pain, worse even than the old one.
When he started talking again, I made myself open my eyes and meet his. "Let's look at it simply. You and I can figure this out, with or without Dante's help. Obviously, we can't know what she has on you or him. All we can do is assume she has everything. We have to think in worst-case scenarios. So tell me, Scarlett, what's your deepest, darkest secret?
I shook my head, blank eyes staring straight ahead. "You don't even want to know."
I could see him out of the corner of my eye. He was wearing a small smile, trying to lighten the mood. "How bad could it be?"
I turned my head and met his eyes steadily. "You don't even want to know," I repeated, because it was the truth.
"What? Did you kill somebody?"
He was clearly joking, but my reaction was not a joke. I tensed up, every part of me arrested, automatically going into auto-save mode, still as a statue.
He studied me, eyes widening. He began to curse and did not stop.
Yeah, that.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-ONE
"No one worth possessing can be quite possessed."
~Sara Teasdale
PAST
SCARLETT
We lasted two years in the apartment together.
The plan was always this: We would live in Cambridge until Dante finished school (and he was working very hard to finish as soon as possible), and then, together, we would move to Hollywood so I could pursue acting.
It was a sacrifice for us both. I didn't want to wait for my ambitions, and thanks to some memorably horrible trips with his father when he was younger, Dante hated L.A.
But that's what you did when you loved someone. You sacrificed. And that's why I made it two whole years in Cambridge.
