Page 170 of Swallow Your Sorries

“That’s bullshit. Why am I only an untouchable when it doesn’t count? Or when it benefits you? When you can use me for your bullshit.”

“Aria. Étienne loves you. I don’t think he cares about a single thing on this planet if it doesn’t involve you. You know that, and isn’t knowing that enough?”

“No.”

“I can’t help you with this.”

“We’re done,” she hisses, reaching for the door handle. “We’re even now. I don’t want to play spy anymore.”

“You’re not a very good one anyway.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re not telling me all of your conversations with Elle.” I light up my phone screen and turn it towards her with a GPS pin of the lingerie store they visited. “Why didn’t you tell me you went to a sex shop?”

She doesn’t answer.

“I let it go because I figured Elle was finally getting rid of her horrible granny panties. But do you know what she’s been wearing all week?”

She doesn’t flinch. “Horrible granny panties.”

I nod. “None of the dozens you helped me pick out for her. I thought it was a stupid pride thing. She didn’t want my gifts, so she’d save her coins and buy some for herself at that ratchet sex shop. Withyou. But she didn’t, so what did she buy? She didn’t swipe her card and you were in there for forty minutes.”

Again, she keeps quiet.

“Then there’s your little sneaky tactics. Like lending her your leotard that can barely cover her pussy to piss me the fuck off.”

“You told me to befriend her, didn’t you?”

“Befriend her, not become her pimp.”

She giggles. “Say pimp again.”

“Oh, I see. So you can keep little secrets but I can’t? Now who’s an untouchable only when it’s fitting?”

She rolls her eyes and is about to bolt when something makes her pause. “You know. You said Elle wanted to help you with this. Help you find the car so you could feel better and get off her ass, no doubt. So why isn’t she here with you now? Oh, that’s right, you don’t want her to think of you as being even weaker, seeing as she’s already witnessed your breakdowns in the greenhouse. What would she think if she knew you can’t withstand a five-minute joy ride?”

“You won’t tell her my secret because you want to keep yours nice and safe. It’s why you helped me in the first place. Although I still don’t understand why it’s a secret at all. But I can guess.”

Again, she’s so quiet. Like a little mouse.

“You don’t want Étienne to know where you were the night before school opened because you don’t want to taint his pure image of you.”

She swallows. “That’s not true. I don’t care what he thinks. Besides, you and I are just friends.”

“You don’t?” I ask, hearing footfalls over dried leaves just outside the car door. “Then why don’t you tell him that I was just comforting you? That you came like a thief in the night and climbed into my arms, and cried on my shoulder like a baby when you saw what he was up to with that girl. Why don’t you just ask him what’s going on with Rin? Maybe it’s because you don’t want him to view you differently. You don’t want him to know that you sought comfort with me. You don’t want him to think you’re jealous and insecure because you’ve always been so calm. So confident. So pretty and perfect. But it’s not perfect to creep into someone else’s bed at midnight, even if it is just to cry. Your cheeks were so very wet that night…”

“Don’t,” she hisses, warning me of her limit.

I slide across the leather seats so I’m inches away from her and reach a hand into her curly hair. “But it’s the truth. Like you said, we’re just friends. But Étienne won’t see it that way. He’ll just see it as us being all alone..all night. In my bed, on those sheets you soaked.”

She slaps my hand away. “We weren’t alone. You got a special delivery, remember? A custom order,” she says, her voice suddenly growing bold. “What was in that pink box, Gant? I know it wasn’t for you.”

Touche.

She always saved her cards for the right moment. So she had seen.

“You packed it in your suitcase that night. The night before, we all boarded the train to Beaulieu, so I know it’s here. What did you order? What did you do?”

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