The Darkest Secret: A New Adult Romance Novel

by Jessica Pine

  Cory comes back in, a comic book under his arm. Usually I get the running commentary on the state of his irritable bowels, but today he looks surprised to see me at all.

  "I didn't get fired," I say, in response to his raised eyebrow.

  "Wow. He must really like you."

  "How come?"

  He flops onto the couch and grabs his laptop.

  "Most people so much as look at his daughter funny and they're done."

  "Nothing happened."

  "No, sure," he says, tapping something into the laptop. "Huh. That's new."

  "What's new?"

  "Camera," he says, and clicks something. It brings up a view of the house, one I haven't seen before, at least not through a lens. I realize with a start that I'm looking directly at Amber's swimming pool. Cory waggles an eyebrow suggestively. "You sure nothing happened, bro?"

  "We're spying on her now?"

  He shrugs.

  "Nobody's spying. The pool is alarmed anyway. You should have heard the noise when a raccoon fell it in one time. Woke the whole goddamn house."

  There's movement on the camera. She's a thin grey figure, approaching the water. Her head turns this way and that, and then she bends to sit on the edge of the water. I see the tiny flame as she lights up. I'm shocked by how uncomfortable it makes me feel, seeing her like this.

  "Turn it off," I say.

  Cory gives me a sidelong look.

  "This isn't right. We shouldn't be creeping on a girl like this. Especially not in her own home."

  "Creeping? Who's creeping? We're just making sure she doesn't drown herself or whatever."

  I uncurl my fingers. I hadn't even noticed I was making fists. What the hell is wrong with me? She's a rich kid. I shouldn't even feel sorry for her. My Aunt Liliana went crazy and nobody even noticed until one Thanksgiving she picked up a paper napkin and started eating it. No expensive doctors and cameras for Aunt Lili - she just kept going, feeding the kids, washing the dishes, weeding the drive - then that one day we looked in her eyes and realized she wasn't in there anymore. She'd checked out long ago. She didn't get to go nuts the way Amber did. She didn't have staff to bring her meals and pick up her clothes when she dumped them on the floor. Even when we finally persuaded her worthless husband that she wasn't doing it to piss him off, there wasn't the money to cover the medication she needed.

  Then you have someone like Amber, who has some Ivy League doctor come running every time her father catches her in the act of that eternal rich-girl pastime - Trying To Piss Off Daddy.

  When it's time to do my round again I'm in good shape. I have her cigarettes in my pocket and a belly full of righteous indignation. And she's pissed too. I can tell even before I see her face; her spine is stiff and her bare feet are swinging back and forth in the water, like she's an angry little kid.

  She turns to look at me and there are unfamiliar dents at the sides of her nostrils, a V pulled tight between her brows.

  "Where have you been?"

  "Working."

  "I was waiting."

  "I can see that."

  She exhales. For a moment I feel like tossing the cigarettes into the pool. I've never seen her quite like this before.

  "You'll be pleased to know I didn't get fired," I say.

  "I told him not to fire you."

  "Thanks. I'll write you a letter of recommendation to the goddamn union."

  The little V scrunches deeper and I realize that although I'm only two years older than her, I may as well be twenty in terms of real life. So she had some kind of unhappy love affair - didn't we all? It's no excuse for this bullshit. She has no idea what life is like for ordinary people.

  "Fuck you," she says, so mean that it sends a jolt right through me. She pulls her legs up out of the water and for an instant before she turns to me I see that her heels are red and raw from where she's been kicking them against the side of the pool.

  "Did you bring my cigarettes?" she asks.

  I laugh and grab her hand before she can reach up to slap me. The look in her eye frightens me and I decide right then and there that I never want to see it again. It's pure panic. The color drains from her face in seconds.

  "There's a camera," I say, still holding onto her wrist. "Right on us. Over the door."

  "Are you insane?"

  "Nope. Are you?"

  She tugs her wrist free of me and turns to look up. When she catches sight of the camera she sucks in an angry, indrawn breath and once again I get a sense of the fire in her. "

  You've got to be fucking kidding me," she says.

  Her hands squeeze her elbows, crushing her small breasts together under her thin tank top. I can see the shape of her nipples and I get the unsettling sense that she's doing this on purpose. She only wants me because she shouldn't have me. We'd be bad for one another. Her head's not on straight - I have it direct from her old man. But she looks directly at my mouth and bites her lower lip and in that moment I'm breathless by the strength of the desire she could inspire in me, if I'd only let her.

  "Why are they watching you?" I ask.

  "It doesn't matter."

  "It does matter."

  She shakes her head. "It's really none of your business."

  "Are you being held here?"

  She snorts.

  "Don't be so melodramatic," she says, like she didn't try to deliver a full-on telenovela backhand a moment ago. "I can leave whenever I please."

  "So why the cameras?"

  Amber sighs.

  "I told you; it's none of your business."

  "I thought you wanted to be friends," I say. "Last night..."

  Frustration makes her cruel.

  "Last night?" she says, with a mocking chime in her voice. "I wanted to fuck, Jimmy. No hearts and flowers about it. Maybe you're right. Maybe you are sentimental."

  "Maybe I am," I say, amazed by how bad she can make me feel. She doesn't even know my name - not my real name, the one my family calls me. She's nothing but a mean, skinny white girl, just another Hollywood brat.

  I walk away before she can see how much she's hurt me. Cory can take this route. She can try hitting on him for a change, if that's how she gets her kicks. I don't have to take this crap. It's bad enough wandering through this monster-sized house and knowing that if my mother worked every hour God sends for the rest of her life until she dropped down dead of exhaustion, she still wouldn't be able to buy so much as a corner of the kitchen or a guest bathroom. So much for money making you happy. I'm done with the imaginary problems of the rich. Maybe I should just do as Beca says and call Emily - she is my kind of girl. She's capable, clever, probably on fire to make babies. Not some breakable wisp of a W.A.S.P. who needs a shrink to persuade her to get out of bed every morning.

  "Take over my round," I tell Cory. "Take her a pack of smokes every day. She likes that. She can sit in the sun and smoke herself cancerous."

  He raises an eyebrow.

  "Dude - trouble in paradise?"

  I shrug and flop back on the sofa.

  "I'm done. I don't have to take her shit on top of everything else."

  "What happened?"

  "She found the new camera," I say. It's only half a lie. "And she's not happy."

  He snorts.

  "When is she?"

  I wanted to fuck. I turn those words over and over in my head. She's so used to getting what she wants. Part of me is almost sorry I didn't give it to her; she's off-limits, the boss's daughter. And wouldn't that just make it that little bit more fun?

  Jesus. What's gotten into me? I glance at the screen. It's quiet. No Amber. Just the oval expanse of the pool and a closed door. I want to hurt her. I want to get her back for what she said. Maybe I should look online. Maybe I should find out what the story is with her. Can it really be classed as invading her privacy when her life is already a matter of public record?

  I would have done it, right then. I would have peeked. But then the darkness behind the glass door widens and a figur
e appears on the camera. Slim, dark clothes, a baseball cap pulled down low. Holy shit. The figure disappears back through the door. None of the alarms have tripped and deep down I know exactly why. Nobody has crossed the perimeter or entered the house. It's her.

  She comes back out, carrying a bag this time. She sets it down and pulls a chair up towards the door. When she steps up onto the seat I see what she has in her free hand - a baseball bat.

  She's wearing huge sunglasses but I recognize the shape of her lips, before she swings the bat and the camera cuts out to fuzz.

  "Shit!"

  "What?" Cory glances in from behind the door.

  "Camera's out."

  "Huh?"

  The next thing I know I see her thin, dark figure running into the garage. She opens the door of a black Escalade. Cory reaches for the alarm, but I jump in front of him. "Dude, what are you doing?"

  "She's leaving."

  "So?"

  "She's not supposed to fucking leave, dumbass."

  I don't move.

  "No," I say. "She can leave. She told me she could leave."

  "And you believed her?"

  I watch as the Escalade pulls out of the garage.

  "Nobody told me otherwise," I say. I can already hear it approach the gatehouse.

  "Jimmy, move your ass. You know she can't go out there."

  "Why?" She's nearly on us. My instincts are torn in two. On one hand I want to do my job, but on the other hand I'm rooting for her to run. The new camera shook me up but this? This is flat out scary. The Escalade is at the gate and I'm standing right next to the console that will open the gate. She leans heavily on the horn, a loud, angry blaaaaaat sound that speaks more of impatience than desperation. And maybe that's why I do what I do. I hit the console button. The gate opens.

  She drives through, off onto Laurel.

  "Holy shit, man," says Cory. "The fuck did you just do?"

  "She wanted out. I let her out." That was all, right? I know it's not all, but if I tell myself it should be that simple then maybe it will be.

  Cory has gone a weird gray color.

  "You're dead," he says. "Jimmy, you idiot."

  "I don't understand. She said she could come and go as she pleased."

  "Yeah - in theory," says Cory. "What the fuck is the matter with you? Get after her. Bring her back." He grabs the keys to the security vehicle and tosses them to me.

  "Just like that?"

  He practically shoves me out of the door.

  "Yes, just like that," he says, his voice rising in panic. "Get out there now, before they realize she's out. They'll eat her alive."

  Chapter Ten

  Amber

  My Dad never got Thanksgiving. He managed to go native when it came to the Fourth of July - "Good riddance to bad colonies," - but Thanksgiving passed him by. Christmas was the time for turkey. "You don't need another holiday," he'd say. "Three months of stuffing your face with sugar - Halloween, Thanksgiving and then Christmas? It's no wonder you're all so fucking fat."

  I was always kind of relieved that his accent made everyone think he was being funny, when in fact he was serious, at least about the fat thing. He'd never quite got over his early career as a tubby English character actor, before he lost the weight and got his big break playing a bad guy. The mere mention of Thanksgiving food could turn him queasy.

  Everglade hadn't done much better. The closest she'd ever come to a real Thanksgiving was one year when Kiersten was fresh out of rehab and determined to make it a 'real family affair'.

  "Her idea of a 'real family affair' was like something out of Sophocles," said Everglade. "Oedipus Rex meets Martha Stewart. She had a fucking frilled apron on and everything. Then it all went to shit when Grandpa said she'd oversalted the green bean casserole and she started screaming about how he'd belittled her at every turn when she was growing up, and was it any fucking wonder she had validation issues?"

  "Holy shit."

  "Yeah, it was pretty magical," she said, leveling out the pumpkin pie filling. "Turned out rehab had told her to be 'free with her feelings', like my mother ever needed any encouragement in that direction. Fastest relapse ever. Why the hell would you tell an already emotionally-incontinent attention whore to let it all hang out, for fuck's sake?"

  She stood back from her handiwork, hands on her hips. We'd gone all out - consulting cookbooks and recipe websites. We were determined that year that we'd have a real, all-American Thanksgiving dinner, like the ones we'd never had when we were children. "Not bad," she said. "For a kid who was practically raised by grunge wolves."

  "It's perfect. Ina Garten eat your heart out."

  Everglade pulled a face. A week of watching food channels had turned her into an expert. "Yeah, if you wanna talk sodium intake," she said. "There hasn't been that much salt in one place since Lot's wife took a peek at a goddamn pride parade. Now, did you blanch the beans?"

  We'd made hand turkeys and table decorations, and all the sugary food that made my Dad so sick - sweet potatoes with marshmallows, canned cranberries and his worst horror of all - Jell-O salad. (Everglade pointed out he had no business freaking, considering he came from a country where people actually ate a thing called Spotted Dick.) We wrangled a monstrous turkey into the oven and watched neurotically through the glass door, squealing and hugging each other in triumph as it slowly began to resemble the varnished brown birds in the cookery books.

  Everything had gone so well. Looking back it was small goddamn wonder she didn't want me to invite Justin.

  She had never liked him. After a handful of meetings she said she was glad he made me happy, but personally she found him pretentious. "Different strokes for different folks and all that," she said. "But not my type, Babycakes. So not my type."

  It started when he came through the door and decided my skirt was too short.

  "You'll Britney Spears the whole damn room every time you bend over," he said. "Put something else on."

  "It's hot in the kitchen," I said, fanning my flushed face.

  "So open a window."

  "Already done." I was sweaty but like always I wanted to wrap myself around him, drown in the blue of his eyes. I could never quite believe he was mine, with his Byronic black curls and sweet, slow Southern voice. As we kissed he pulled my panties to the side and thrust two fingers inside me, right there in the hallway, where anybody could have walked in.

  "I don't want anyone else to see this," he said. "This is mine. You understand? All mine."

  I was already slack-jawed with lust. He gave me a look that could burn sugar and sucked the taste of me off his long fingers. I forgot all about the dinner that Everglade and I had worked so hard to make perfect, just like I forgot everything whenever he touched me. His fingers had rough tips from playing the guitar, something else he did almost as perfectly as he made love. When I wandered back into the kitchen I must have looked as vacant as I felt, because there was a pointed quality to Everglade's gaze. Looking back I realize she probably had a keener nose than most for sniffing out his brand of poison; after all, she was Kiersten Rowe's daughter.

  At the time I just thought she was being terrible; she and Justin brought out the worst in each other. I prayed for the moderating influence of Alex, her boyfriend at the time. He was very New York, scary smart and with the same wry, sideways cynical humor as Everglade. His father was a professor at Columbia and his mother was something big in publishing. They were both, he was fond of saying, fucking horrified at his choice of San Diego.

  He dished me out a spoonful of potatoes, a consideration not lost on Justin. Then he started talking about some author his mother had introduced him to - one of those bright young post-modernist things who was already being talked about as a Pulitzer candidate, even though he was barely older than us.

  "Dumb as a box of hair," said Alex. "I'm serious. That whole stripped-down prose they're all comparing to Steinbeck and Hemingway? It's actually because he's still on the See Spot Run level of sentence const
ruction."

  "The Tale of Scrotie McBoogerballs," Everglade declaimed, in a Morgan Freeman voice.

  I laughed. Justin curled his lip.

  "So what?" he said. "We should all carry on reading purple prose in order to look smart - is that what you're saying?"

  Alex shook his head.

  "I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying the emperor's dick is flapping in the breeze and it's only a matter of time before someone points it out."

  Justin shook his head. He liked classic novels and gloomy poetry, but he could never pass up an opportunity to be contrary. It was one of the things I loved about him - he challenged where everyone else would have accepted.

  "I liked it," he said, poking at a piece of turkey. The breast was moist - all our basting and barding and butter had paid off - but he hadn't mentioned that yet.

  "What?" said Everglade. "Scrotie McBoogerballs?"

  "Funny," he said. "I watch South Park too. I find it makes me smarter, don't you?"

  "Justin..." I felt my stomach twist and knot.

  "It's a joke," said Everglade, unintimidated. "It's funny."

  "So funny you told it twice?" Oh God. I should have known he wouldn't behave. I should have known he'd react badly to Alex. For some reason I'd told myself that Justin would love the company of someone as smart as he was. Only he was determined to be awful.

  "It was a pretty funny episode," said Alex. "What did you like about it?"

  "What? South Park?"

  "No. The book."

  Justin was pulled up sharp. I had no idea how he was going to react.

  "I thought it was honest," he said, after a short pause. He bit a chunk out of a buttered roll. "Unpretentious."

  Everglade's eyebrows made a break for the ceiling. I shot her a warning look.

  Alex shrugged.

  "I guess we differ. Personally I can't stand all that faux naive shit - I can't think of anything more pretentious."

  "I guess your baseline for pretension is different to mine," said Justin, leaning back in his chair and spreading his arms, the better to show off his tattoos.

  Everglade sighed.