Page 32 of Worse Than Wicked
“I don’t have any,” I say. “But one day, Summer House will be mine.”
I don’t tell her how impressive that is, that hundreds of years of tradition were broken when our grandfather put me in the will. Only sons inherited before that. I don’t tell her, because I never tell.
“Then how do you mix them up?” she asks.
“My family has ten or twelve houses,” I explain. “But that’s between six men.”
She turns to Duke, her eyes so wide we can see white all around her irises. “She’s even richer than you?” she asks, clearly awestruck.
“Tons,” he says, smiling at me over her head. “In fact, she used to own this house.”
He nods to the house they emerged from, the house where I grew up with Colt, with Devlin across the lawn where parents passed like strangers in the night, ducking behind lilacs and azaleas, their footprints in the silvery dew the only evidence of their treachery.
“That’s right,” I say. “I lived here when I was your age. If you look inside one of the closets, you might still find my name scratched into the wall.”
“You’re Ma-bel?” she asks, pronouncing it like two words:May Bell.
“Mabel,” Duke corrects her, putting an arm around me and smiling down at Olive. “She’s my girlfriend now.”
Olive looks from Duke to me and back. “Do you have sex?” she demands.
“Only when she wants to,” Duke says, squeezing me against him.
“What about when you want to?”
“I always want to,” he says. “I love her, and she’s sexy as fuck.”
“Okay, let’s go inside,” Harper says, putting an arm around Olive’s shoulders and steering her that way.
“Was that inappropriate?” Duke mutters to me as Harper leads Olive inside, Baron on her heels.
“A little, judging by her reaction.”
“So you dropped your stuff off already?” Harper asks.
“We went by Summer House and got settled first,” Baron tells Harper. “Mabel had to get her cat situated.”
“You have a cat?” Olive asks, twisting free of Harper and coming back to us.
“Yes,” I say. “Seeley Boots.”
“Is he named after a seal?”
“No.”
“Good, because seals are scary. They eat penguins. Did you know that the ones that balance balls on their noses at the circus aren’t seals, they’re sea lions?”
“No.”
“What’s he named after?”
“A character on a TV show.”
“My favorite TV show isPimp My Ride. Have you watched that?”
“No.”
“It’s not on TV anymore, but Royal found all the episodes online, so I get to watch one every night before bed. Sometimes I watch more, if they forget to lock my laptop before they leave.”
