These Dirty Lies Page 4

  “After school, what are we doing? I thought we could head to Samphire and check out their fall menu.”

  “And Samphire would be…”

  Celeste chuckled. “It’s a little bistro downtown. It does the most amazing stone-baked pizza. So freaking good.”

  “Right.”

  “Sorry.” Miles dipped his head. “I forget that you don’t—”

  “Miles,” Celeste said quietly.

  “Guys, it’s okay. You don’t have to do that. We all know I’m not… used to this.”

  I wasn’t sure I was ever going to be used to it. But it was my life now, at least for the next ten months.

  “Okay, I have a better idea.” Celeste smiled. “What about if we get ice cream from Banana Splits and head down to the park? We might be able to get a table and it’s such a nice day.”

  “I was going to head back to the house and study.”

  “But you have to come. It’s our Monday afternoon ritual. We always do something.”

  “Celeste is right.” Miles nodded. “Besides, you need the tour.”

  “The tour…” My brow quirked.

  “Yeah. I know you haven’t ventured out much, so we could give you the behind-the-scenes tour.”

  “You’re not going to take no for an answer, are you?”

  “Nope.” Miles grinned, stealing a bunch of grapes off Celeste’s plate. “I need to head to the library, but I’ll see the two of you later.”

  As he walked away, I murmured, “He’s very…”

  “Cute?”

  “I was going to say peppy.”

  “Don’t be deceived by his good looks and charm. Miles Mulligan rocks a mean left hook.”

  “Good looks, huh?” I teased. “Sounds an awful lot like someone has a crush.”

  “On Miles? Please.” Celeste scoffed. “He’s like a brother to me.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Harleigh, I mean it. I don’t like Miles like that. Besides, he wasn’t gazing longingly at me.”

  I almost choked on my juice. “Don’t be ridiculous. He doesn’t even know me.”

  “Exactly. You have that mysterious new girl appeal.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not looking to get involved with anyone. Good looks and charm or not.”

  “Miles is good people. He’s—”

  “Celeste, I said leave it.” Appetite gone. I stood, threw my bag over my shoulder and grabbed my tray. “I’m going to go to the bathroom before I head to next period. I’ll see you later.”

  Regret washed over her, but the damage was done. I needed to get the hell out of there.

  Before I said something I couldn’t take back.

  No expense had been spared restoring and maintaining Darling Academy’s original buildings and that extended to the ground floor girls’ bathroom. It reminded me of a nineteen-twenties powder room, the kind you saw in old black and white movies. The hex floor tile and backsplash, and the art deco mirrors seemed far too elegant for a high school bathroom. But when money was no issue, I guess only the best would do for the girls of Old Darling Hill.

  I ducked into the end stall and closed the toilet lid so I could sit. I knew it wouldn’t be easy being here, pretending, keeping up the façade, but I had underestimated how much it would take out of me. I felt drained. Especially after my run in with Marc.

  Avoiding him was impossible, but I hadn’t expected him to remember me. Or maybe I’d foolishly hoped he wouldn’t.

  He and Nix were bitter rivals on the football field, and even worse off it. Marc and his friends had wandered into our territory once and things hadn’t ended well for him. It was the same night when everything changed. When my life as I knew it went up in flames.

  It was also the same night Nix had kissed me.

  Kissed me, then ripped out my heart.

  Because that’s what the people around me did. They hurt me. Abandoned me.

  My father.

  My mother.

  Nix.

  Dropping my head, I inhaled a ragged breath, pressing my palms against the stall partition, needing to touch something to ground me. To remind me that I was in control of my emotions.

  They didn’t control me.

  I wouldn’t let them control me. Never again.

  Never again.

  My father.

  My mother.

  Nix.

  None of that mattered anymore. They had broken me. Each in their own way. And I would never—

  The bathroom door opened and laughter filled the room, sending my heart into a tailspin.

  Relax, breathe. No one knows you’re in here.

  “You saw her right, the new girl?” a girl’s voice said in a gossipy tone.

  “Yeah, she’s in my AP English class. Total loner. Sat huddled to herself the entire time, staring at nothing.”

  “Yeah, rumor has it, she found her mom dead. Overdose. I mean, that’s got to leave emotional scars. No wonder her dad sent her away last year.”

  “He’s probably worried she’s going to follow in mommy’s footsteps.”

  “Ange, that is cold. So cold.” They chuckled. Three, maybe four of them. Their dulcet tones blended together over the roar of blood in my ears.

  I pressed my hands to my head, trying to block it out, block them out. I didn’t care about what they were saying.

  I didn’t.

  They were no one to me. Nothing.

  Liar. It hurts and you know it.

  My heart was a wild beating thing in my chest, making my palms sweat and my head pound. Slipping a hand down my body, I dipped it under my skirt and pinched the fleshy part of my thigh, digging my nails in until the pain blotted out everything else. Hand closed over my mouth, I smothered the yelp as I drew blood. Some of the tension seeped away like a balloon popping, and I sagged against the wall, desperately trying to remain silent.

  The girls continued talking, waiting on their friend to pee. But I was too spaced out to focus on the details of their conversation.

  When they left, the gentle click of the door behind them echoing through me, I grabbed a wad of tissue paper and wiped the blood away. It wasn’t much. Just a few droplets. But they quickly absorbed into a fading smudge on the tissue. Funny how something so small could spread into something so gruesome.

  I balled up the paper and shoved it in the small trash can down the side of the toilet. Slipping out of the stall, I washed my hands and inspected my appearance in the mirror. My lashes were damp, the color drained from my cheeks, my eyes shadowed and haunted. I barely recognized the girl staring back at me.

  And it was only the first day.

  The first of many.

  I inhaled a thin breath. I could do this. I didn’t have any other choice.

  I wasn’t my mother. She was weak. She let my father’s betrayal destroy her. Her pain, her heartbreak drove to her breaking point and nothing—not even the daughter she’d sacrificed everything for—could save her.

  I wouldn’t become her.

  Even on the hardest days, when it felt like my heart was breaking apart all over again, I wouldn’t lose myself to the darkness again. I would live in it, bathe in it, and become one with it.

  But I would never succumb to it.

  Not again.

  That was my promise to myself and Celeste and my therapist at Albany Hills.

  People had the power to break you, to hurt and betray you. But in the end, nobody put a gun to your head and told you how to react.

  We had to own our response mechanisms and we wouldn’t always get it right.

  God knows, I hadn’t.

  But I was still here. I was still fighting every day to do better.

  To be better.

  And I was determined to walk out of here—the town that had chewed me up and spat me out—with my head held high one day.

  One day.

  Nix

  “You wanna hit Buster’s tonight?” Zane asked as we headed out of school for the day.

  “No can do.”

  “No.” He frowned. “Why?”

  “Got some shit to take care of.”

  “And by shit you mean…”

  “Don’t ask questions you won’t like the answer to.” My expression tightened.

  We reached my car and I yanked open the door, climbing inside. Zane followed, giving me a concerned look. “Do I need to tell you this is a bad fucking idea.”

  “No. But I gotta see it with my own eyes, man.”

  “Yeah.” He released a steady breath, running a hand over his jaw. “I get it; it’s Birdie. She’s—”

  “Nothing, she’s nothing,” I said, hating how deep the words cut. “But I gotta know.”

  “Want me to come with? Watch your back? If Denby catches you on their side of the res—”

  “I can handle the likes of Marc Denby.” I jammed the key in the ignition and fired her up.

  Zane snorted. “Still, a little back up wouldn’t hurt.”

  “I appreciate it, Z. I do. But this is something I need to do alone.”

  “Okay. But if anyone sees you… get the hell out of there, and fast.”

  “I will.” He lifted a brow and I added, “I promise.”

  “You know, I always thought the two of you…” He trailed off, tension making the air so fucking thick in the car, I couldn’t breathe. “How’s Jessa?” He changed the subject.

  “She’s… Jessa. Still convinced she can change him.” Him being my piece of shit father. “I’ve given up trying to tell her to get out while she can.”

  “You know, you don’t have to stay there. You could come stay with me and my gran. She wouldn’t mind.”

  “I know.” Mrs. Washington was the best, but I couldn’t upend her life like that. Besides, I couldn’t leave. Not yet at least. Jessa
needed me; she didn’t have anyone else.

  “You’re a good friend, Z. The best. But I’ve got this, I promise.”

  He gave me a clipped nod and I started backing out of the parking space. Most kids rode the bus or their bicycle to Darling Hill High. A handful of kids like me were lucky enough to have a hand-me-down ride. She was my pride and joy. The car my grandfather had restored with his own two hands. He’d left it to me in his will when he’d died a few years back, and I’d made good on my promise to look after her.

  He was a good man. Nothing like his son. The fact he’d liked me while he was alive, was just another reason for my father to despise me.

  It was only a ten-minute drive to The Row but with every mile closer, the pit in my stomach carved wider.

  I hated this fucking place.

  It was home, sure, and it held some of my best memories. Goofing around with Zane and Kye, causing mischief, hanging out with Harleigh…

  Harleigh, fuck. My grip on the wheel tightened until I white-knuckled the damn thing. I was supposed to be over this shit. The guilt. The crippling hopelessness I felt. The simmering rage that burned inside me. Obviously it had only slumbered though, and now she was back, the monster was slowly awakening.

  “You good?” Zane asked, and I flicked my eyes to his.

  “I’m good.”

  When you were born in a place like The Row, it became a part of who you were. Part of the very fabric of your soul. The scent of weed in the air, stale liquor and bad decisions, clung to you like a second skin. There was no escaping that shit. No outrunning it. But when you were Joe Wilder’s kid, his only flesh and blood, that stain was only amplified. There wasn’t a single person in Darling Row who didn’t know his name. If they didn’t use him for his connections, they feared him because of them. He was a mean sonofabitch who doled out favors and always collected with interest.

  “I’ll come with you,” Zane said.

  “Nah, man.” I shifted in my seat, feeling like a thousand fucking spiders were crawling under my skin as my trailer came into view. “I’ll be in and out.”

  And if my luck was in, Joe would be out.

  The car rolled to a stop, and we climbed out. Zane hesitated and I knew he wanted to say something else. But I beat him to it. “I’ll text you later. See what you’re up to.”

  “You’d better.” He tsked. “Catch you later.”

  I tipped my chin and watched him disappear around the side of my trailer. Joe’s beat up car wasn’t parked out front but that didn’t mean much. Sometimes, if he was too wasted to drive home from The Tap, Lyle, the owner, confiscated his keys and made him walk his sorry ass back here.

  Trudging up the steps, I grabbed the door handle and yanked it open. “Jessa?”

  “In here, sweetie.”

  The smell of freshly baked cookies hit me like a warm blanket. “Hey,” I said, popping my head around the door leading to the open plan living space. Jessa was at the breakfast counter, adding cookies to the cooling rack.

  “Where’s Joe?” I frowned when she didn’t look up at me.

  “Out. He… uh…”

  “Look at me,” I said, clenching my hand into a tight fist as anger rose inside me like a tidal wave hurtling toward shore.

  “It’s nothing, Nix. Honestly, it looks worse than it is.”

  Closing the distance between us, I gently gripped her chin and forced her to look at me. “Shit, Jessa.” My stomach dropped at the ugly black-and-blue bruise that mottled her eye socket.

  “He didn’t mean it.” She batted my hand away, giving the cookies her full attention again.

  “Jessa, come on. That’s some bullshit and—”

  “I’m not having this conversation, Phoenix. He’s stressed, under a lot of pressure. Sometimes he struggles to control himself.”

  She didn’t need to tell me that. I had enough scars littering my body as evidence of Joe Wilder’s regular lack of self-control.

  “Fine,” I snapped, barely reining in the anger vibrating inside me. “But I can’t help you if you won’t help yourself.”

  She glanced up and gave me a sad smile. “Sometimes it’s harder to walk away than it is to stay, Nix.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  And I fucking hated it.

  Jessa wasn’t my mom. But she was the closest thing I’d ever had to one. I was supposed to protect her. I had protected her more than once over the years. And it always ended up the same, with us both taking a beating.

  We both knew to pick our battles now. When to stand our ground and when to stand down. But when I saw her like this, her fake smile and haunted eyes, I wanted to take the steak knife from the block and gut my father like a fish. It was the least he deserved.

  Sometimes, I wondered how much of him I had inside me. How far it would take to push me before I snapped.

  Rubbing my temples, I let out a steady breath, forcing some of the rage out of me. “I’m going out.”

  “Oh, I thought we could—”

  Dejection washed over her, and I felt like an asshole. But I didn’t trust myself enough to stay.

  “I can’t be here, not when he… I’m sorry.”

  “I understand. Please… don’t make a thing out of this. He already apologized.”

  My teeth ground together so hard my jaw hurt. “Yeah, whatever. I’ll see you later.” I stalked down the hall to my room at the back of the trailer. The same room I’d grown up in. Same peeling gray walls and mildew encrusted window. The view at least was better than some trailers, overlooking the edge of the trees leading down to the reservoir.

  I grabbed a black hoodie off the back of my chair and a packet of gum off the desk and got the fuck out of there before Joe returned.

  And I did something really fucking stupid.

  Maybe even more stupid than what I was about to do.

  If The Row made my chest constrict as if I was being crushed under a concrete block, being in Old Darling Hill made my skin feel stretched too tightly over my bones. My car, even though I tried to keep her clean and tidy, stood out against the pristine vehicles lining the streets and parked in big sweeping driveways.

  I felt like an exhibit in a zoo as I cruised toward the other side of the neighborhood, the strange glances and pursed lips brushing up against me like shards of glass. People knew I didn’t belong here. Whether it was my car, my black hoodie, or inked skin, they took one look at me and branded me an outsider.

  It bothered me more than it should, and the reason for that was one I didn’t want to admit to myself. One that was looming ahead as I drove toward the gated estate, taking a left turn down a dirt road that ran perpendicular to the fenced perimeter.

  I’d been here before. More times than I was proud of. I knew if I drove a little further, there was a hole in the privet that gave me a clear view of the house and the driveway.

  The house she lived in now.

  I parked and ran my hands around my steering wheel, trying to ground myself. The first time I’d come here, I’d almost puked over myself. Not my finest moment but realizing I had lost Birdie to… to this was like a punch to the gut. Of course she’d chosen this place over The Row.

  What normal person wouldn’t?

  Except I never ever considered her as normal. She was… Fuck, it didn’t matter.

  It was done.

  We were done.

  I needed to get that through my thick skull.

  And yet—

  Movement caught my eye through the privet and a flashy sports car rolled to a stop outside the house, followed by a Range Rover. A girl climbed out, the daughter if my research was correct. There was a son too. He was sixteen and his sister was a junior. And then there was Birdie.

  Harleigh Wren Maguire.

  The girl I’d always imagined would be by my side one way or another.

  The guy climbing out of the sports car; him, I didn’t recognize. There was something about the way his eyes followed Harleigh, tracking her as she walked up to the house. My fingers went white as I clutched the steering wheel tightly as if it were the dude’s neck. She looked good despite the fucking awful blue and gray uniform they made the kids at Darling Academy wear. But seeing her like that, dressed up as one of them, standing on the steps of the huge fucking mansion, I wanted to roar at the world.