by Gemma Weir
Even as I’m speaking, I don’t understand where all this anger and fear is coming from. I’m worried about her. I feel guilty and I don’t like it, especially since she’s been avoiding my calls and texts.
“I don’t know where she is,” Carrigan says, but there’s an edge to her voice, an underlying panic maybe and there’s a worry, or is it fear, in her eyes that I don’t understand.
“What happened on Saturday when she got back? She was worried about going home. She knew your parents were going to be upset,” I ask her, watching her closely as she swallows visibly, her eyes avoiding me, when always before she’s made a point of looking me in the face.
“Look, you need to speak to her about this. I’m not interested in your relationship drama,” she says, rolling her eyes and tapping her foot.
“Carrigan, please, we’re worried about her,” Olly says from behind me, his voice pleading.
“Seriously, you too?” she cries, her head snapping toward Olly. “Fine, I have no idea where she is. My parents weren’t pleased about the engagement. There was an argument and Tallulah packed a case and left. I assumed she’d gone back to your house, but obviously not.”
“What?” I shout, loud enough to garner the attention of the few people that are milling around the cafeteria doors. “Where would she go?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t care,” Carrigan says, shaking her head as she moves to walk past me.
Reaching out, I grab her arm. “Are you fucking serious? She’s your twin and you have no idea where she is, and you don’t fucking care?”
Her eyes flash with an emotion that I don’t recognize, and when she speaks, the words she’s saying somehow don’t match with the tone of her voice. “Good riddance. I’m glad she’s gone.”
“Do your parents know where she is?”
She stares down at my hand on her arm and whispers. “I hope not.”
I let her go, not stopping her as she walks away. Turning to look at Olly and Wats both of them have matching worried expressions on their faces.
“I’m starting to freak the fuck out a little bit over here,” Wats says, voicing the thing I think we’re all feeling.
“That sounded kind of bad, right?” Olly says. “I mean, she did say she hoped her parents didn’t know where Tally was. I heard that right, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, that’s what I heard too,” Wats confirms.
“Where would she go? Carrigan said she packed a bag after she argued with their parents. Maybe she’s just gone to a friend’s house to cool off or something,” Olly says.
“I don’t think she has any friends,” I say, absentmindedly as I pull my cell from my pocket and immediately dial her number. The voicemail kicks in and on impulse I dial another number, listening to it ring for a moment until a voice answers.
“Hewitt.”
“Hi, this is Arlo Lexington. I have a job for you,” I say into the cell phone.
….
It takes exactly forty-five minutes for my private investigator to track Tally’s one and only credit card and find out the number of her hotel room. Thank fuck I still had his number from when I had him look into one of my mother’s gold-digging boyfriends last year.
Watson and Olly both look worried as Carson drives us across town to the hotel. I wanted to come alone, but the guys convinced me it was better for all of us to come in case we had some difficulties getting up to her room.
Carson throws his keys to the valet and we move quickly across the foyer and toward the elevator without anyone even questioning why four guys in school uniform would be at a hotel in the middle of the day.
Some days, like today, it’s fucking awesome to be rich. No one questions your right to be somewhere when you turn up in a car worth as much as most of the employee’s homes, dressed in the uniform for one of the country’s most exclusive schools.
We board the elevator and press the button for the twenty fifth floor. Tally is just in a basic room, not even a suite for fuck’s sake. When we reach her floor, I lead the way down to room two-five-seven and knock, all of us waiting impatiently for her to answer.
When the door opens, it reveals Tally in a sports bra and baggy sweatpants, her hair pulled up on top of her head. But right now, she could be naked, and I wouldn’t be looking at anything other than her face, because the stunningly beautiful blonde has two black eyes, bruising, and a cut along her swollen cheek, along with a just starting to close together split lip.
“What the fuck?” I snarl, shoving my foot into the door just as she goes to slam it in my face.
Three
Tallulah
The knock of the door has me jumping up to open it. The concierge said it would be twenty minutes for my room service to be delivered, but it’s barely even been ten. Throwing open the door, I’m beyond shocked to find Arlo staying in the corridor, with Olly, Watson, and Carson all lurking behind him.
“What the fuck?” Arlo growls.
The sound of his voice sends tremors running through my body and I move to shut the door, only to find his foot jammed in the way. He gently pushes me aside and all four of the huge boys force their way into my room.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, remembering that I’m only in a sports bra and should really have put some clothes on before I answered the door at all.
“What the fuck happened to your face?” Arlo growls, stalking toward me.
Flinching, I duck out of his way, crossing to the other side of the bed and putting the furniture between us as I grab a t-shirt and pull it on, covering up.
“Who did that to you?” Olly asks softly, not approaching me.
“I’m fine,” I say on autopilot, lifting my hands to pull down my hair and hide the worst of the bruising.
“No, leave it,” Arlo snaps, slowly approaching me like I’m a wild animal that’s going to bolt or attack him when he gets too close.
“Why are you here? I’d like you to leave please,” I say, willing my voice to sound normal and calm.
“You didn’t come to school. You haven’t been answering my calls,” Arlo says, taking a single step closer to me.
“I’m sick, and I didn’t want to talk to anyone,” I reply, quickly darting a glance at the other
guys and noticing that they all have similar sickly expressions on their faces, but that none of them are moving any closer to me.
“I was worried. Carrigan said you left, but that she didn’t know where you were,” Arlo says edging closer to me again.
“Err yeah, I left,” I say, feeling shellshocked as I speak the words. I left my home. I’ve been at a hotel since Saturday night and now saying those words out loud to him, it’s the first time it’s actually dawned me that I left my parents’ home and I don’t think I’ll ever go back.
I glance away and when I look up again Arlo is right in front of me, his brow furrowed, his lips pressed together as he watches me with sad eyes.
“Was this your dad or your mom? Or Carrigan?” he asks, his voice barely above a whisper.
I swallow, knowing I shouldn’t tell him, that I shouldn’t tell anyone. With both Greg and Mrs. Humphries already knowing, that’s two people too many, but the words fall from my lips anyway. “Mom and Dad.”
“Baby, I’m so fucking sorry,” he gasps, as he finally closes the distance between us and carefully pulls me into his chest, his arms wrapping around me like I’m the most fragile thing in the world.
I let him hold me, as numbness settles over me. It’s an odd sensation, but strangely comforting. He’s speaking to me, but I don’t hear what he’s saying through the haze of pressure that’s building inside my head and blocking out the sympathy I can see rolling off him in waves.
His actions were the catalyst for this. He didn’t make them act violently, but this fake engagement was the straw that broke the camel’s back. It was a step too far that finally made my parents crack.
“Please stop touching me,” I say, pushing insistently at his chest.
/> Immediately releasing me, he steps back, his eyes raking over me, presumably looking for more injuries.
“I’m fine, it’s only my face. I just don’t want you to touch me,” I say, looking up into his tortured face.
“This is… this is my fault, isn’t it?”Hhe asks.
“You weren’t the one who backhanded me, but all your bullshit lies contributed to my parents losing their shit, yes,” I say frankly, not prepared to sugarcoat this to make him feel better. I may have to blend into the background of my own life, but that doesn’t mean I’m a doormat.
“Fuck,” he growls, lifting his hands to his head and gripping his hair so tightly his fingers go white.
A part of me thinks that maybe I should comfort him, do something to assuage his guilt, but I don’t move, because I want him to feel guilty. I need someone to share this burden for at least a little while, and though I’m sure it’s not the healthiest thing to do, watching him suffer lightens my own pain.
“I’m sorry. I’ll tell them the truth, I’ll explain,” he says, his words coming so fast they’re a jumble.
“No,” I cry, silencing him.
“What?” he says, his eyes meeting mine.
“It doesn’t matter anymore. You used me to piss off my family and force them to accept that you don’t intend on marrying my sister. It’s too late to take it back. Now I need to use you too. I need to keep up appearances until graduation, then I’ll be leaving and I’ll never have to see any of you ever again,” I tell him, my voice hard and weirdly monotone.
“You need to go to the police,” Olly says, his voice reminding me that the others are even in the room.
“I’m not going to the police, don’t be ridiculous.”
“But they attacked you,” he says, stepping forward.
“It doesn’t matter anymore. I’m not going back to that house, ever.”
“So you’re just going to let them get away with doing this to you?” Arlo snarls.
I smile and it feels foreign on my lips, the hint of pain only sharpening my intent. “No, I’m not letting them get away with anything. My parents are driven by money, obsessed by Carrigan’s inheritance and the power that will come with being that rich.”
“So what, we’re all rich,” Carson says, his gaze assessing, as he watches me from the other side of the small room.
“Exactly, we’re all rich. I have enough money in my trust fund to never have to work a single day in my life and still live in the lap of luxury. Money isn’t a consideration for any of us, but yet my family are still obsessed with being the richest of the rich. You guys know about the ridiculous set of stipulations in my great grandfather’s will, right?” I say, addressing them all.
“She has to be a virgin, marry into another old money family blah, blah, blah,” Watson says, rolling his eyes.
“Exactly. Well she also has to maintain a 4.0 GPA, which without me she can’t do,” I say calmly.
“What do you mean?” Olly asks.
“My sister is smart, but she’s not perfect 4.0 smart.”
“Okay?” Carson says, looking like he has no idea what I’m talking about.
“I take more than half of my sister’s classes for her,” I blurt.
“What?” Watson cries. “How?”
“You pretend to be her,” Arlo says, his voice low and rough.
I nod slowly as I watch him piece it all together.
“That’s why no one knew you were there. It’s not because you’re introverted or antisocial or any of that other bullshit your family tried to feed me. It’s because that way you could swap with your sister whenever she needed you to take her place.”
“Exactly. The teachers know both of us attend, but my parents make enough donations to the school that no one questions why I skip so many of my own classes, and hand in my assignments late, or why my parents insist I do detention on my own in isolation,” I say, crawling onto the bed and sitting cross-legged in the middle of the comforter.
“But why would you agree to it all?” Olly asks, looking genuinely perplexed.
“My sister might be a massive bitch now, but she hasn’t always been this bad. The moment this inheritance was dropped on her, she’s been living with a noose around her neck, tightening and tightening the older she gets. I remember hearing her crying in her room one day, and when I asked her why she was upset, she said that Mom and Dad would hate her because she was going to fail her chemistry test and ruin all of our lives. We were fourteen and she thought failing one test was going to destroy our entire family’s future. I suggested I take the test for her.”
“So, you actually agreed to basically pretend you don’t exist,” Arlo snaps.
A wry scoff falls from my lips. “No, but when my mom found out I took that first test and passed, she asked me to step in again, then again. Then she stopped asking and started telling me to do it. She’d lament on and on about how Carrigan was the one with the important future, but that I had to play my own role.” Looking up, I find all of the guys watching me. “I don’t really remember how it got from a couple of tests, to them pretending they only had one kid, to me hiding apart from when I was pretending to be my sister.”
“Tallulah, that’s crazy,” Olly says, his sympathy oozing from him.
“Look I’m not looking for sympathy,” I snap, turning to look at my fake fiancé. “Arlo, you blackmailed me and this happened,” I say, shamelessly pointing to my bruised face. “You owe me.”
“I’m, fuck, yeah, whatever you need,” he coalesces easily.
“It’s time to remind everyone that I exist, and fuck my parents and sister over at the same time. Carrigan helped me in the end, but this money, this expectation, it’s poisoning her. I’m pretty sure she’s going to hate me even more than she already does, but I’m hoping she’ll see this is actually the best thing for her in the end.”
Watson laughs and it’s infectious and a little scary. “Hell yeah, what do you have in mind?”
Four
Arlo
I can hear her speaking to the guys, but I can’t focus on anything but the bruises on her face. Her parents hit her. Both of her parents physically struck her, because of the stupid childish lie I told. She told me this would cause her problems. She asked me, begged me, not to go through with this, not to mess with her life. But I ignored her pleas and I did it anyway because I’m a selfish motherfucker, and because of that she’s bruised and battered.
She’s hurt and alone in a tiny fucking basic hotel room, because her family forced her to be invisible, and yet I’m the asshole that pushed everyone over the edge and the reason she got beaten up. You see these girls on TV shows whose families abuse them and it’s fucking awful, but you never think it might happen to someone you know.
We live in a world of excess, of privilege and wealth. Abusive parents are supposed to be a poor people thing.
I want to go and hug her, to tell her I’m sorry and that I can fix this, but she’s not interested in my bullshit and I don’t fucking blame her. She doesn’t even look angry. She just straight up told me that I’m the reason she has two black eyes. I’m the reason why her beautiful, flawless face is bruised and swollen. I’m the motherfucking reason, her lip is split and probably scarred.
All of this is my fucking fault, and she’s just calmly sitting on that stupid queen size bed and explaining how she plans to piss her family off. Why isn’t she crying? Why isn’t she a fucking puddle on the floor that I can rescue?
“What can we do?” I ask, needing to find some way to start to make this up to her. Nothing I can do can ever compensate for this happening, but I’ll do whatever she needs me to do, to try.
“I need you guys to help reintroduce me back into society again. I need to be seen everywhere so everyone knows that there are two of us,” she says easily, still beautiful despite the state of her face.
“There are so many bars, events, and parties happening every night, plus you could ham up the engagement stuff; the f
uture Mrs. Lexington is definitely worthy of the society pages,” Watson says.
“You need to make a real entrance at school, make sure everyone knows exactly who you are,” Carson jumps in.
A small smile tips at the corner of her lips, but she winces slightly and it falls from her face, making me feel like an even bigger asshole. “You need to move in with me,” I say, bringing the entire conversation crashing to a halt.
“What?” She cries. “No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do, it explains why you’re no longer living at your parents’ home and cements the engagement—we’re so in love that you’ve already moved into our future home to plan the wedding,” I say confidently, flashing a look at Olly, who quickly jumps onto the bandwagon.
“That actually makes sense. You guys can become the ‘it’ couple. You’ll arrive together, leave together, total hashtag couple goals,” he says nodding.
“Hashtag couple goals?” Tally says, cringing slightly.
“The fastest way to get you back on the social scene is with social media,” Carson butts in.
“I’m not on social media,” Tally says.
“What not even Insta?” Watson says aghast.
“Not even Insta,” Tally says with a small amused laugh.
“Well that needs to change. Where’s your cell?” Watson asks.
“I don’t actually know, but it doesn’t connect to the internet anyway,” She says, waving in the direction of her case, stood open on the luggage stand.
All four of us turn to look at her. “What type of cell do you have?” Carson asks slowly.
She shrugs. “I don’t know. The kind that makes calls; it’s vintage.”
“What like an old iPhone?”
“No, like an old Nokia.”
