by Eden Beck
“It’ll probably be a bit quieter up there,” he says, “plus, I think we’ll get a good vantage point to watch everything. Still get to be a part of the action without actually being a part of it.”
I give his arm a good squeeze, our eyes meeting long enough for us to share a smile. “Finally,” I say, “an idea tonight that I can wholeheartedly agree with.”
Sterling seems to like the idea too, because he grabs my other hand and leads me toward the stairs right away. I guess it makes sense since we’ll be able to keep track of where his dad is at—and avoid any more run-ins with him at all costs. It’s also just out of earshot of the rest of the hall, so we can talk without being afraid of being overheard by any of the other well-practiced party goers.
But of course, right before we make it to the stairs, Bridget has to step into our path again.
She looks over the four of us with a look of disgust that she does nothing to try to conceal.
“I refuse to let you turn this gala into your own private, twisted little make out orgy,” she says with both of her hands on her hips this time. Just the thought makes her wrinkle up her nose and make a mock gagging sound.
“Move out of the way, Bridget,” Warren says, his own voice short. “We aren’t going to make out anywhere, we’re just going to sit up on the stage where there’s more room. And seriously, an orgy? You’re just trying to start trouble.”
“Start trouble?” she says, her voice a pitch too high. “I thought that you brought me here to spend the evening with me at this nice event. But I can see that you had other motives for coming here tonight. I’m not even sure why you brought me along. You could have made a fool out of yourself without me here to watch it. I refuse to let you drag our family’s name through the mud just because you’ve let your standards in women slide.”
Oh my god, this girl is getting on my very last nerve. I try really hard to bite my tongue, but Bridget refuses to move out of our way and it’s so childish and ridiculous that I just can’t stand it anymore.
“You’re just angry because no one will ever love you the way these guys love me,” I blurt out without thinking. “You’re the one who should be embarrassed of herself.”
All of them turn to look at me.
I’m not sure if they’re more shocked that I said something so honest, or so mean. I really probably shouldn’t have said it at all. Not only was it downright hurtful—even if it is true—but the only purpose it’s going to serve is to make Bridget even more furious.
I let my temper get the better of me and I shouldn’t have.
I really shouldn’t have.
It just seems like someone needed to put her in her place for once. I think everyone is just a bit taken aback that it is me who’s doing it.
Me, more than anyone.
“That isn’t true,” she says with a smug look on her face before turning to her brother. “Tell her.”
Maybe if she hadn’t been wearing such a look of hateful arrogance all over her face, or if her eyes didn’t look like they were drowning in malevolence, then maybe Warren would have answered differently. But I can see in his eyes, the answer that he’s getting ready to give her and it is going to make her implode.
“It is true,” he says as he looks his sister dead in the eyes. “You keep acting like this, and Aubrey’s right.”
Perhaps the only person more shocked than Bridget is me.
I didn’t exactly expect Warren to defend me, but I certainly didn’t expect him to outright agree.
At first Bridget just looks shocked, but then she scoffs as if she doesn’t believe him. She turns to both Chase and Sterling and forces a small laugh out of her mouth that sounds desperately close to a whimper.
“Oh please,” she says with a sarcastic lilt at the end of her voice. “I suppose that you two are going to tell me that you’re both in love with Aubrey too now.”
“Yeah,” Sterling says very matter-of-factly. “We are.”
It was astounding enough to hear Chase say it earlier, but hearing Sterling say it too … and to Bridget no less … it leaves me absolutely floored.
I’m soaring so high on my emotions that I could sail up to the moon never to come back down.
I watch as Bridget is truly at a loss of words for the first time quite possibly ever. She looks at Sterling with a sort of disappointed longing, but it’s the look that she gives her brother that’s the most pained one of all.
She looks at him as if she has just been utterly betrayed by the one person that she is closest to in the world. And for a moment, I actually feel bad for her.
Then, she simply turns and steps out of our way without saying another word. I can’t read her expression.
It’s like a brewing storm. On the surface everything looks calm—hurt, but still calm. But underneath, there is an undercurrent of anger that is brewing tumultuously. I can see it in her eyes and hear it in the way that she is breathing heavily as if she’s trying to keep herself from a catatonic explosion.
There are two ways that this can go, now.
Either Bridget can finally take the hint that maybe people would like her more if she wasn’t such a bitch, and maybe she’ll try to make a change for the better. Or, after the initial shock of what just happened wears off, she’ll come back a hundred times more vindictive and malicious than she already is.
From what I have learned about Bridget, I already know which one of those reactions she’s going to have.
But she needs to be careful because I am still holding on to her secret—the scandalous secret that will smear her reputation far worse than Warren’s own secret ever could, and I’ve seen how carefully he’s kept that guarded.
She won’t dare push me too far—not with that looming over her head. I may have gone too far with a lot of things, but having that secret is the one thing that’s saving my ass.
Or so I think.
Chapter Twenty-Three
It could have all gone so smoothly.
I spent the last few months preparing to get out of Ridgecrest early, only to have those hopes dashed by a few scathing—and very public—words. I should be upset, devastated even, but instead I find an unexpected flood of relief.
I don’t have to leave.
I never thought I’d be thinking of it that way.
But here I am, with Warren, Chase, and Sterling—and I realize these last few weeks I’ve been in denial that I’d started to secretly hope I wouldn’t get out of here early.
There’s no reason to be in denial anymore.
Or there wouldn’t be, if Bridget would just leave us be for one damned moment.
We’re barely on the stage a few minutes, standing up in the wings to watch the crowd milling down below, before Bridget comes storming up the steps and marches right over to us again.
This time, there’s a strange look on her face that I’ve only seen a few times before.
And it’s usually reserved for Sterling.
It’s recklessness.
This time, she heads straight for me and only stops when she’s facing me and just a few inches from my face. The guys are all gathered around waiting to see what she’s going to say next. I know I’m not the only one who looks visibly tired of her drama. Sterling looks completely ready to escort her off the stage if she starts getting too nasty. But instead, she does the one thing that I never thought she would do.
“You know what, Aubrey?” she says. This time she looks genuinely upset and doesn’t even have the theatrically placed hands on her hips. “You’re right.”
“Excuse me?” I say, wondering what kind of mind game she’s trying to play now. “I’m right about what?”
“You’re right about no one ever loving me. Because the one person who maybe would have loved me, I had to give up. And for what? For this? To be here at this crappy reform school with a brother who only pretends to care about me, a guy that only pretended to like me, and a bunch of fake friends that would just as easily choose you over me at the
toss of a coin?”
She throws back her head and lets out a strangled laugh.
“All that so I could be humiliated like this and told that I’m unlovable by a girl like you? A worthless, penniless, cruel-hearted person whose entire existence here should have ended last semester.”
This is definitely rock bottom for Bridget. She has a feverish look in her eyes that’s started making her look a bit like a rabid animal.
It seems like she’s barely holding on by a thread now. Before I even see it coming, and before I can do anything to stop her, Bridget turns to her brother and does the very last thing I expect.
She starts to tell him everything while Sterling, Chase, and I look on helplessly.
“So, you love her, huh?” she says to Warren. Her words sound like they are intended to sting. “Then I guess that means you two are always honest with each other about things, right? Because isn’t that what people who love and trust each other are supposed to do—be honest with each other?”
Warren just stares at her as if she’s a toddler having a meltdown and it’s just going to be a train wreck no matter what he does or doesn’t do.
“Well, I hate to tell you this, but Aubrey has been lying to you this whole entire time,” she sneers. “That girl is nothing like you think. Poor Aubrey, right? Wrong.”
She stops and bares her teeth at her brother. “She’s not the victim she’s made herself out to be.”
All three boys look at me, and in that moment, breath catching, I see the resolve falter on their faces.
I’d be mad at how quick they are to doubt me if Bridget wasn’t telling the truth.
“What are you ranting on about, Bridget?” Warren asks, his eyes flickering between her face and mine.
“Aubrey has been blackmailing me,” Bridget says, simply.
I’m almost ashamed to admit that all three boys let out the smallest, relieved sighs.
They don’t believe I’m capable of it.
But of course, they’re wrong. I am.
“Blackmailing you?” Warren asks with a chuckle. “Really? That’s the best thing you can come up with? Okay, I’ll bite … about what?”
Bridget doesn’t answer him, instead she just looks at me and smiles widely.
“How does it feel to be exposed?” she asks me.
I feel every nerve ending in my body standing on edge. I have the foreboding feeling that this is all going to get much worse before it gets better.
I open my mouth—but to say what? I could deny it, but then what good would that do?
I’ve already told enough lies.
I also can’t seem to get myself to tell the truth, so I just stand here in awkward silence, my lips moving but no sound coming out.
I only feel worse when I feel a reassuring hand press against my lower back.
“What in the hell could Aubrey possibly have to blackmail you about?” Warren asks again. “Blackmail only works if you have something to hide. Do you have something to hide, Bridget?”
Suddenly, there’s the slightest falter in the pressure on my back as Warren turns to me.
“What is she talking about?” he asks, his voice raising just a bit. “Is there something going on between the two of you?”
I don’t answer him either because I’m not sure what Bridget is going to do, and I don’t know if telling the truth or keeping silent is the better choice at this point.
“Damn it, Aubrey, tell me what’s going on!” Warren says angrily.
Sterling and Chase are both silent and the air hangs around us in a pregnant pause. The hand on my back slips away entirely, and suddenly, though I still stand planted to the same spot, I’m falling.
Warren’s tone unnerves me completely. Even last semester when he teased and tormented me, his tone was always bullish and taunting, but it was never so ripe with raw anger and frustration as it is right now. I take a step back in the chaos and bump up against a control panel on the side of the stage, which startles me even further.
All three boys are staring between Bridget and me, but no one is saying anything at all. I want to tell him—I want to be honest with all three of them, but at this moment I am keenly reminded of what Alaska and Clark had said.
I went too far.
I really went too far this time.
With Bridget, with them, with all of it.
Now I just wish that I hadn’t done any of it. I wish that I could take it all back and that I hadn’t ever hid anything from Sterling, Warren, or Chase. Now how am I supposed to fix it?
“If she’s not going to tell you,” Bridget says resolutely, “then I am.”
Warren’s face is contorted in confusion as he looks away from me and back to his sister. It looks like he doesn’t want to hear it from her—whatever it is. But since I’m not saying anything, he gives his sister the stage, literally. He waits for her to start talking, and when she does it all rolls out of her mouth just like the crashing waves caused by that brewing storm I saw growing in her earlier.
“The reason that I went to go stay with our grandparents wasn’t what Mom and Dad told you. I went to stay with them because I was pregnant.”
And there it is. It’s out. Her secret.
Any power I held over Bridget drains away along with the color in Warren’s face.
He looks at his sister and his brow furrows so deeply that I can barely see his forehead anymore. I hear Chase and Sterling shift uncomfortably on their feet, their own silence as telling as any words.
“They didn’t want me to stain our family’s reputation—that precious reputation—so they shipped me off to stay with our grandparents.”
“So …” Warren says, his own voice faltering. “So did you …”
“Did I have it? Yes, Warren. I did. Then I had to come back home and pretend like none of it had ever happened—like I hadn’t just gone through an agonizing birth and an even more agonizing act of giving up my baby just so that I could come back here to all of this bullshit.”
All three guys stared at Bridget in silence and shock.
Utter silence.
I don’t realize what’s wrong with that until I see Chase glance sideways over my shoulder and my gaze follows to see that something else truly awful has happened.
Somehow even more awful than what’s already unfolding in front of me.
The entire hall full of people is silent and staring at us. All of the students, faculty, and members of the review board that are here, all staring straight up at us as if we are the hired entertainment for the gala.
I look around frantically to see how in the world they could possibly hear what we are saying from where we are all the way on the stage. And that’s when I see it—the control panel that I accidentally bumped into when I took a step back earlier. All of the lights on the panel are lit up green.
The microphones are on, broadcasting every one of Bridget’s words throughout the hall. Everyone in the whole hall has heard her.
Every. Last. Word.
Everyone here, including the review board, just heard all of it. I give Chase a look of panic and try to stumble off the stage to at least take this discussion elsewhere, but Bridget doesn’t so much as budge.
That wild look in her eyes says it all.
It’s too late anyway … Why stop now?
“Want to know the fun part of all this?” Bridget says. “The only part that I am actually going to enjoy telling you about? Aubrey knew about it. She knew about my secret and she used it to blackmail me. She’s been blackmailing me this entire semester, ever since we got back. She took the most traumatic event in my life and used it to torture me. Why do you think I let her sit at my table and invited her to my party? Why do you think that I gave her all my old clothes and didn’t protest at all when she took my volunteering assignment? Do you really think that I would just do all of those things out of the kindness of my heart for a girl like her?”
That was the most convincing and believable thing that she said. Warren know
s his sister, hell all three guys know Bridget’s personality, and all of them know that she wouldn’t have done any of that stuff if she hadn’t actually been blackmailed and forced into doing it.
I look over at Warren, and at the blank and emotionless expression on his face. He looks back at me but not in the same way that he had just moments ago.
Now his gaze is cold and hard and bitter.
“How could you?” he snarls at me vehemently. The tone in his voice doesn’t even sound like him anymore.
I’m still falling inwardly. I can’t believe this is happening. I can’t believe he can go from professing his love for me one moment and then looking at me with daggers in his eyes the next.
“I get it that you don’t like my sister, and I get it that you wanted to pay us back for how we treated you last semester. But how could you do something so … so vile?” His voice cracks again. “I thought you were different.”
“Warren, I’m sorry,” I say as I start to hear the desperation crawl into my voice. “I hadn’t intended to fall for you, or for any of you. By the time I realized what a mistake I made … it was too late to go back and fix it.”
“That is no excuse for what you’ve done,” he says, looking at me as if I am despicable to lay eyes on now. “You’re a snake, and I can’t believe that I even trusted you for a minute.”
“Warren, please,” I say as I reach out my hand to touch his arm.
He backs away, and he isn’t the only one who steps back. Sterling and Chase do as well.
“Guys come on,” I say. “I know that what I did was wrong, but you have to admit that almost everything you guys did to me last semester was wrong too.”
“Nothing we did to you ever came close to this,” Warren says. “You lied to all three of us about it—even as we were trying to help you.”
I get ready to say something else, but I can see the review board members approaching the stage out of the corner of my vision. I can’t deal with all of this at once. I need a minute to breathe.
I scramble to duck and hide behind the pulled curtain and in my confusion and chaos, I nearly stumble down the steps. Despite my betrayal, Chase reaches out to help me and keep me from falling, but instead he ends up losing his own footing.
