Page 51 of Gilt

He nods. “You?”

I shake my head. “They only asked if I was planning to leave this summer.”

“I knew they didn’t suspect you.” There’s a finality to his tone that leaves me confused. His eyes drop down, and when he looks up, they’re full of regret. “Have you ever needed to tell someone something even though it might ruin everything?”

I suck in a breath. “That doesn’t sound like a hypothetical question.”

“It’s not.”

“Should I get back in my own seat for this?” I ask him.

“I’d rather keep my hands on you for as long as possible.” Uh-oh. Whatever is about to come out of his mouth has the potential to change everything. “I was in the other room when they questioned you the day we found his body.”

I nod. I’d seen him coming out as I got into the elevator. It didn’t take a membership in MENSA to know why he’d been next door. “When they wanted me to corroborate your alibi?”

“Yes.” He pauses before adding on, “and no. You have to understand you were this mysterious girl who showed up and was lurking around the house. I liked you. I really did, but it would have been stupid of me not to mention you to the police.”

“Wait. What are you saying?” I pry myself from his grasp, and even though there’s very little wiggle room, I pull away until the steering wheel digs into my shoulder blades.

“I told him I found a girl in my dad’s study who wouldn’t tell me her name and that she’d stayed the whole night.”

“How did you know I stayed?” I asked angrily. “When I woke up, you weren’t with me.”

“After I left you on the patio, I went to speak to my dad. We had words. He handled me leaving Stanford as well as you might expect. After that, I found a bottle of whiskey and made a new friend for a couple of hours. Sometimes darkness overcomes me, Emma. It’s not something I like about myself, but I can’t deny it. I left you out there because I couldn’t bear for you to see me like this. Then I saw you leaving with Jonas and Hugo, and I knew Monroe would be able to tell me who you were.”

“You wanted to know who I was?” I ask, softening too much.

“I wanted to run after you, but I stopped myself.”

“Why?” I demand. The question covers so many unanswered things from that night.

“I’d been drinking for hours. I passed out with my head on the bar. It wasn’t a proud moment for me.”

“And then you found your dad.” My stomach begins to churn as I relive the night with him. I don’t like experiencing it through his eyes.

“Yes, and I didn’t think. I tried to stop the bleeding and checked his pulse. Then I realized it was too late. Monroe found me like that: covered in his blood and drunk off my ass. She called the cops. All I can remember is her screaming ‘what did you do?’ over and over again. She couldn’t hear a word I was saying. She still can’t.

“So, when the police brought you in, I told them about the girl,” he repeats himself. “I let them draw their own conclusions. You were my alibi.”

“But I was also your primary suspect,” I guess. Betrayal rips my heart in half, and my hand flies to my mouth to hold back a sob, but Jameson won’t let me scramble away from him. He grabs me by the hips and holds me on his lap. “The day in the cemetery when I found you, you didn’t trust me. You suspected I might have killed him. Am I right?”

I force myself to nod.

“But you didn’t want that to be the case,” he continues.

I nod again.

“That’s exactly how I felt the whole time,” he says. “I needed to find out if I could trust you. I needed to find out who you were. As soon as Monroe told me you were a Southerly, it was a strike against you.”

“The feeling’s mutual,” I spit at him.

“Calm down, Duchess,” he urges me, but I dodge his hand when he tries to stroke my cheek. “I stood there and listened to you talking to your sister in the graveyard, and I knew then that you could never hurt anyone.”

“But you had to be sure, I guess.”

“It sounds like you’re familiar with the stakes.”

“I am,” I admit slowly. I want to be angry at him for suspecting me. This whole time he had been putting me to the test, but hadn’t I been doing the same to him? It was a classic case of two wrongs don’t make a right. Now we’d found ourselves at a crossroads.