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“It’s inappropriate,” Morgan snapped. “That’s my little sister, and you used to be my best friend. It’s crossing a line, and I don’t know how to get it through your thick skulls that I’m not going to stand for it.”
“You don’t get to stand or not stand for anything,” Billie said, snapping right back and baring her teeth like a wolf. “It’s our life and our relationship. Not your fucking decision to make. How do I get it through your thick skull that you don’t actually get a say in this? It’s actually one thing that’s not your fucking business.”
“You stopped acting like my best friend years ago,” I added, angry as all hell at Morgan. Sure, maybe if I’d stuck around, I should have told him about what happened between Billie and me. But the fact that he’d held onto this for four years and let it poison him against both of us? That wasn’t right. I couldn’t believe it of him. It felt like the person I had known and trusted for so long was a lie. Could ten years of friendship really not stand up to this? Was this all it took to destroy it and make him hate me?
“I stopped because you went behind my back and fooled around with her at the kegger,” Morgan snapped.
“How the hell did you know that?” I demanded. I’d accepted, way back when we’d first run into each other again, that he knew but I had never stopped to really think about how much he knew, or how he’d come to know it. I’d just assumed that Billie had told him.
But that had been when I’d thought Billie hated me, and since then I had come to realize that she’d only been hurt. And with her relationship with Morgan being so distant, I couldn’t believe that she’d told him everything. So how had he found out?
“I want everything out between us,” I demanded. “If Billie told you about us then we should talk about it and move on. She’s not a kid anymore. She was an adult when she made the decision and she’s an adult now, and she knew what she was doing. So did I. We weren’t drunk, and we were fully consenting. Was it a bad choice or a good one? Who the fuck cares? It was our choice to make, and she’s only gotten older since then. You need to start treating her like the adult she is, not some prize you have to protect.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, I never told Morgan anything,” Billie said. “He already knew. I thought you had told him!” She looked at me, confusion in her eyes.
I stared right back at her. “No, I never told him—I just left town without talking to him. And I’m sorry about that,” I added, looking over at Morgan again. “Seriously. It was shitty of me to leave both of you without saying a word.”
“But if you didn’t tell him…” Billie looked completely lost. “Then how did he find out?”
Someone might have gossiped about us. I hadn’t thought anyone saw us that night but maybe—
Morgan sighed in exasperation. “For fuck’s sake. I found out because of the letter you sent.”
“What letter?” Billie asked.
I’d only sent one letter, and it wasn’t to Morgan. My stomach twisted and I felt sick.
“The letter that Pike sent you,” Morgan said. “I recognized Pike’s handwriting, so I opened it.”
“That letter was addressed to me, asshole!” Billie looked like she was near tears in rage. I’d never seen her like this. I wanted to grab her and hold her close, comfort her. “I never saw that letter—I never knew—”
“That’s because I never gave it to you,” Morgan said, and I felt like something in me had been ripped open. I wondered vaguely if this was what betrayal felt like. “I kept it.”
And now, now everything made sense.
30
Billie
My ears were ringing and my chest hurt, my stomach hurt, oh fuck, I might throw up. My morning sickness had pretty much passed, but I still could hurl right now and if I did, I was going to be sure to aim it all right at Morgan’s face.
How could he. How could he? This felt like I’d been stabbed. Like I’d been sold out. What the actual fuck?
“What the hell did you do,” I raged. I didn’t even recognize my own voice. Pike looked horrified and concerned, and I wondered what was in that letter, what he had said to me.
This whole time, I’d thought that he’d just abandoned me and that our night hadn’t met anything to him. But he’d written me. He’d written me a letter. What was in that letter? What had I missed out on, what had both of us missed out on, because of Morgan stealing it?
I struggled to keep my breathing even, to keep myself from tearing Morgan to pieces in my rage.
