Bryna gagged.
“Tara did some of that. Avery doesn’t have a gag reflex though. It’s amazing.”
“I don’t believe you. Just get out of my room. Now.”
She jumped out of her desk chair, charged at him, and shoved against him, trying to throw him out of her room, but he was solid. He barely moved more than a few inches.
“I will beat you at your own game, Bri. This is only the beginning.”
He backed out of her room, and she slammed the door again.
Her heart was racing. Could it be true that Avery and Tara slept with my fucking stepbrother? Ugh! It was too disgusting to think about. Maybe Pace was only planting a seed in her mind to try to freak her out, or maybe they had really gone through with it. Either way, she had to know the truth.
She jotted out a text to her friends to meet her at a coffee spot off Rodeo under the pretenses of finding a dress for the charity benefit, and then she dashed out of her house.
Fifteen minutes later, she was seated at her favorite outdoor table with a skinny mocha macchiato in front of her.
Avery and Tara showed up a few minutes later.
Avery smiled brightly and tossed her hair. “Hey, B. No Jemma?”
“I thought we could look for dresses without her.”
“Thank God,” Tara said, collapsing into a chair.
“Mmm,” Bryna murmured. She took a sip of her drink.
If what Pace had told her were true, Jemma would be the least of their concerns.
“So,” Avery said once they had gotten their drinks, “where do you want to go first?”
Bryna folded her hands in her lap and stared at her two friends. “Probably Barneys.” She took another sip of her drink and smiled. “It’s so nice to be here with you guys. We haven’t spent any time together outside of practice since we went to X. How was your break?”
Tara shifted and glanced at Avery. “Mine was good.”
“Mine, too,” Avery agreed.
“Good. The highlight for me was going to Chateau Marmont with Gates for New Year’s.” Of course, it had really been St. Barts with Jude, but the realities of her break had nothing to do with the true purpose of this conversation. “Where were you guys for New Year’s? I haven’t heard you talk about it.”
“Uh…” they both mumbled.
They exchanged another glance.
“I was at the Harmony party,” Tara said.
“Yeah…me, too.”
Bryna nodded thoughtfully. “Gates tried to kiss me at midnight, and we got into a huge fight. Please tell me your night ended up better than that!”
“Mine was totally lame,” Tara admitted.
“Mine, too,” Avery parroted.
“Didn’t kiss anyone at midnight?” Bryna asked.
Tara flushed and looked away. Avery tried to meet Bryna’s eyes but didn’t do a very good job of it. They both appeared anxious. Guilty.
Bryna held her silence. She watched them sit there and squirm. Soon enough, they would admit it. She couldn’t believe this. The dirty whores had slept with her stepbrother. The way they were acting was proof enough that something had gone down.
After a full five minutes of dead silence, Tara broke. “I’m sorry, B.”
“For?”
“Tara!” Avery snapped.
“She should know!”
“Know what?” Bryna prompted.
“I slept with Pace,” Tara said. “So did Avery. Um…together on New Year’s.”
Bryna slowly stood from her seat and towered over her friends. “I already knew that,” she said calmly.
They both looked like they might cry.
“Pace told me.”
“What?” they both shrieked.
“That bastard,” Avery cried.
“I can’t believe him!” Tara said in horror.
“What I can’t believe is that neither of you told me,” Bryna admonished. “I had to hear it from him. And you know what? I actually defended you. Said that my friends would never touch him, and he proceeded to regale me with your lack of a gag reflex.”
The girls paled further.
“Now, I’m wondering why I did that. You two know how disgusting Pace is, and how despicable it is to have to live with someone like that. The reason you didn’t tell me was because you knew I would be pissed. Imagine how I feel now that I know you were hiding it.”
She gave them a minute to consider what she had said.
“Bri, we didn’t mean for it to happen,” Avery insisted. “We were drunk, and he was there.”
“We’d never do it again!” Tara cried.
Bryna shook her head. Ridiculous and just plain insulting. “You know how important this charity benefit is to me, and I need to make sure that it goes off without a hitch. So, you’re both off the committee.”
“What?” Avery shrieked.
Tara’s jaw dropped to the floor. “You’re serious?”
“I guess I’ll go look for a dress by myself.” She picked up her purse and smiled.
“You’re really kicking us off the committee?” Avery demanded.
“Actions have consequences, girls. You just figured out what yours are,” Bryna said.
She walked away from the coffee shop as she slid shades over her eyes and sighed. She couldn’t let people think that they could get away with this kind of shit. She was still queen after all. She had to rule her queendom with an iron fist. What had happened was out of necessity.
She wished fixing the situation with Jude could be as easy as it had been with the girls.
TWELVE DAYS.
It took Jude twelve days to call Bryna back.
She saw his name on her phone, and she wasn’t sure which emotions she conjured first. Anger, joy, frustration, hope—they all hit her with an onslaught.
He’s calling!
He’s calling now after all this time? What took him so long?
She wouldn’t know the answer to any of her questions if she didn’t answer the phone. With a rush of courage, she swiped the touch screen to the side. “Hello?”
“Bri,” he said in relief.
“Hi, Jude.” Anger was winning out. How dare he make me wait this long!
“How are you?”
She remembered back to when she had first met him, and he had made her wait five weeks before he called. She had tried to be cool and collected, playing it off, but it had bothered her. And it bothered her more now.
“Frustrated and confused. I don’t like to skirt around issues. We need to talk.”
“You’re right. I should have called you right away, like I said I would. I was pissed and irrational, but,” he said softly, “Bri, I’ve missed you so much.”
Her resolve weakened slightly at those words. God, I’ve missed him. Even if she was angry and uncertain about the state of their relationship, she had still wanted to rush over to him and make it all right. How is he able to pull such emotions out of me? “I missed you, too. But how could you make me wait like this? It’s not like I was the only one in the wrong. You lied to me about where you were going to be. What were you even doing there?”
“I know. I had planned to be out of town for work, but I ended up staying in town instead.”
“Why?” she asked. She had been thinking about this since that night. She couldn’t figure out why he had skipped his work plans to go to the hotel for New Year’s. There had to be a reason.
“I was still working. A lot of my clients were there that night.”
“You keep saying that, but I don’t know what it means. The more I think about it, the more my imagination runs away with me. What do you do?”
Jude sighed. “It’s really not that crazy.”
“Then, why do you have to hide it from me?”