Page 109 of Gilt

“Yeah, it’s a fucked up family,” Jameson takes a step closer, and Levi flinches. “But it’s our family, and you’re not a part of it.”

“What did I miss?” Hugo asks, rubbing his hands together as he steps outside.

Levi wipes his bloody nose with the back of his hand and then straightens up. “Nothing. You didn’t miss anything. I was just leaving.”

“That’s too bad,” Hugo says, clapping him on the back as he passes, oblivious to the tension between the four of us. “Next time, I want to hear all about you getting up on Blake Lively.”

Levi casts a glance toward Jameson. “Sure. I’ll tell you all about it.”

Then he walks into the house and out of our lives.

“How long have you known about this?” Jameson asks me when the others go into the house.

“Since the night we left Palm Springs. I’m sorry. I should have told you.”

“No. Don’t apologize to me, Duchess. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I didn’t know how to tell you that your best friend betrayed you,” I admit.

“I think it’s hard for someone like you to understand.”

“Understand what?” I whisper as he moves in closer, his lips slanting toward mine.

“Disloyalty.”

“I know a thing or two about it,” I think of Becca and the lies she kept from me.

“Maybe you do, but there’s not an ounce of it in your body. It’s one of the reasons...”

Before he can finish the sentence, I kiss him because I trust him, and he trusts me. Right now, with our worlds as fucked up as they are, that has to count for something.

When we break apart, I’m panting. Jameson presses his forehead against mine, lingering there despite the sweat from the heat of the evening.

“Can I stay with you for a while?”

“You can stay with me forever,” he promises. Then, he seals that vow with a kiss.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

His mom shows me to a spare room. Obviously, things are a bit different when she’s home. She smiles knowingly as she opens the closet and takes a guest robe out, laying it across the bed. She continues to point out where I can find towels, shampoo, or a spare toothbrush.

“You didn’t have to go to all this trouble,” I say to her when she asks if there’s anything else I need.

“Nonsense, this is why we have guest rooms. Jameson mentioned that you’re only seventeen. I don’t feel comfortable allowing a seventeen-year-old to share a bed with her boyfriend.”

I bite my lip, wondering why on earth I can’t will the ground to open up and swallow me whole when I need it to.

“I knew your mother,” she continues, “and I think she’d agree with me on this.”

“You have no idea,” I say under my breath. Of course, if it was up to her, I wouldn’t be staying with the Wests; she’d be taking a restraining order out against them. I keep that to myself, though.

After she’s left, I look around the large bedroom, feeling out of place. I creep quietly to the door when I hear voices in the hallway.

“You don’t have to put us in separate rooms,” Jameson says to her.

I hear her muffled laugh through the door. “I’ve seen how you look at her. It’s for the best. There’s enough police scrutiny on you at the moment. Keeping some distance between you and her is a good idea while she’s still underage.”

“I know. We’ve already talked about it.”