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“Well, obviously, I love fucking you. But I want to be with you.”
“Is that all?” she asked.
“I’m shit with words, Manon.”
“You’re doing pretty good so far.”
She hugged me, and I relaxed.
“Your grandmother needs me to spy. So we might have to hang low. Just for a month.”
She didn’t respond, which I thought was strange.
As we stepped onto the lit-up grounds, Crisp, sucking on a huge cigar, stared straight at us, and I heard Manon say “shit” under her breath.
“Oh, Manon, there you are. I’ve been looking for you.”
He looked at me as though I were trash, and I felt like smashing him in the face, but I controlled that urge. I was no longer that hothead, hit-first, question-later lad. In my bad days, just the hint of a snigger would have had me in a spin. And that was what Crisp’s smarmy grin was, more of a sneer. I returned it with my own, despite my promise to Caroline to butter him up for a gig.
“This is Pierce, a close business affiliate,” he told Manon, before turning to his mate. “This is my wife-to-be, Manon.”
He ignored me, which was fine because, at that moment, I felt like I was about to spew all over his velvet jacket.
I turned to Manon and shook my head with my hands open, and alarm filled her eyes, as though confronted by a wolf, which she had. Crisp, in the meantime, wearing a predator’s grin, looked like he was having some fun before the big kill.
I couldn’t stand his smugness any longer, so I walked off.
She chased me. “Hey.”
I stopped. “So, when exactly were you going to tell me?”
“I don’t want to. I have to.” Her voice cracked.
“Why?” I spread my hands again.
“I can’t tell you. He’s blackmailing me. It’s bad. It will fuck my future.”
“We can work it out. Just refuse him.”
I couldn’t believe I said that. Was I proposing to her? I wasn’t exactly ready for that. But I wasn’t ready to be without her either.
Tears poured down her face. “But you’ll hate me.”
Crisp came to claim her, and I turned my back on both of them. The ball was in Manon’s court.
The fact that she couldn’t trust me with more of her secrets kicked hard. Surely nothing could be as bad as her fucking that rich paedophile at fifteen.
Chapter 19
Manon
Thepicturesarrivedjustas I was about to call Drake again. It was the morning after my party, and I felt like shit. The forest sex had been so raw and magical we’d almost skipped back, or I had. I’d forgotten about everything and had even hatched a plan to run away.
We were happy and sharing our feelings. The storm in my brain had almost cleared until Crisp gate crashed my bliss. He seemed to take delight in rubbing shit all over Drake. That ugly smirk on his pasty face even stretched into a rare smile.
Slimebag.
It wasn’t the shoplifting that worried me but Crisp exposing me for sending pictures of my vagina, fakes of course, to lure him into marrying him.
