“I don’t understand!”
“What is happening?”
“Stop, please! I’m begging y’all.”
An argument pervaded my dreams. I reached out, my hands finding empty sheets in the starless dark. Reed had left. I crossed my fingers and hoped Dad hadn’t found him sneaking out of my room. I would sooner lunge on a blade than let Reed take the fall for making me happy.
Slipping into drawstring shorts under my oversized shirt, I forced myself out of bed and into the hallway. My arms found their way across my chest, and I shivered in the cold, cursing my mom and her need to keep the AC at sixty-five degrees.
“Only poor people suffer in the heat, darling.”
I followed the voices into the living room. A yawn in my mouth died down the second I caught sight of both my parents, Hank and Betty Prescott, Reed, and Nash. They stood wrapped around the walls of the room like an exhibition at Madame Tussauds, frozen in varying degrees of rage and anxiety.
The Winthrop mansion comprised of cold marble with a farmhouse twist. Reed joked Dad was the farmhouse, and Mother was like the cold marble.
Tonight, the marble had taken over, and we stood inside a tomb of statuario, gold, and silver—mummified, waiting for life to move on and forget about us.
I rubbed my bleary eyes and took in the scene as quick as I could. Mother wore that frozen stare of hers. Dad stood like a Hummer, imposing, arms crossed as if daring someone to talk to him.
Tremors rocked Betty’s round frame. Hank stared between Betty and Nash, whose relaxed shoulders spoke of boredom, but instinct demanded I not be fooled. He was more alert than the rest of us.
It made the baby hairs on my arms stand up as I brought my focus onto Reed. Handcuffed beside his brother, his fury left no feature of his unscathed. I barely recognized him through his scowl.
In front of the fireplace with hands on their hips, two detectives took turns speaking, police badges proudly displayed. I’d been transported into a Dirty Harry flick, except instead of Clint Eastwood, I got cheap suits and a frantic Southern mother. (Betty, not Virginia. My mother couldn’t give two shits.)
“Reed?” My voice halted the yelling.
The two detectives scrutinized me in unison. I didn’t want to think of how I looked with the mascara-stained cheeks and bed head, my arms clenched around my chest to fight the chill and feet shoved into the hot pink bunny slippers Reed had gotten me as a gag gift last year.
Instead, I turned to Reed. “What’s going on?” My eyes dipped to the cuffs interlinking his wrists. “Why are you handcuffed?”
“Able is in the hospital.” The voice belonged to Reed, but it didn’t sound like Reed. It sounded like rage, thinly veiled, looking for a target. “He woke up long enough to tell the police I beat him up.”
One detective approached Reed. “Is that a confession?” His eyes lingered on Reed’s Able-Cartwright-has-a-small-dick t-shirt, and I realized we’d never taken them off. Great.
Nash stepped in front of his brother, blocking him from view. “It’s not a confession, because I did it.”
The other detective shook his head. His man bun bobbed with the movement. “Mr. Prescott, you expect me to believe you assaulted a boy ten years younger than you with whom you don’t spend time, do not go to the same school as, and no longer live in the same town as? Allow me to remind you hindering an investigation is illegal, and the victim has already identified his assailant.”
“Nash!” Betty glanced between her sons, desperation turning her brows into a mountain peak that met at the middle. “You will not take responsibility for something you didn’t do.”
“Ma—”
“Nash.”
Their stare-down lasted a full minute. Tension swarmed the air, and no one dared to breathe loud. Meanwhile, I kept my head down, confused as I tried and failed to make sense of this. Reed wasn’t violent. That sounded more like Nash, who Basil used to gossip would punch a man out for breathing at him the wrong way.
Reed was a pacifist. He took out his aggression on the football field. Even then, he was a quarterback, and I’d never seen him tackle anyone. Ever. And I’d gone to all of his games since his mom had become our housekeeper and his dad had taken up the mantel as our groundsman.
One time, a fight had broken out on the football field, and Reed had been the first to walk to the sidelines and wait for it to subside. Yet, he’d fought for me. That pleasure in my chest, like a balloon filling the space around my heart with air, returned.
“Detectives…”
Dad stepped forward, pulled a cigar from his front pocket and a lighter from his back pocket, then lit it. We waited as he tilted the cigar above the flame, taking his time to turn it until the foot ignited.
When Dad spoke, everyone listened. It happened without fail. All he’d said was one word, and we’d stopped. Even as he brought the cigar to his lips, inhaled, held, and exhaled, we waited.
The people at the cotillion today? They were rich because Dad had made them rich. Everyone in town—with or without money—invested in the Winthrop name. The richer we became, the richer they became.
The detectives knew of Dad. They shared a glance, not a complaint on their lips as he took his damn time. He lowered his cigar. The smoke clouded the living room, bringing the warmth it lacked.
The pitter-patter of rain against the roof filled the silence. At one point, I’d loved the noise until Mother caught me and Reed dancing in the rain, and I’d come down with a cold that lasted three weeks because she had refused to get me medicine until I promised I had learned my lesson.
My dad had returned from a business trip a week into my cold. By then, my tenth birthday had been a week away, and I’d feared he’d make me stay home from our Disneyland trip if I told him I’d gotten sick.
Dad had rented out the park, and I’d spent the entire night on Space Mountain with Reed, pretending I didn’t need to throw up every time the ride lurched to a stop.
Mother knew, but she’d pulled me aside and said, “Punishment is the backbone of this country. Being sick is not your punishment; it’s suffering in silence.”
“I’m sure we can figure this out.” Dad stepped closer, looking at ease despite the tension in the room.
He still possessed a head full of dark hair, graying at the temples in a way that made him look distinguished rather than old. He’d once joked that I’d gotten my gray eye from him and my blue eye from Mama.
As soon as he’d said it, my gray eye had become my favorite, because that was Gideon Winthrop. He had the ability to make everything better, including this.
“Mr. Winthrop.” The detective with the man bun swiped at his baby hairs, transferring sweat from his forehead to his fingertips. “With all due respect…” He trailed off when Dad interrupted him.
“With all due respect, you are in my house at midnight without a warrant.” Dad held the cigar in front of his lips as he finished, “I am telling you we can figure this out, and you will listen.” He drew the cigar to his lips and pulled.
“Mr. Winthrop, someone is getting arrested tonight.” The detective glanced at Reed’s shirt, coughing a bit when Dad exhaled the cigar smoke in his direction. “A fifteen-year-old boy is in the hospital with a broken nose, rib, and leg; a separated collar bone; and a dislocated shoulder.”
Mother gasped, and it took everything in me not to.
Holy crap.
Reed had done that?
For me?
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
My cheeks flushed when I realized how fast the knowledge had my heart beating. I pulled my arms tighter across my chest as if they could protect me from my feelings. They couldn’t. Nothing could.
This would be our fate—childhood naivety repaved by darkness.
“His father, Eric Cartwright, is my attorney—” Dad stopped as soon as he’d caught my wince at the mention of Able’s dad. “Emery…” Wrathful eyes dipped to where my arms met my shirt. He lowered the cigar and stepped toward me. “What does your shirt say?”
I backed up a step and considered the cost of moving to Eritrea and opening up a seawater farm. Somewhere no one in this room but Reed could find me. We’d live on white-leg shrimp and milkfish and would probably die of mercury poisoning before twenty, but it would be a better way to go than death by mortification.
“Dad.” I almost shrugged but dug my crisscrossed arms tighter to my chest. At this rate, I’d never grow boobs because I’d suffocated the cells before they could grow. “It’s no big deal.”
“Emery.”
“Please.”
“Emery.”
Another step back, and my heel hit a wall because, apparently, I didn’t know how to walk a straight line out of here. Truth was, I didn’t even need to show him.
He knew.
No way did the fury in his eyes escape anyone’s notice. My arms shook. I succumbed to inevitability and lowered them. Not that I was ashamed of what had happened to me. I didn’t want it to follow me.
Once one person knew, the whole town knew. That was how Eastridge worked. And people always, always blamed the girl. Since everyone from Eastridge would undoubtedly go to Duke with me and Reed, they would forever remember me as the girl who’d fucked up Reed’s and maybe Able’s future.
My burden and mine alone.
Dad was a good person. Most times judicious, and sometimes even rational in a way most blue bloods weren’t. He wouldn’t blame me. Reed wouldn’t blame me. Neither would Hank nor Betty. Hell, I even knew Nash wouldn’t stoop so low. But Mother? The two detectives I’d just met?
I felt vulnerable as I laid my secrets on the table without speaking a word. I should have said something or explained that nothing had happened; instead, I appreciated the silence, because I knew it’d be the last time I heard it before my dad blew his lid and destroyed the Cartwrights and possibly Eastridge with them.
The two detectives glanced down at my shirt, piecing things together before Reed and Nash stepped in front of me in tandem. I peeked around the brothers but let them cover most of me.
Dad pulled out his phone and dialed. “Eric. My home office. Now.”
Classic Dad.
Always standing up for me.
I wanted to grab his hands, drag him to the Harry Potter World theme park, and drink ginger beer with him. Or dance in the rain with no music as I replaced my memories of Able with his ridiculous eighties moves.
Dad turned to Hank and Betty, tossed the cigar on the floor, smashed it with his heel, and ignored Mother’s irritated gasp. “Eric Cartwright is on his way. As far as I am concerned, your son did nothing wrong, and Eric will agree with me. No charges will be pressed.” He said it with such certainty, I believed him. That, and he was Gideon Winthrop, and that meant everything in Eastridge.
The detectives didn’t even argue as he asked them to un-cuff Reed and wait in his office. Satisfaction unfurled in my belly. I had no plans on telling Dad what had happened because I had no plans on giving it more attention than Able deserved, but revenge felt good at my fingertips. They burned with the urge to raze, dismantle, devastate.
I wondered if this was how Nash felt as he blazed his own path, doing as he pleased with no concern over consequences. When he’d played football for Eastridge Prep, he’d start fights with the players, the mascots, the refs without considering the consequences. Or perhaps he had considered them and simply didn’t care.
He’d ditch school, to be found behind the gym with his hands up a senior’s shirt. And I’d never forget those nights in the kitchen, a spoonful of ice cream in my mouth, watching blood drip from his fists onto the floor as he tried and failed to ebb the flow with ice and towels.
“Honey…” Mother placed a palm on Dad’s shoulder, hard enough that his shirt bunched at her touch. “Gideon, don’t be silly. Think about this.” She ran her palms across his shoulders and down the length of his arms. All six carats of her engagement ring winked at me, sandwiched between two diamond-encrusted wedding bands. “The Cartwrights are great people. What about Winthrop Textiles? Eric Cartwright knows all our company secrets.”
Rage expanded in my chest, lacing itself with the oxygen I inhaled, momentarily blinding me. I struggled to focus my vision. I stared into the backs of the Prescott brothers and counted down from ten, allowing myself a moment to hide behind them as I processed in silence.
Calm down, Em. Don’t say a thing. Let her think she’s winning. Dad has this handled.
People assume strength is loud. In reality, strength is silent. It is resilience, the will to never surrender your dignity. And sometimes, the only person who knows strength exists inside you is you.
Nash’s muscles tensed. He seemed coiled, ready to burst. I didn’t know what to do, but I felt like I owed him. Touching him felt weird. Forbidden. Like I had broken a boundary no one had warned me existed. Still, I placed a palm on his back, hoping it brought him some comfort, like he and Reed had gifted me today.
If anything, he became tenser until I drew invisible lines on his back with my finger and began playing Tic-Tac-Toe with myself. Nash twisted his head and arched a brow at me, but his muscles had loosened. A lopsided grin tilted my lips up. I slashed a finger across the imaginary grid, pretending it was Reed’s back I was touching.
“Winthrop Textiles?” Dad raised his voice and pivoted to face Mother. His heel crushed the cigar against the marble, scattering dusky ashes like a shattered urn. “Able Cartwright hurt our daughter, and you’re worried about Winthrop Textiles?”
“Yes, I am. You should be, too.” I could picture her waving her arms around, gesturing to the cold marble of the living room. “How do you think we afford all this?”
I peeked around Reed and Nash a bit, in time to see Dad spear Mother with a glower that suggested he might hate her. I wasn’t my mom’s biggest fan, but Dad seemed pained, betrayed, some mixture of feelings that hurt me to witness.
“What if we did nothing?” I rested my forehead against one of the brothers. “What if…”
I considered Reed in juvie, all golden-haired and bronze-skinned beauty. He wouldn’t last. He’d come out jaded and acting like… well, like Nash.
“What if we could find a way to make this all disappear?” I finished, louder this time, peeping out from behind my wall of brothers to do so.
Betty Prescott shot me a grateful glance, hope in her eyes along with guilt. I understood it—the need to protect her sons at all costs. Her hope was mine, too.
“Wonderful idea, sweetie.” Mother stepped forward, the pep back in her step, and clapped twice. “Let me talk to Eric. We’ll get this settled. No one presses charges on either side. It’ll be like nothing ever happened.”
Except something had happened.
To me.
Did she even care?
Laughing and making dumb t-shirts with Reed pushed tonight away, but standing in front of an audience, vulnerable… what had almost happened hit me hard. I dipped behind the Prescotts and fell forward into Reed.
A broad hand reached back to steady me, and I realized I’d actually fallen onto Nash’s back.
He looked over his shoulder and whispered, “Easy, Tiger.”
I stared into his eyes, trying to figure out what he was trying to tell me with them. In front of him, my parents fought, but I focused on the Prescott brothers, my fingers finding purchase on Reed’s arm and Nash’s words.
“Why a tiger?” I asked.
We had one in the foyer, but I’d never thought much about it. It had a gaudy silver-skinned version of Dionysus riding it and Dionysus’ cult tattooed on its hind legs, none of which I identified with.
“It’s a saying,” Reed offered, still refusing to stare at either of us. He trained his eyes on Betty and Hank. His rage hadn’t lessened, but at the very least, I knew it wasn’t directed at me.
Nash shook his head. “You’re the tiger.”
I waited for him to explain. He didn’t.
“When you say it to me, I can’t figure out if you’re being nice or making fun of me.”
He shook his head, laughter on his breath. The amusement in his eyes carried levity I clung to. “Why can’t it be both?”
“Gideon!” Mother shouted. Her shrill voice broke the Prescott spell. “We are not jeopardizing our relationship with the Cartwrights over this!”
“And you’re okay with jeopardizing your relationship with your daughter?!” he called out to her retreating back, but she’d already left the room toward the office.
Finally, Dad turned to me, Reed, and Nash. “Are you okay? Did Able…” he started, then stopped as if realizing the company.
I bit my lip to stop it from quivering. Winthrops were strong.
“Nothing happened, Dad. He tried, but…” I trailed off, feeling silly because I was still hiding behind the Prescott brothers when I’d done nothing wrong. I stepped to the side and stared Dad in the eyes, my chin tilted up and voice steady. “I’m fine. I swear. And if Able is in the hospital, he got what he deserved, though I think I did a pretty good job kneeing him in the balls if I do say so myself. Twice.” I leaned against Reed, who wrapped an arm around my shoulder. “For the record, Dad, these shirts are accurate. Able Cartwright has a small dick, and now he has a gazillion broken body parts to go with it.” I squeezed Reed’s hand on my shoulder, a silent thank you.
Dad scanned me, examining my face for any signs of lying. “That’s my girl, but it ain’t enough for me.” He shook his head. Someone cared. Warmth blossomed across my chest. “He deserves jail.”
“No.”
“Em?”
“If I press charges, he’ll press charges against Reed. You know this.”
Dad and Nash cursed at the same time. Dad swiped a palm down his face and shifted his weight onto his back foot.
“Please, Dad, do this for me,” I added.
Silence trickled between us. He finally relented and shifted his eyes to Nash, like he was the leader of our little trio. “I want the three of you in Emery’s room. I don’t want Cartwright to catch sight of y’all when he shows up. Okay? It’ll only make it worse. I’ll do my best to fix this.”
“Yes, Dad.”
“Hank. Betty. Join me in my office, please?”
As soon as the room emptied, Reed had his forearm pressed against Nash’s throat. “What the fuck, man?!”
I caught the flash of remorse in Nash’s eyes before it fled, and he couldn’t have looked calmer even if he had a cigarette dangling from the corner of his lips. “I’m sorry.”
Two softly spoken words.
An apology I didn’t understand.
Still, I bore witness to the scene, an interloper they didn’t bother acknowledging.
Reed pressed harder against his brother’s throat before letting go. “Fuck you.” He shook his head. “Fuck Mom. Fuck Dad.” He strode off and out of the back door, ignoring my dad’s demands to hide.
Ignoring me.
“Reed!” I stumbled after him, but a hand tugged my shirt back. I jerked away, and Nash released me, even when I fell into the wall.
“Let him go.”
For a fleeting second, I wished to be Nash Prescott. I wished to have whatever chemicals in his brain allowed him to see the people he cared about and let them go.
But I wasn’t Nash.
I was Emery Winthrop.
And Emery Winthrop?
She’d realized her crush on Reed Prescott wasn’t as small as she’d thought.
It was an itch inside my heart.
I wanted to rip my flesh and tear him from my system.
