Page 90 of One Filthy Kiss

“Meg, I’m so sorry.” Her voice reaches me from somewhere far away, someplace where we were once best friends who didn’t betray each other over a fucking man we only just met.

I grip the side of the basin, my knuckles white. “Don’t you dare say sorry now.” I speak into the void, barely recognizing my own voice. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

“I never thought this would happen. Any of this.”

I whirl around and face her, the woman I’ve known most of my life. I realize now that I hardly know her at all. “What did you think was going to happen when you took him to my motel room? Did you think he would sniff my panties like some kind of fucking pervert and be on his way? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

She remains seated. She looks scared, and I’m glad.

“I didn’t want this, Meg. You have to believe me.”

“Believe you? I can’t believe a fucking word you say!” This is killing me inside, but I can’t stop myself now. “Amber’s father has followed us here because of you!”

“I don’t think?—”

“No, Nikki! That’s the fucking truth. You don’t think about anyone but yourself. Because of you, he’ll take Amber away from me.”

Amber stirs inside the den, and I realize I’ve been practically shrieking at Nikki. I need to dial it down for my sister’s sake.

“They won’t let him take Amber away from you.” Her eyes are pleading with me, but I can’t even bear to look at her. “There are bodyguards everywhere. He won’t get anywhere near you.”

“He already has.”

I realize that she doesn’t know what happened in New York, but it makes no difference. She was my best friend, and she betrayed me for a guy who threatened to destroy her career if she didn’t.

“I’ve got a fucking panic button.” I raise my hand to show her the strap fastened around my wrist. “There’s a bunker underneath the cabin that we’re to hide in if he finds us. A bunker, Nikki. That’s what our life has become thanks to you.”

“A bunker.” She stands up, peering around the room as if she might already be under the ground. “Why would they tell you to go hide in a bunker? You’ll be trapped.”

“Because he won’t be able to get in.” When Ric first mentioned it, I dismissed it as a last resort, but now…

“We won’t be able to get out.” Her use of the word ‘we’ isn’t lost on me. “I can’t go underground, Meg. I’ll freak out. You know I have a phobia of enclosed spaces.”

It’s on the tip of my tongue to remind her that this isn’t about her, but her breathing is growing shallow, the dip between her collarbones caving as she tries to fill her lungs. She’s having a panic attack. She went through a phase of having them frequently when we were at college, but she got them under control, and I’ve not seen her have one since.

I open and close the kitchen drawers, searching for a brown paper bag for her to breathe into. In the end, I settle for a piping bag.

Nikki is sitting on the floor with her knees spread wide, and her head between her knees to stop her from passing out. I cover her mouth with the piping bag and hold it tightlyaround her lips while she breathes into it, the bag expanding and constricting with each breath.

She’s crying when her breathing regulates itself, and I sit beside her, lean back against the cabinets, and pull her head against my chest.

I can’t stay angry with her. We should stick together for Amber’s sake.

This might not be about Nikki, but if Amber’s father finds us here, he isn’t going to spare my best friend simply because she helped one of his stooges break into my room. He wouldn’t have found anything anyway. I haven’t been back to the motel since I met Gio.

“It’s okay, Nik,” I murmur, smoothing her hair away from her face. “We’ll figure it out.”

“They will stop him, won’t they?”

She sounds so young, so vulnerable that I’m transported back to when we were in high school, and her first boyfriend dumped her for a popular girl called Alice Beedon. She’d cried on my shoulder then too.

“Of course, they will. That’s why Ric told us to stay inside. It’ll all be over soon. Maybe we can ride an inner tube around the Winooski River tomorrow. I picked up a leaflet about it in town.”

She relaxes against me a little. “Meg, can you ever forgive me?”

No regrets. That’s what my mom used to say. Regrets are for people who didn’t live their lives the way they ought to.

“On one condition. You dump that fucking asshole and then make sure that everyone in Hollywood knows what he really is.”