“Okay,” Posey said, staring.
“Are you okay?” Charlie asked, her gaze on the road.
“Of course I am,” Posey said. “You’re the one with the face that’s swelling like a balloon. Now will you explain?”
“Doreen has this on-again-off-again boyfriend named Adam,” Charlie started.
“The guy you were texting,” Posey said.
Charlie nodded, remembering her sister grabbing her phone on Wednesday, back when it had seemed as though she wasn’t going to blow up her life again.
“So Doreen beat you up? For messing around with her boyfriend?”
“No! Are you serious? Adam was pissed because I ratted him out and stole something from him.” Put like that, it did sound bad. “Which he deserved. And that thing I stole, he stole first.”
“I don’t think anyone’s following us,” Posey told her, slumping down and returning to a normal, legal seated position. “Can we go home?”
Charlie shook her head. “Let’s give Adam a night to cool off, where he doesn’t know where I am. I’ll talk to Doreen. She’ll calm him down.”
Posey frowned at the window, clearly unhappy.
Charlie sighed. “Sorry about your client.”
“You know that Vince knew about Adam, right?” Posey said.
“That I was conning him?” Charlie cut her gaze to her sister in the mirror. “How could he—”
“Okay, knew was the wrong way to put it. He thought he knew about Adam.”
“Just come on out with it,” Charlie said.
“He heard me reading off your phone. You know, about meeting Adam in private.”
Charlie felt sick. “Did he say something?”
“He asked me if I saw when you were going to have the meeting.” Posey looked deeply uncomfortable. “And said that I was right about him. That I’d been right all along.”
“And what did you say?”
“Nothing,” Posey told her. “I was too surprised. I really didn’t think he noticed what I said or what I thought. And I guess maybe I wasn’t fair to him.”
“Now you think that?” Charlie had to force her foot away from the gas, so strong was her impulse to take out her feelings on the road.
Posey shrugged. “He was too calm. I was always waiting for the other shoe to drop, for him to hurt you. I mean, hot, built guys are supposed to be assholes. I figured he was probably bad news. But in the end, even though he was a huge liar, I think he might have been your most successful relationship.”
Charlie briefly contemplated driving them both off the road and straight into a tree.
I wasn’t the only one who lied. He’d said that when they were fighting.
Now, much too late, she understood what he’d meant. I couldn’t give you what you needed. I kept things from you. Even if you didn’t know what was wrong, you could tell there wasn’t enough of me.
On Friday morning, when he’d gone to Rapture to pick her up, had he known she was supposed to meet Adam? She’d thought he was there because he’d been worried her car wouldn’t start, but what if he’d been there expecting to find her with someone else?
I wish I could say I was sorry, that I wanted to be honest the whole time, but I didn’t. I never wanted to be honest. I just wanted what I told you to be the truth.
Charlie had always believed that nothing really touched Vince, because everything he really cared about had been left behind in his old life, the one he was exiled from. The one to which he longed to return.
But it was entirely possible that he’d hated his old life.
And that she’d lost more than she ever realized she had.
26
THE PAST
The glass of champagne in Remy’s hand was warming too fast. Too many bodies pressed together. All around him, delicate laughter floated through the stifling air. Adeline was talking to a viscount or a baronet or someone with one of those titles that didn’t come with any money but did come with invitations to parties.
It bothered Remy a little that he could tell that without trying, that his eye automatically picked out the lack of tailoring in the man’s suit and the worn leather strap of a third-generation Rolex. He tried to convince himself that it was mere cleverness and not snobbery, but knew it wasn’t entirely true. He’d gotten used to having money he didn’t earn, and feeling smug about it.
The fundraiser was being hosted in the home of one of Remy’s ridiculously wealthy school chums. It was to benefit children of some kind. Maybe they’d been sick. Maybe they were going to be given art therapy. Or ponies. Or their ponies would be given art therapy. It didn’t matter. There was a theme too—old Hollywood, which basically meant wear something fancy or ridiculous or both. That didn’t matter either.