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“But I could have stopped him ”
“You did. I let him kiss me.”
She let him she let that guy she
Layne glanced over. “You stopped him before he could get much farther than that.” She picked at the lid of her coffee cup, her voice bitter. No, rueful. “I should have known better.”
Gabriel needed to get a handle on his thoughts before the car caught on fire. “What on earth made you go to that party?”
“It’s stupid.” She pushed a curled strand of hair back from her face. “My mother has always wanted me to be like those girls. She became friends with all their moms and begged me to spend time with their daughters. She used to buy me expensive clothes. Every other day, she’d come home from the mall with another bag from some hot new store. I never wore them. Some I threw in the charity bin behind the school. Some I shoved in the back of my closet. I hated them. I hated her.”
He remembered the tentative conversation in her bedroom.
“You didn’t want to be perfect.”
“Sort of.” She hesitated. “No, I could never be perfect, and she knew it. I think that was the point. It was all this big cover-up. The clothes, the horses, it was all one big sham. Her perfect, im perfect daughter.”
Gabriel remembered Ryan’s little comment before he’d punched the shit out of him. She’s all deformed under there.
It made him think of that moment in the woods, when he would have kissed her. His hands on her ribs, and she’d pulled away.
Had he misread that entirely?
Layne turned and looked at him, her eyes piercing and sharp.
“How much did you see? When he was . . . you know. How much did you see?”
Gabriel sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “It was dark,” he said truthfully. “Not much of anything.”
“Come on.” Her voice was hard.
Gabriel shifted to look at her. The light at her back made the red turtleneck almost glow. “Really. He didn’t get the shirt over your bra. Honestly, with the light, I bet Taylor couldn’t catch much of anything on her phone.”
“God, she is such a bitch.” Layne made a disgusted sound. “I can’t believe you slept with her.”
Gabriel almost dropped his cup. “What? Who the hell said I slept with her?”
“No one. But . . . in class . . .” She faltered. Even in the dim light, he could see Layne’s cheeks turn pink. “She said ”
“I have never slept with Taylor. Jesus, there’s a locker room joke that ” He shook his head. “Never mind.”
“That what?”
He took a quick sip of coffee. “You know that stupid saying in sex ed about how when you sleep with someone, you’re sleeping with everyone that person has had sex with?”
“Yeah?”
“Let’s just say I have no desire to sleep with the entire team.”
Layne didn’t look entirely convinced. “Today. In class. She mentioned last year.”
This girl was too smart for her own good. He sighed. “All right, look. I was at this one party, and I was sitting on a couch, and she came over and climbed in my lap. I didn’t exactly shove her away. But I did not sleep with her, and we barely spent ten minutes together. She’s on the cheer squad. I play a lot of sports.
She flirts with any guy she sees, including half the faculty.”
Layne settled back onto the tailgate, staring out at the night again.
“Come on,” he said. “She just says those things to get a reaction.”
