Page 113 of Feed Your Fiends

“Says the girl who leaves dishes in the shower.”

“I told you, the maid ambushed me,” she snaps, following me down the hallway to my and Gant’s bedroom.

Gant’s bedroom.

“What took you so long? I told you Gant’s normally back at three. It’s five after.”

“Why do you care?”

“Why do I care?” she asks incredulously. “Because if you’re gone, how can I justify being here alone if he happened to catch me? The maid—”

“Heldina.”

“Heldinaalmost did, and it freaked me out.”

I turn to stare at her, lips parted but no words will come out for a long ass time. “Rin, how the fuck could I justify you being here even if I’m here with you?”

She looks at me quizzically. “You’d tell him the truth. That you invited me over because you were helping a friend out.”

I’m too tired to laugh, but a deep chuckle shakes my shoulders as my head rolls back onto the pillows as I climb into bed and beneath the puffy duvet. Numb. I feel as numb as my feet because sorting my emotions right now is impossible.

“I didn’t invite you. You trespassed, and we aren’t friends.”

Rin pauses for a moment, a brief flicker of something passing over her features as she crosses her arms. “Like you would know who true friends really are.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I ask, but there’s no vitriol in my voice. No energy.

“It’s not like you have any to know.”

“I do. Stassi and Aria—”

“Haven’t called you this whole time you’ve been in Gant’s cave.”

I swallow because I haven’t contacted them either, so how can I have the audacity to feel hurt? But I do. I miss them, and I’m partly to blame.

“But you know who communicated with you daily?” Rin goes on. “Me.”

“Because you want money. Because you have nowhere else to go, not because you want to be here with me.”

“It doesn’t change the fact that I’m still here, and I have been since the hospital. I don’t see you’re other friends. I don’t even hear them call.”

“And where are yours? Why aren’t you in their homes?”

“I never said I had true friends. You did.”

I want to say that’s sad, but I’d never had friends before Beaulieu either, and technically, they’re Gant’s friends first, and I don’t need Rin to point out howsadthat is.

I lean back against the pillows, deflated. It’s not like I’d been there for Stassi or Aria either. I was too caught up in my own shit and from the Beaussip articles they’re tangled up in their own too.

“You sound like Gant.It doesn’t matter the motive, just the outcome.” Like me claiming to hate him and still wanting to be directly under him as I wait for him to come home and complete our bedtime routine.

I rub his side of the bed beneath the blankets, and suddenly, I’m craving his warmth. Maybe it’s Rin’s frigid bitch air that has me so cold.

“He surprisingly makes good points sometimes for someone that talks out of his ass. Speaking of asses, what did Jarett say?”

Should I even tell her? Then again, really, who has been there for me besides the two people I should hate the most?

“He confirmed what I think I ever knew deep down. That the Auclairs had him for two years because they think he’s Marisol’s baby daddy.”

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