Series: Webs We Weave Series by Krista Ritchie
Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 126927 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 635(@200wpm)___ 508(@250wpm)___ 423(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 126927 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 635(@200wpm)___ 508(@250wpm)___ 423(@300wpm)
Fear flickers in and out of her eyes. “That’s an exaggeration.”
“How?”
“When we were young, of course we weren’t given the same amount of responsibility, but they have given us more. And when you’re putting together a team, it makes sense that you look at each person’s strengths and weaknesses and compatibility. They’re always just doing what’s best for us.”
“What’s best for the job,” I correct.
“What’s best for us is best for the job. It’s always been that way, and they’re just giving us the fancy lifestyles they wished they had at our age.”
Her mother is speaking.
“You know the minute I started hating them?”
“The exact minute?” She looks me over. “No. You remember it?”
“Yeah.” I narrow my gaze on her. “I was fifteen. I confessed to my father something I shouldn’t have. I trusted him with something priceless.” I cock my head. “I told him how I felt about you.”
Her face slowly falls. “You actually said the words to him?”
“I told him I had a fucking crush on you. How much blunter could I be?” The pain of this mistake flares like a new sore and not something a decade old. “And you know what they did?”
She’s in slight shock.
“Over the next ten years, they chose what I was to you. They made me your brother. They made me watch you get groped by rich shitbags. They made me your boyfriend. They made me stand ten feet away and do nothing while you were defenseless with men who could’ve crushed you. They made me save you on a turntable, over and over again. They made me your husband. They took my feelings for you and they put them in a motherfucking blender.”
She’s unblinking, haunted.
The cords of my muscles burn as they’re stretched in tense bands. “Does that really sound like something a loving, caring parent would do to a child?”
“Rocky . . .” My name is gentle from her lips.
“The minute I started hating them,” I say, “was the minute I realized they would try to take my one vulnerability and use it against me. The cold hard truth: I’d rather die a thousand fucking times than be conned once.”
She nods, understanding.
I’ll never stop lying and influencing others for my gain.
I can’t.
It’s inside me like roots tethered to my veins. I love how it feels when I ask for something and I’m given it. The power is a drug. But more than that, I’m made for this, and deserting it leaves me weak . . . vulnerable to manipulation.
“We’re all bad people, Phoebe. But they take the cake.”
Phoebe drops her gaze to her feet. “I didn’t know Everett knew . . . I mean, they likely all suspected we liked each other. Do you think he told our moms?”
“Yeah.”
“But you’re not sure?”
“There it is,” I say dryly, “the doubt.”
She glares. “Skepticism isn’t a bad thing.”
“But you can’t be skeptical of our mothers? Just the other way around.”
She’s letting them off the hook and prepared to fry my father for misusing my trust in him. So I’m a little shocked when Phoebe admits, “Okay, maybe they’re partly to blame. I don’t know yet.”
I haven’t let go of the sink beside her hips.
Her gaze brushes over my chest and flexed biceps. I study the beautiful planes of her heart-shaped face, a quiet second breathing between us despite the running shower and the heavy metal music.
There is fond history with Phoebe that pulls me into a trance. All the roles we’ve played. All the lies we’ve lived together. It’s twenty-plus years at the other’s trusting, loving, devoted side. It circles us in moments and minutes and silent hours.
“Being with you gives them power over me,” I whisper to Phoebe. “It always has. I’ve felt weak and vulnerable and used. And I don’t trust what they’d do if we really got together. You say your mom would be too involved. I think that’s an understatement.”
Phoebe weaves her arms over her chest and cups her elbows.
The strain between our bodies prods me to push up against her. To hold her face again and pin her to the sink—but I keep the desire chained and barricaded in my head.
“We’re back where we started,” Phoebe says under her breath. “You know it hurt being close to you on a job, knowing that’s where it lived and died. I need to move on from you—that’s the only way this works.”
I let go of the sink like a knife sliced through my gut. But what did I expect?
We’ll never be together. Move on.
“I’m going home,” Phoebe says, slipping past me. She collects her phone off the fuzzy mat. “It’s better if you don’t follow me.”
I breathe hot breaths through my nose, my eyes burning. The door whips open and Phoebe storms out into the drunken party with the rage of an abused ex, while college students gawk from her to me.