Page 132 of Bitter Lies

Max looks between them with tears in his eyes, and when he sees nothing but love and affection shining back at him, he bows his head and weeps. “I’m in trouble.”

“How?” Dad asks, pulling out the chair across from Max and sitting in it heavily.

“I made a deal, and they’re gonna kill me, Dad,” Max sobs.

“Oh, honey,” Mom says as Griffin steps up and grabs my hand.

Stoically, we listen to Max reveal his sordid story, most of which isn’t a surprise to me, and gratefully I clutch onto Griffin like a lifeline as my brother slowly falls apart.

“I made some friends, and it was cool. We partied, you know. But then I did some blow, no big deal, but I wanted more and more until I couldn’t carry the cost. So, they fronted me money.”

“How much money?” Dad asks gruffly as Max sniffles pathetically.

Max raises his head and glances around warily. “10 g’s.”

“Max!” Mom says.

Glancing at Griffin out of the corner of my eye, I wonder just how much the necklace Max was desperate to have is worth. Surely not $10,000? There’s no way Griffin would give me such an expensive gift, especially not at fourteen years old, but Max’s next words prove me wrong.

“I was going to give him the necklace. Sorry, bro,” Max says gruffly, his head in his chest.

“The necklace I gave to Halsey?” Griffin asks, looking at me questioningly as the light dawns in his eyes.

Flushing, I smile weakly, for despite the circumstances, what I did was wrong, even if I did confess, and he chose not to believe me.

“Where is it?” Griffin asks, and Max’s head shoots my way with a heated glare.

“I knew you were lying to me!” he snarls.

With a pointed look, I say, “Max, it wasn’t ours to give.”

“Actually, it is,” Griffin says, “because it’s your necklace, Halsey. It always has been.”

Swinging my head his way with narrowed eyes, I search his expression with a bloom of hope. “Then why was that chick wearing it at the party?”

“I don’t know. I brought it to give back to you. She must have found it in my things,” he says with a frown.

With a shaky smile, I squeeze his hand, tears building in my eyes as Max interjects, “I found it and gave it to her, just like I gave it to Bobby Moore.”

“Oh, Max,” I whisper, turning away from Griffin with an aching heart.

“Whatever. It wasn’t fair. It was always you,” he sneers.

Griffin’s jaw clenches, his familiar tic come out to play. “You lied to me? You’re the one who did this?”

Max raises his head to the ceiling, his face contorted in an ugly smile. “Yes.”

Into the quiet, as my parents look between us with confusion, Griffin turns away but not before I spy the darkness behind his eyes. “Do you know how much damage you’ve done?”

“I know it worked,” Max says slyly. “What’s the matter, bro? Feeling guilty about the bet?”

“There was no bet,” Griffin says, turning back with jewel bright eyes.

“No? You didn’t bet Jason Macklemore that he couldn’t get into Halsey’s pants?”

The silence is deafening as my mom gasps behind me, and my dad asks into the silence, “What now?”

But I barely hear them as I turn to Griffin with confusion and stop up short when I see the shame and devastation behind his eyes.

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