Page 79 of American Prince (New Camelot Trilogy 2)
“Is that what she told you?” Her voice is still low. “She was lying to you then, just like she lied to me.”
“She lied to you?”
Abilene keeps talking, as if she hasn’t heard me. “Everyone adored Greer. Every boy wanted to kiss her, every girl wanted to be her. The teachers petted her, Grandpa always liked her more, even my parents wished I could be as smart and polite as she was. But she was so aloof—so quiet—she didn’t even realize. She didn’t get it. She could have been the queen of that school if she’d even once looked up from her books, and that’s what infuriates me. She could have had everything and she didn’t even know. Didn’t care.”
I drink. “I don’t see how all that
equals her lying to you.”
She takes a breath, as if she can’t believe what an idiot I am. “She didn’t lie about anything to do with school, dumbass. I meant she lied about him. She lied and she took him from me.”
I intended on facing away from her, but this makes me turn my head to get a good look at her expression. “Him? Ash, you mean?”
“She knew I loved him. He was all I wanted, and she took him away from me before I ever even had the chance.” Her voice is bitter, but when she sees me staring at her, she unfolds from her chair with a small smile on her face. She walks towards me, slowly, deliberately, the elegant lines of her body captivating. I suddenly feel very aware of the two and half glasses of scotch warming up my stomach, very aware of the fight I just had with Greer.
“Somehow, somehow, she got to him first. It should’ve been me kissing him at that party, it should have been me as his bride, and when I tried to tell him that in Geneva, he pushed me away. Told me he loved her.”
Abilene makes the word loved sound sordid, obscene, as if loving Greer is some sort of aberrant act that is beyond the edge of taboo.
She arranges herself on my lap, naturally, like it’s a habit of ours. “She took everything I wanted away from me, just like she took everyone’s affection and love when we were growing up. And if I can’t have Maxen, then she can’t have you. In fact, I don’t want her to have anything.” She places her hand along my jaw and tilts her head prettily at me.
When I was a boy, my grandmother used to have a mechanical bird with gold-filigree wings and ruby eyes. It was beautiful and delicate and when you wound up the key between its wings, it would cock its head and open its beak and flutter its sharp, metal wings. And as Abilene tilts her head at me, I think of that bird. Calculated and beautiful and utterly, utterly un-alive.
Mistaking my examination of her for something else, she leans in and presses her lips against mine. I don’t return the kiss, I don’t close my eyes. I stare at her wondering—how did that impetuous, passionate girl Greer told me about turn into this spiteful automaton? The girl Greer told me was the first to party, the first to fight, the first to laugh. What happened to her? Was it really losing the chance to be loved by Ash that turned her sour?
Abilene opens her eyes too, and pulls back ever so slightly. “This can be fun for us,” she says, again in that convincing purr. “We can both get something out of this.”
Fuck, that scotch is hitting me hard. I want her off my lap, out of my house and my life, but I’m almost too drunk to make my limbs work, to make my mouth say the words. But I finally manage, standing up with her in my arms and setting her down on her feet, not as gently as I could have. “If you were the last person on Earth, Abilene, then I would learn to love sheep instead. Get the fuck out of my house.”
Again she tilts her head, the gesture no longer coquettish but shrewd. “Be careful with me, Embry. It’s not fair that she has both of you, and I plan on fixing that for once and for all.”
“I don’t give a shit what you do as long as you keep your word about Morgan,” I say, walking over to the door and opening it. The scotch is making everything so fuzzy, so watery, and it takes me a couple tries with the doorknob to make it work.
“You might regret those words, loverboy,” she croons in a singsong voice, and then she steps out onto the veranda, and I slam the door shut behind her.
I grind the heels of my palms into my eyes, barely able to stand I’m so drunk and tired. How the fuck do I get into these messes? Why is it always me who’s asked to give give give until I have nothing left?
Never one to turn back on a bad decision, I go into the living room and polish off the last glass of scotch, and then wander upstairs to tumble into bed. I don’t even take off my shoes. My last thought before I slip under the dark, drunk waves is of Greer and the way the light glinted off her white-gold hair as I broke her heart in the Oval Office.
I dream then. I dream dark, sweaty dreams of Greer and Ash, Ash holding Greer open for me, the wet welcome of her as she hugs me tight to her body. In my dream, she murmurs that she loves me, that she forgives me, that she’ll let me inside her whenever I need it. Please, I beg dream-Greer, please make it feel better. Let me come inside you.
The dream grinds on, flesh and fucking and the kinds of things one doesn’t admit to in their right mind, and in my dream, I come over and over and over again as Greer cries out my name, Embry, Embry, Embry…
“Embry,” a female voice coaxes. “Embry, wake up. Your alarm.”
I open my eyes to powerful morning sunlight slanting through the room and sheets tangled around my body. I’m clammy and dehydrated and naked and—
Quills of panic pierce my awakening brain.
Abilene is next to me. Also naked.
I reach over and turn off my alarm and then look at her. Really look at her.
“We didn’t.” But my voice is as uncertain as my mind right now. Those dreams were so vivid and I was so fucked up from the scotch, although three glasses isn’t actually that much for me…
I look at her some more. The tousled red hair, her pale, freckled skin.
“What do you think we did?” she asks coyly.
