“Are you all right?” Mr. Marin turned and slid off the stool.
“Fine.” Hanna dabbed the coffee with a napkin. “Just fine.”
But she was far from fine. She looked at the image on the newspaper page again, praying she was imagining things. Three pictures of Liam’s handsome, smiling face stared back at her. In the first one, he had his arm around a thin blond girl with a pointy nose. In the second, he was kissing a dark-haired girl in a swingy jersey dress. And in the third, he was walking down a busy Philly street, hand-in-hand with a short-haired girl wearing oversized sunglasses and a Burberry trench. A Real-Life Romeo, In Love With Love, said the caption next to the montage. Liam Wilkinson is one of Philly’s most eligible bachelors . . . and he loves playing the field.
A hard, thick ball lodged in Hanna’s throat. The photo caption named each of the girls Liam was with and when he’d been seen with them. One of the photos was from earlier this week, on a day Hanna and Liam hadn’t seen each other. And the short-haired girl, whose name was Hazel, was described as “Liam’s long-term girlfriend he hopes to marry someday.”
Hanna’s gaze flitted to a quote in the main body of the article. “He’s definitely a charmer,” said Lucy Richards, one of Liam’s ex-girlfriends from last year. “He made me feel like I was the only girl in the universe. Said that he’d never felt this way before except with me. He kept talking about running away with me, taking me to one of his family’s châteaus in France or Italy. It definitely made me feel special . . . until I realized he did that with every girl he dated.”
Hanna reached to the middle of the table, grabbed a piece of toast from the stack, and shoved it in her mouth. Then she grabbed another piece, and then a slice of bacon, even though she hadn’t eaten bacon in years. Liam had said all those things to her, too. He’d made those same promises. So it was just a . . . line? A ruse? And she’d fallen for him. She’d let him stay overnight at her father’s house. She’d jeopardized her father’s career.
Her legs wobbled beneath her as she stood. The room tilted and swayed as though the whole house was on a rocky ocean. Liam’s adoring face flashed through her mind. All those romantic things he’d said. The passion that had snapped and crackled between them. Jesus.
She staggered out of the kitchen and into the living room. When she dialed Liam’s number on her phone, the line rang and rang, once again going to voice mail. “Nice article about you in the Sentinel,” Hanna sputtered as soon as she heard the beep. “Don’t call me back. Ever.”
When she hung up, the phone slipped from her fingers to the cushion of the couch. Hanna sank down and hugged a pillow to her chest, biting down hard on her tongue so she wouldn’t cry. Thank God she hadn’t told Liam anything important about her father. Thank God she hadn’t told him about Tabitha.
“Ahem.”
Hanna turned. Kate stood in the doorway. There was an uncomfortable look on her face. She walked into the living room, perched on the edge of the patterned slipper chair across from Hanna, and waited. Kate knew. She’d pushed the Style section to Hanna’s place so Hanna would see it, after all.
“How did you find out?” Hanna said in a low, hateful voice.
Kate fiddled with a pearl choker at her throat. “I saw you guys together at the flash mob. And then I heard you, the other night, in your room. I knew he was here.”
Hanna winced. “You’re going to tell Dad, aren’t you?” She glanced into the kitchen. Her father was now pacing around the island, his phone to his ear.
Kate turned away. “He doesn’t need to know.”
Hanna blinked at her incredulously. This was a perfect opportunity for Kate to be Daddy’s favorite again. Her father would never forgive Hanna for this.
“I’ve been cheated on, too,” Kate said quietly.
Hanna looked up in surprise. “By Sean?”
Kate shook her head. “Not by him. By someone I dated in Annapolis, before I moved here. His name was Jeffrey. I was so into him. But then I found out through Facebook that he had another girlfriend.”
Hanna shifted in her seat. “I’m sorry.” She found it hard to believe perfect Kate could’ve ever been dumped, but she looked so humble. Almost human.
Kate shrugged. She raised her green eyes to Hanna. “I think we should take them down. Not only has that family messed with Tom, but they’ve messed with you, too.”
Then Kate rose and strutted out of the room, her arms swinging, her shoulders back. Hanna slowly counted to ten, waiting for Kate to turn around and say, Just kidding! I’m totally telling on you, bitch! But after a moment, Hanna heard the gentle clunk of her bedroom door closing. Huh.
“I’ll call you back in a bit,” Mr. Marin said loudly in the kitchen, and Hanna heard the beep of the call ending. She stood, the tips of her fingers prickling. Kate was right. Maybe Hanna should take Liam’s family down. Hanna might not have told Liam anything vital about her father—besides typical divorce stuff every family suffers from and a lot of embarrassing stories about her weight—but Liam had told Hanna a whopper of a secret about his family. Something that would cut Tucker Wilkinson out of the campaign for good.
“Dad.” Hanna padded into the kitchen. Her father was now standing at the sink, washing his dishes. “There’s something I need to tell you. About Tucker Wilkinson.”
Her father turned, one eyebrow raised. And then everything Liam had told Hanna spilled out of her: his father’s affair, the woman’s unwanted pregnancy, the abortion. Her dad’s eyes bulged with every word. His jaw dropped lower and lower. The words felt like poison spilling from Hanna’s mouth, worse than any piece of gossip she’d ever spread, but then the photos from the paper flashed through her mind once more. They made her think of that line from some random Shakespeare-era play Mr. Fitz had made them read in English class last year: Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
Liam totally deserved it.
Chapter 35
WHO CARES ABOUT PERFECT, ANYWAY?
“Mike, cereal is meant to be eaten with a spoon,” Ella said that same morning as she, Aria, and Mike sat down to breakfast in the sun-filled nook. The room smelled like organic coffee, freshly squeezed orange juice, and the slightly wilted wildflowers Thaddeus had sent Ella the other day.
Mike begrudgingly grabbed an antique silver spoon from the drawer and slumped back to his seat. Then Ella turned to Aria. “So what happened to you at the cast party last night? I turned around and you were gone.”
Aria pushed the big Ray-Ban sunglasses higher on her nose. She was wearing them to hide her red, puffy eyes from a whole night of crying over Ezra, Kelsey, A, and everything else. “I had some stuff to take care of,” she mumbled.
“You should’ve stuck around.” Mike chewed his Kashi flakes loudly. “The director got really smashed. People say that’s why he had to come and work at a random private school in the suburbs—he’s a boozer. And Spencer Hastings freaked out on this random girl. Psycho!” He sang the last word and bugged out his eyes.
“She’s not psycho.” Aria picked at a Fresh Fields waffle, the events of last night whirling in her head. Spencer freaked out, but it was for good reason.
So Kelsey was New A. On one hand, it was a good thing: At least they knew who the notes were coming from. On the other, what if people did believe what Kelsey knew about Tabitha? This morning, three more stories had appeared online about Tabitha’s death: one about a new forensic procedure the scientists had done to prove once and for all it had been Tabitha’s remains, another about a bake sale held in Tabitha’s honor, and a third about underage drinking in general, mentioning Tabitha’s death as a recent example.