“Start trouble?” she says, her voice a pitch too high. “I thought that you brought me here to spend the evening with me at this nice event. But I can see that you had other motives for coming here tonight. I’m not even sure why you brought me along. You could have made a fool out of yourself without me here to watch it. I refuse to let you drag our family’s name through the mud just because you’ve let your standards in women slide.”
Oh my god, this girl is getting on my very last nerve. I try really hard to bite my tongue, but Bridget refuses to move out of our way and it’s so childish and ridiculous that I just can’t stand it anymore.
“You’re just angry because no one will ever love you the way these guys love me,” I blurt out without thinking. “You’re the one who should be embarrassed of herself.”
All of them turn to look at me.
I’m not sure if they’re more shocked that I said something so honest, or so mean. I really probably shouldn’t have said it at all. Not only was it downright hurtful—even if it is true—but the only purpose it’s going to serve is to make Bridget even more furious.
I let my temper get the better of me and I shouldn’t have.
I really shouldn’t have.
It just seems like someone needed to put her in her place for once. I think everyone is just a bit taken aback that it is me who’s doing it.
Me, more than anyone.
“That isn’t true,” she says with a smug look on her face before turning to her brother. “Tell her.”
Maybe if she hadn’t been wearing such a look of hateful arrogance all over her face, or if her eyes didn’t look like they were drowning in malevolence, then maybe Warren would have answered differently. But I can see in his eyes, the answer that he’s getting ready to give her and it is going to make her implode.
“It is true,” he says as he looks his sister dead in the eyes. “You keep acting like this, and Aubrey’s right.”
Perhaps the only person more shocked than Bridget is me.
I didn’t exactly expect Warren to defend me, but I certainly didn’t expect him to outright agree.
At first Bridget just looks shocked, but then she scoffs as if she doesn’t believe him. She turns to both Chase and Sterling and forces a small laugh out of her mouth that sounds desperately close to a whimper.
“Oh please,” she says with a sarcastic lilt at the end of her voice. “I suppose that you two are going to tell me that you’re both in love with Aubrey too now.”
“Yeah,” Sterling says very matter-of-factly. “We are.”
It was astounding enough to hear Chase say it earlier, but hearing Sterling say it too … and to Bridget no less … it leaves me absolutely floored.
I’m soaring so high on my emotions that I could sail up to the moon never to come back down.
I watch as Bridget is truly at a loss of words for the first time quite possibly ever. She looks at Sterling with a sort of disappointed longing, but it’s the look that she gives her brother that’s the most pained one of all.
She looks at him as if she has just been utterly betrayed by the one person that she is closest to in the world. And for a moment, I actually feel bad for her.
Then, she simply turns and steps out of our way without saying another word. I can’t read her expression.
It’s like a brewing storm. On the surface everything looks calm—hurt, but still calm. But underneath, there is an undercurrent of anger that is brewing tumultuously. I can see it in her eyes and hear it in the way that she is breathing heavily as if she’s trying to keep herself from a catatonic explosion.
There are two ways that this can go, now.
Either Bridget can finally take the hint that maybe people would like her more if she wasn’t such a bitch, and maybe she’ll try to make a change for the better. Or, after the initial shock of what just happened wears off, she’ll come back a hundred times more vindictive and malicious than she already is.
From what I have learned about Bridget, I already know which one of those reactions she’s going to have.
But she needs to be careful because I am still holding on to her secret—the scandalous secret that will smear her reputation far worse than Warren’s own secret ever could, and I’ve seen how carefully he’s kept that guarded.
She won’t dare push me too far—not with that looming over her head. I may have gone too far with a lot of things, but having that secret is the one thing that’s saving my ass.
Or so I think.
Chapter Twenty-Three
It could have all gone so smoothly.
I spent the last few months preparing to get out of Ridgecrest early, only to have those hopes dashed by a few scathing—and very public—words. I should be upset, devastated even, but instead I find an unexpected flood of relief.
I don’t have to leave.
I never thought I’d be thinking of it that way.
But here I am, with Warren, Chase, and Sterling—and I realize these last few weeks I’ve been in denial that I’d started to secretly hope I wouldn’t get out of here early.
There’s no reason to be in denial anymore.
Or there wouldn’t be, if Bridget would just leave us be for one damned moment.
We’re barely on the stage a few minutes, standing up in the wings to watch the crowd milling down below, before Bridget comes storming up the steps and marches right over to us again.
This time, there’s a strange look on her face that I’ve only
