Page 20 of Liars and Liaisons

A single tear drips down my cheek, but I don’t notice it until it splatters against the dirt. I’ve betrayed her so much.

“Jace and Alec never could appreciate a good trauma story. Remember the guy who came in with the flashlight stuck up his ass?”

“And he kept insisting he didn’t know how it happened? Oh, yes. I have nightmares about that one still.”

Her laughter fills the line, and I can’t stop a smile from forming on my lips.

“Is Dad back from Kalamata yet?”

She sighs, and I hear the shuffling of newspapers. I can imagine her leaning back in a dining room chair, glancing out the bay window at our little vegetable garden. “He gets in tonight, I think. Want me to have him call you?”

“No.” I say it too quickly—the silence that ensues is a beat too long. Clearing my throat, I withdraw my hands from the soil and wipe them on my flare-legged black pants. “I mean, let him settle in first. You know how he is after a long flight.”

Besides, I add silently,I’ve already heard from him.

Laurel scrambles to his feet as I push to mine, dragging my palms over my black T-shirt. A thrift find, like everything else I own, because not only is shopping secondhand better for the environment, but it’s also all I can afford.

No one wants to hire a girl without a permanent address, even when you have an in with the mayor. Not that I would accept a job here—not after my brother lured me to his bar years ago and tried to just hand me money.

For some reason, I can’t make myself take things I haven’t earned. Even when there’s a surplus, and no rules binding me to taxable income.

“You’re okay though?” my mother continues. “I noticed the forums say you and that boy—”

“Oh God, can we not talk about him?”

I ditch my flower bed and head into Alistair’s giant house with its vaulted ceilings and luxury furniture. Inside, the stone floors have hints of royal blue in them, and there are similarly colored accents throughout the house—hand towels, lamps, even the piano at the foot of the winding grand staircase—that remind me exclusively of Cora.

A testament to how much she is loved here.

“You have to stop reading gossip blogs,” I tell my mom.

“Well, how else am I supposed to know what’s going on with you and Cora? You two could be dead in a ditch somewhere, and her mother and I would never know.”

Kal would definitely contact our father to inform him of my death, but I can’t mention that to her. Even with the knowledge, guilt sloshes around the base of my throat, clogging my airways with its toxicity.

“We’re fine, Mom. Really.” It’s not a complete lie. Cora’s doing great. And I’m… here. Despite everything. Still planting flowers and expecting the sunshine to wash my worries away. “What about you? Alec and Jace? I want to hear how things are with you guys.”

The soft pitter-patter of nails on the floor echoes down the hall as Laurel heads for his food dish in the kitchen, and I take the stairs two at a time. The last door on the left is the guest room I’ve been occupying, and I slip in quickly, breathing heavily as my mom launches into local youth group drama—something about people of certain income levels being excluded from a fish fry—but I stop listening the second I close the door behind me.

Because I’m no longer alone. Not even remotely.

Grayson James lounges on the queen-size four-poster bed pushed against the far wall, clad in a white dress shirt. It’s opened to the fourth button, revealing a flash of tanned flesh I’m already overly familiar with. His brown cigar pants are bunched up from the way he’s sprawled out, like a king posing for a portrait, and I can’t help noticing howlargehe is compared to everything in the room.

Not even in size necessarily, but in presence. Grayson’s entire existence becomes a hindrance to anyone it brushes up against, even if just for a moment.

Or one mistaken night.

I swallow, hitting the End Call button on my phone with my thumb. It’s been about week since I saw him last, and yet that same burning tether from when we kissed seems to ignite in the air between us, setting my body aflame. A distant part of me wonders if all those stories about your first are actually true even if you didn’t know him well enough to get attached.

Even if you don’t remember any of it.

I’ve tried triggering the sensation of him on top of me, inside me, moving and pushing and thrusting, but my hand can’t come close to what I imagine the ecstasy to be like. Or hope it’s like anyway. I guess once you’ve had a taste of something real, replicas don’t compare.

“I’m a man of my word,” Grayson says after a moment, flipping through an outdatedBirds & Bloomsspread.

One of my brows arches. “I must have missed the part where you promised to break into my room and put yourdirty shoesall over my comforter.”

His feet are hanging off the bed, but still. Who knows what he was doing before I came in?

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