Twisted Lies by Nora Cobb

 

Chapter 17

Astrid

 

“Well, you’ve been a stranger.” Bryce walks behind my chair before sitting down beside me at the library table. The first floor is packed with students studying for tests, but after the Halloween debacle, I have an entire table to myself.

 

I haven’t talked to Bryce or Justin in a week. And I avoid Charlotte. I want to tell her off, but I have to remind myself of how that would backfire. The shameless slut picking on the princess of Stonehaven. I roll my eyes at the thought. Charlotte has what she wants anyway. She has Bryce, but obviously, he has wandered off on his own again.

 

“Aren’t you afraid your keeper will see you talking to me?”

 

Bryce doesn’t answer. He places his bag on the table and pulls out his laptop. He sits there intently staring as the screen casts a glow over his sculpted features. His straight nose ends in a perfect point; his skin has never had a pimple; and his lips rarely curve down. It must be pleasant to be so pleased with oneself.

 

“Didn’t you hear me? Go sit somewhere else,” I whisper between my teeth as I feel the room turn its eyes on us.

 

Wren sits at a table not too far from us, and she’s not reading her upside-down book. Casually, she opens up her purse, and I wonder how long it’ll be before I see Charlotte flouncing in.

 

Bryce looks at me with that superior smirk. “You’ve had enough alone time. Or maybe you haven’t been lonely enough?”

 

Bryce pulls a hardcover book out of his bag, and I stare at it as if it’s a rodent that’s jumped onto the table.

 

It’s the ledger from the Pit.

 

Involuntarily, I move back away from it, hunching my shoulders as if an inanimate object could bite me. Bryce calmly opens the book, revealing rows of digits, and my breath rushes from my body in a way that I can’t disguise.

 

“Justin showed you the books,” he states, flipping through the pages. He stops on a page, and his finger moves down the column. The name on top says Getz. “You don’t have to ask him again. You ask me.”

 

I scoff. “So you can toy with me?” I glance around, noticing a few eyes on us. This will get back to Charlotte, prompting an overdue confrontation.

 

“He’s not to touch you,” he whispers, still fingering the book. “I’m the only one who touches you.”

 

“Can your girlfriend Charlotte watch?” I whisper.

 

Bryce’s calm eyes link with mine. “She may want me, but I will have you.”

 

“How does that even work?” I scoff.

 

Bryce moves the tablet toward me, so the screen is facing up. A video is playing, and I gasp at an image of Justin’s head between my open legs. In the next frame, my head is thrown back as I hiss with release.

 

“In the future, that will only be me,” he says.

 

“Does Wyatt know?” I ask sheepishly.

 

Bryce’s face colors as his eyes narrow. “Why should he need to know?”

 

Instantly, we receive angry glares from the librarians at their desk. Bryce grabs his stuff and pushes it into his bag. “Get your stuff. We’re going for a ride.”

 

“A ride?” I scoff.

 

“Don’t make me make a scene. I’ll drag you out if I have to.”

 

The look in his eyes tells me he’s not kidding. I grab my books and shove them into my backpack. “Are you going to walk out with me, or should I wait before I follow?”

 

Bryce hears the sarcasm in my sweet voice and towers over me, waiting for me to stand. Wren watches us, not hiding how she feels as she screws up her face as we walk by. Her phone is out, and I don’t doubt she’s sending both message and photo to Charlotte.

 

Fine. Let her be the messenger that brings Charlotte to me.

 

Bryce doesn’t speak to me as we walk side by side to the student parking lot. It’s shocking the difference between the cars the faculty drive and the students. I’ve never seen a Mercedes or a BMW in the teachers lot, but they fill the student lot.

 

Bryce holds the door open while I slip into the passenger seat. He hops in the driver’s side while I adjust my backpack on my lap. We drive toward Rockingham and pass through it toward the other side of town and open space. It’s odd. I’ve never really gone past Rockingham. Maybe because there’s nothing there but grass and trees. I forget that I’m with Bryce and enjoy looking out the window as we pass a farm. I forget how close we are to nothing.

 

“Where are we going?” I ask him.

 

He shrugs his shoulders. “We’ll stop at the next place we see.”

 

“As long as we only talk.”

 

He frowns a little. “Agreed. We need to talk.”

 

We stop at a place called the Rusty Inn. I doubt anyone has ever slept here as we walk into a rundown bar and sit down at a sticky table. On the walls are mounted fish that were caught from the lake we passed by, though I’d be surprised if anything lives in that dingy lake now.

 

The one-page menu is already on the table. As expected, the inn serves fish, and I wonder if it came out of that gross lake. We both stick to the soup of the day and order a plate of fries to share. When Bryce tries to order a beer, he gets shot down for being underage. The waitress points at his school blazer. Bryce shrugs charmingly, and she walks off smiling as if they had just shared a joke.

 

I pull my hair behind my ears before settling my gaze on him. “What do you want, other than me?”

 

“Why shouldn’t I want you?” he asks.

 

“I’m not an experiment in slumming,” I reply coldly.

 

Bryce smirks, placing a napkin in his lap. “I find the best things when I go slumming. That’s how I found the Pit, driving around looking for something to do. And look at it now, a real money maker.”

 

I shake my head, thinking back on what Wyatt told me. “You’re using people for your own profit, but that comes naturally to you. You don’t even realize it.”

 

“Let me think if I can come up with another example,” he replies, “You using Justin to explain the books.”

 

“Why can’t I like Justin?” I ask, raising my voice in frustration.

 

Bryce lets out a short burst of laughter. “Justin? How could any woman with self-esteem like Justin?”

 

I’m not sure if I’m defending Justin or my taste in men. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

 

“Fine, I’ll pull apart the competition for you.” He’s silent as the waitress places our soup on the table and then continues. “Maybe you’re blinded by their charms, but I’m not. Justin’s father is a serious liability. But Justin is too attached to his family to make a decision for himself. When push comes to shove, he’ll always defer to daddy dearest. As for Wyatt, he’s broke. Or almost there.”

 

I scoff. “Being poor and broke isn’t the same.”

 

“Really?” Bryce eyes me as if I’m dense. “His mother wasn’t the woman they wanted for his father. They blame her for his death.”

 

I still my spoon in my soup. “I thought his father died in a car accident.”

 

“He did, but they blame her because she didn’t keep him home or die beside him. At any rate, she barely has any income. His uncle dipped into the family funds to cover some bad investments. Wyatt will have to earn a living. His mother tries to help…But what can she really do other than send him a few dollars in a greeting card?”

 

I sit quietly, amazed by how little sympathy he has for Wyatt. A guy he claims is his friend.

 

“And Pierce,” he says after tasting his soup.

 

“Pierce?” I lower my voice, though the ambient noise conceals our conversation. “I hate Pierce.”

 

“You love to hate Pierce.” He points at me with the spoon. “That doesn’t come from out of nowhere. I’ve seen the way the two of you stare at each other. You think it’s hate, but all I see is you two eye-fucking each other.”

 

He says eye-fucking a little too crisply. And I squirm a little. “That will never happen. I’d rather kick his face in than talk to him.”

 

“So you say.” Bryce shrugs his shoulders, smirking.

 

I gawk at him as he places the soup spoon against his mouth. Bryce truly believes his assessment of my relationship with Pierce. I can’t see the connection between us, except we both like to shout and our tempers are on a short fuse. But that’s no basis for building any kind of relationship, let alone a healthy one.

 

“He tried to attack me at the dance,” I argue.

 

Bryce shakes his head. “He wanted to humiliate you in front of me, so I would want you less.”

 

“That’s insane,” I scoff. “He tries to hurt me, but somehow it’s still about you.”

 

“He knows you’re not a slut, Astrid, but he tries to prove you are, so I’ll lose interest. He wants me to settle on Charlotte even though we all know you’re the prize, and it’ll be your choice.”

 

“My choice?” I ask, startled by the confession.

 

“Choose wisely, Astrid.” His eyes flash. “And that choice would be me.”