Page 74 of Push & Pull
“You don’t get it.” Simone came close enough to touch Petra, but the tension between them was too strong and toxic to facilitate anything more than a shaking fist and grunting throats of frustration. “You know things about me that I don’t open up to anyone else about. You’ve seen a side of me that I’ve been embarrassed about for as long as I’ve feltanything.What have you shown me? Nothing. You’re as genuine as pyrite.”
“We have known each other for one week,” Petra spat. “Less than that!”
“Yet look at what’s happened in that amount of time. Fuck me.” Simone’s voice trembled as she grabbed a sweater off a chair and wrapped it around her arms. “I’m such a goddamned idiot for trusting you at all.”
Although she was far from the first person to express such sentiments to Petra’s face, this was the first time that it stung her in the heart.
“We can still talk this through,” Petra said with misplaced gumption. “I respect that you’re angry about this. It was never my intention for you to find out like this.”
“When was I supposed to find out? When you’ve moved into my place and are scoping out what my friends and I have for you to snatch?”
Petra actively decided tonotbecome offended by that. “I was serious when I said I was planning to leave my uncle’s business. All of it. I don’t know what I’ll do for a living, but it won’t be this anymore.”
“I’m supposed to believe that?”
“Why do you think I didn’t want you to know about this? It’s already terribly difficult to explain without someone getting super judgmental.”
“Excuse me for being judgmental.”
“I’ll take your snotty tone and interpret it as you being hurt. I’m sorry.” On the other hand, Petra was prepared to read that tone as petulant and haughty. It would line up with how she had initially read Simone Evans, an heiress with half of the world handed to her on a silver platter. “Believe what you want, though. Life’s already a mess.”
Petra couldn’t hang around much longer to hash this out with Simone. If things were volatile enough that a neighbor filed a noise complaint, Petra might be found out for what she did to Earl Olivier. Better for her to get the hell out now before Earl possibly woke up and had the balls to tell the hotel – and the police – what happened to him.
Going to her uncle’s safehouse in Brooklyn wasn’t ideal, either, but it beat sitting around for this with Simone. Petra gathered her things, including the suitcase that had been opened in the corner of the room.
“Where are you going?”
Petra half-laughed, half-snorted as she pulled the orange dress over her head and changed into jeans and a sweatshirt that would conceal her identity on the way out of the hotel. “Away from here. If the police drop by, do me one last favor and don’t rat me out. Anyway, if you did, they won’t find me where I’m going. Either way, I need to get out of here.”
“The police?”
“Ididdrug and rob a man, Simone. Gosh. Haven’t you been paying attention at all?” Petra tugged on the strings of her sweatshirt and finished zipping up the suitcase. Before Simone could ask anything else, Petra continued, “I’m taking the Volvo. If you want to talk in the morning, let me know, but otherwise…” She shrugged, refusing to behold that pale face that only whitened the more Simone realized that Petra was walking out. “You’re rich and resourceful. You’ll find your way home tomorrow.”
Petra hesitated for two seconds, giving Simone that last chance to say something that might heal the wound that had ripped open between them. When Simone said nothing, Petra rolled her bag out of the hotel suite. She didn’t bring her keycard with her. She held no intention to return, not unless Simone extended the olive branch. After all, she had Petra’s number.
Chapter 26
Foralmostawholeweek, Simone had looked forward to walking through her front door and finally being home.
Now that she was there, however, nothing felt all right.
She wanted to crawl onto her couch, put on Netflix, and pretend that the past week hadn’t happened – that she hadn’t spent her first night without Petra’s bedazzling smile or slick sense of humor.Or her touches. Or her embrace.That was the embarrassing thing that truly made Simone want to crawl beneath the giant afghan blanket her mother had left her from another life.
Instead, she had to freshen up in her bathroom and turn right back around. Her meeting with Astrid was still on the docket for the day, and Simone would be damned if she screwed that up as well.
Her aversion to her own reflection in the bathroom and bedroom mirrors should have told her she wasn’t in a good place to discuss business, let alone her personal life. Yet Simone changed into a clean pantsuit, ran a wet comb through her hair, and applied a simple layer of makeup that would hopefully distract from the bags beneath her eyes and the fine lines at the corners of her mouth.I didn’t sleep at all last night.She had loaded up on energy drinks before checking out of the hotel and hopping into the rental car she had delivered.
She had specifically requested anything but a Volvo. The Honda the rental car agency dropped off was more than fine. So was the Aston Martin that occupied her personal parking garage in the basement of her building. That’s the car she chose for an excursion out to the countryside, where she would face the house she grew up in and the women who inhabited it.
Simone usually enjoyed driving by herself. She usually didn’t mind flipping through radio stations like Petra had their whole excursion up the east coast. Yet when the dial landed on the local alternative rock station, the first band Simone heard was Hole – Courtney Love sang about the parts she was made of, a thin veneer referencing her romance with legendary rock musician Kurt Cobain.You know. Mom. Dad. Stepdad.Grunting, Simone changed the station.
So happened The Smashing Pumpkins played on the “contemporary oldies” station.
She shut off the radio since the traffic was too thick for her to rummage for her phone and plug it into her car stereo, let alone futz with Spotify for whatever playlist they had generated for her that day. The silence in the Aston Martin did not soothe Simone’s nerves. Or her ego, for that matter. For the past twelve hours, she had been spiraling out of control, the kind of self-assessment that convinced her she was the dumbest person she could ever know.
Petra must have seen that in her. That’s why she made sure to cling to Simone for as long as she could.
It was only a matter of time.Simone turned off onto the familiar country road that led her to Evans Manor, the only estate she could ever call home.She would have done something eventually.Women like Petra could not be trusted. She hadn’t even denied pilfering through the wallets of Zeta Nu, and Simonestilldidn’t know how she pulled that off.Her uncle taught her. An uncle that people owe a lot of money to.Loan shark? Mobster? Simone didn’t want to think about it.
