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“Ben said to get started without him today,” Libby calls out over the noise of the blender.
I swing my leg over a stool at the kitchen island, sitting down and pulling out my phone. “Where is he?”
Libby shakes her head, her long hair in loose curls halfway down her back. No polka dots today, but those same white jeans, this time with a white top and a navy sweater, rows of necklaces around her neck, rattling as she turns around.
“He had to drive into town to meet with some lawyer buddy of his. Don’t ask me what for,” she adds, holding up one hand even though I had not even started to ask. “I could not give a shit.”
Again, a distant kind of alarm bell ringing, a queasy sensation that something isn’t right. But is it real, or is this place just making me paranoid? It can do that to a person. Even Ruby thought so.
I look back at my phone, scrolling through emails, looking for anything I might have missed from Nathan, my lawyer.
Just in case.
Libby moves around the kitchen, pouring her noxious juice into a pink cup emblazoned with a cursiveL,before leaning back against the counter, watching me.
I ignore her, my eyes on my phone, hoping she’ll go awaynow, refusing to cede the space, but Libby can’t pass up the opportunity to catch me alone.
“So. Your wife.”
I don’t reply, my fingers tightening around my phone.
“She’s pretty,” Libby goes on. “Like, prettier than I thought you could land, if I’m honest.”
“Can’t disagree with that,” I say, still refusing to meet her gaze. I’d been surprised myself at how Jules, with her blond hair and big eyes and gorgeous smile, had wanted me, a skinny, sullen kid pouring beers at a cheap wing place. I’m not as skinny now, and I finally figured out how to style my hair so that I don’t look like I’m in the Vienna Boys’ Choir, but there’s no doubt I’m punching above my weight.
“I guess I thought maybe you didn’t like girls or something. But maybe you just like blondes.”
I look up sharply and our eyes meet. She’s tapping the pink straw of her cup against her lower lip, studying me.
“Does she know––” she starts, and I cut her off.
“Don’t.”
Maybe it’s my voice, low and dangerous even to my ears, or something in the way I’m glaring at her, because Libby shoots me a dirty look, dumping the blender, base and all, into the sink with a clatter, remnants of green juice splattering on Cecilia’s clean counters.
“Don’t act like it’s some big shameful secret, Camden,” she says, turning and bracing her hands on the sink behind her. “Because, honestly, if you hadn’t been soweirdabout it, everything would’ve worked out a hell of a lot better than it has.”
My gut twists even as I give a shocked laugh because, Jesus, she reallybelievesthat.
“What do you think would have happened?” I hear myselfsay. “We would’ve gotten married? Lived happily ever after here at Ashby?”
It’s such a perverse thought—me and Libby, married, shacked up together in this house—that I can hardly picture it, but Libby must not have that hang-up because she’s suddenly crossing the kitchen, she’s suddenly standing there in front of me.
“It would’ve solvedeverything,” she replies, her voice almost cracking, and for the first time, I realize that that night—that fucked-up, deeplywrongnight—might have meant something different to her than it did to me.
“We were kids,” I tell her, trying to be gentle, even as my mind fights to push down every memory, every detail. The soft breeze coming through my window, the green-apple scent of her shampoo, the way her hands slid over my skin.
How long I’d let her kiss me, let her touch me, before shoving her away. Seconds, but they lasted an eternity.
“No one’s ever said no to me, Camden,” Libby says now, her hand resting lightly on my chest, and I can’t help but laugh as I cover her fingers with mine.
“I don’t doubt that,” I tell her. “But… fuck’s sake, Libby, you’re my cousin.”
“Not by blood,” she says, too quickly, and there’s a sudden sour taste in the back of my throat.
“Maybe not, but in every way that matters,” I reply firmly. “And besides, you didn’t want me anyway.”
That part I remember maybetooclearly. Pushing her away, even as every cell in my stupid teenage body had wanted to pull her closer, my voice raspy as I’d said,Your dad will kill me.
