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‘What does that mean?’
Her chin lifts slightly, a sign of her usual offensiveness. ‘We talked. A lot. Really got to know each other. Intimately and emotionally, just like you did.’
The floor seems to tilt beneath me.
‘About what?’
‘About lots of things. Sometimes about you.’
You. The word slices clean through me.
‘You’re lying. Ash loves me, and he wouldn’t do that to me.’
‘I’m not,’ she says coolly. ‘And once I actually had a taste of him, I understood the appeal.’
The air leaves my lungs suddenly, as if I’ve been punched. Her eyes flash in triumph and something uglier.
‘You act like he’s untouchable and devoted to you. He’s not. He’s just a guy, and he didn’t exactly push me away.’
Heat crawls up my neck and across my cheeks, humiliation blooming slowly under my skin. I feel stupid, as if she’s reached inside my heart and dragged something private into the light just to pick it apart. My mind turns against me, replaying every touch, every look, every whispered promise, twisting them into cheap lies. I don’t know what makes me sicker: the image of him near her, or the possibility that I was never as irreplaceable as I thought.
‘You’re disgusting,’ I whisper.
‘No,’ she fires back. ‘You’re just mad that you’re not the only one he looks at like that.’
My heart feels like it’s physically tearing apart.
‘He wouldn’t,’ I say again, but now it sounds like I’m trying to convince myself.
‘You don’t know that,’ she says softly, and the little twitch in her eye releases a level of rage inside me that I’ve never felt before. ‘And that’s what’s killing you.’
Tears burn behind my eyes, but I refuse to let them fall in front of her.
‘Why are you like this?’ I ask, and this time I don’t sound angry. My voice is broken and raw. ‘Why do you hate me so much?’
Something flickers across her face, and I feel for a second I might have gotten through to her, but her expression hardens instantly.
‘I don’t hate you,’ she says. ‘I just hate how you always get everything. It’s always easier for you. Everyone treats you nicer. You’re the younger sibling, the victim, the one everyone loves. You haven’t experienced the hard side of life because you live in this protective little bubble.’
‘I don’t understand what the hell you’re talking about.’
‘He never did it to you.’
I stare at her. ‘Who? Ash?’
‘Why did he never do it to you?’ she whispers.
Confusion swirls in my brain as I try to understand what she’s saying. What did Ash do to her?
‘Do what?’
She looks at me like I’m the one being cruel, like I’m forcing her to spell out something obvious, but I genuinely don’t know what she means.
‘You really don’t see it,’ she says, almost to herself.
‘See what?’ My voice comes out sharper than I intend. ‘If you’re going to say something, just say it.’
Her hands curl into fists at her sides. She says nothing; she just studies me like she’s searching for something beneath my skin.
