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He doesn’t look impressed. “But no phone to call a cab. And no shoes to make your two-mile-long walk remotely comfortable.”
“Again, I had five minutes to grab what I needed. I’m the idiot who forgot her shoes.”
“And he didn’t think to remedy that fact before he escorted you off the premises.”
“There you go again, making it sound really bad.” I’m going for flippant, but my voice breaks in the middle.
“It is really bad, Tori. It’s fucking awful.” For the first time since I got here, he looks at me with sympathy—which totally gets my back up.
I clear my throat, making sure there will be no more annoying cracks to give me away. “Trust me, Miles. You don’t need to feel sorry for me. I’m doing enough of that all by myself.”
“I don’t feel sorry for you,” he answers. “I feel pissed off on your behalf. They are two totally different emotions. He had no right to treat you like that.”
I start to tell him that in my family, my father has whatever rights he wants to take.
The right to sleep with other women long before he and my mother had their little “arrangement.”
The right to miss his children’s birthdays and graduations and special achievements whenever a better offer came along.
The right to ship us off to boarding school when he got tired of having us around—and the right to bring us back, whether we wanted to come or not, whenever he wanted to show the world what a devoted family man he was.
But telling him all that will only make me sound more pathetic, and that’s the last thing I want. I’m quite comfortable with the healthy animosity that’s grown between Miles and me in the last year. Rocking that boat is pretty much not an option.
No matter how he looked at me when he saw me earlier.
The thought of those blue eyes raking over my body, all hot and interested and oh-so-sexy, sets off little flutters deep inside me. Which is so not what I need right now. I’ve got enough problems without adding lusting-after-my-best-friend’s-asshole-brother to the mix. Especially now that I’m going to have to live with him for a while. And especially now that he’s starting to seem like way less of an asshole than I’ve been giving him credit for…
“Tell me you know I’m right,” Miles continues when the silence between us stretches on too long. “Tell me you know you’re not to blame for any of this. With an example like your father around, no wonder you fell for a total douche like Parsons.”
“Damn right I’m not to blame for Alexander being the King of Douches. The fact that I ever slept with him—even if it was over two years ago—makes my fucking skin crawl.”
“That tape was made two years ago?” Miles asks incredulously. “Did you tell your father that?”
“Of course I did. I also told him that I never gave Alexander permission to tape us having sex. He didn’t care.”
“Your father is a real son of a bitch, you know that?”
I wish I could argue with him, but I can’t. Tough love is one thing, but I’m the first one to say my dad went too far today. Especially when he suggested that I should have just slept with Alexander and spared him—and his company—the embarrassment of having a daughter who stars in her own sex tape.
I don’t tell Miles that part. Partly because it’s the most humiliating part of this whole debacle—the idea that my dad thinks so little of me and my right to choose—and partly because Miles already looks like he’s on the verge of stroking out. I may not have much use for him, but I sure as hell don’t want to be the one responsible for bursting a blood vessel in my bff’s brother’s great big brain.
In the end I go with glib. It’s easy, and—more important—it’s what I’m good at, hiding the hurt I’ve felt inside for more years than I can count. “Yeah, but think of what a great story I’ll have to tell my therapist. When I can afford a therapist, again, I mean.”
He starts to say something else, but his phone buzzes before he can. He holds it out to me without even looking at it.
Fuck. It’s Chloe. I was hoping to have a little time to figure out what to say to her, but it looks like my time just ran out.
I take the phone, swipe my thumb across the screen to answer it. Then say, “Hello,” as Miles heads back into the house to give me privacy.
Fuck. When the hell did he turn out to be such a good guy?
“Tori! Oh thank God!” My best friend’s voice floods the line. “I’ve been worried sick. Are you okay? Of course you’re not okay. I swear to God, if I could get my hands on that creep, I’d rip his dick off myself. That’s if I could find it, which is doubtful, at least if that video was anything to go by. And can I just ask? What kind of a moron releases a sex tape that not only shows what a small cock he has but also makes him look like a boring, incompetent lover?”
She sounds so incredulous that I crack up completely, laughing so hard and so long that tears start flowing down my cheeks. I refuse to think about the fact that they’re the first tears I’ve allowed myself since this whole nightmare began. The first I’ve shed in I don’t even know how long. Trust Chloe to make sure that when I finally gave in to them, there would be as much amusement in them as rage and frustration.
“Trust me, Chlo, he doesn’t just look like a boring, incompetent lover. He is one.”
“Obviously. Why else would he do something like this? What an idiot.”
