Page 92 of Cruel Lies

She frowns. "Ask you what?"

I smile and stroke her lip, swollen from kissing. "The only question that's ever mattered."

Her breath catches when she realizes what I mean. "Ronan?—"

"Ask me," I snarl.

She hesitates, then nods. "What do you see when you look at me?" she whispers.

"I see the most beautiful thing I have ever put my hands on," I tell her.

Then I scoop her in my arms and we go inside.

25

CALI

Most days, I wake up all at once, like someone flipped a switch and that switch was connected to a 9-volt battery and nipple clamps. I tend to jolt out of bed, thinking about the kids and the day and the fifty things I need to do before the sun rises.

But not today.

Today, I float up out of sleep like I'm gently rising from the bottom of a pool. Even when I surface into consciousness, I'm not quite sure where or who I am, what day it is, what planet.

Then, one piece at a time, reality clicks back into place.

I know who I am: Calista Meadows.

I know where I am: my bedroom.

I know when I am: the morning after the gala, the sun already risen and bright through the gap in my curtains.

Weirdly, I'm still in my dress. The green silk is bunched up around my thighs and twisted at the waist. My mother's earrings are still in my ears. I can feel one of them digging into the side ofmy head where I slept on it. My mouth tastes like sour whiskey and my head is doing a slow, dull throb behind my eyes.

I lie there and try to put the night back together.

The gala. The dress. Ronan at the bottom of the steps. Dancing under the big chandelier. Todd, frail and sweating. Paula crying black tears onto her cheap gold dress. The car across the bridge. The stoop. The whiskey. Ronan's father and the shattered glass and his mother getting smaller and smaller until there was nothing left.

Then the kiss.

I remember climbing into his lap on the warm stone. And afterward…

My face goes hot even alone in my own bed. I remember asking him to come upstairs.

But then…?

Nothing.

I sit up too fast, and my head lurches. I press a hand to it and wait for the room to stop whirling.

"Good morning."

I nearly jump out of my skin.

Ronan is sitting in the chair across the room. Nobody ever sits in that little armchair in the corner; its purpose is to hold clothes I don't want to fold right now.

But the laundry is in a neat, crisply folded stack on top of the dresser and Ronan is there instead. He's still in his tuxedo from last night, though he's draped the jacket over the back of thechair and the bow tie is undone, hanging loose around his open collar. His sleeves are rolled up. He's got one ankle crossed over the opposite knee, and he's just sitting there, calm as anything, watching me.

"How long have you been sitting there?" I croak.