Gluttony (26 page)

“It’s Harper. Do your best, and if you’re lucky, I might call you back.”

Beep.

“Harper … this is Beth.” She took a deep, shuddery breath. “Please don’t hang up before you listen to this. I know you’ll never understand what I did, and I know you hate me, so I’m not asking you to forgive me. I just want you to know I’m sorry. More than I can ever say. I—” Her voice caught, and she gripped the phone tighter, fixing her gaze on the horizon and forcing herself to stay calm, make it through. “Just take care of Adam. I-I’m glad he’ll have you.”

One down. Two to go.

Adam’s was easier, somehow, maybe because she was only saying what she’d said so many times before. Or maybe because she hadn’t hurt him as badly, and didn’t owe him as much.

“Hey, it’s Adam, you missed me now, but I’ll catch you later.”

She sighed a little at the sound of his voice, the light Southern accent infusing each word with the hint of a warm smile. “I’m sorry for all the things we said to each other,” she told him, wondering when he would hear her words. “And for all the time we wasted being angry. Maybe if I hadn’t been so angry, things would have … a lot would have been different. We were really good, Ad, and I just want you to know, whatever happened, I still love you. Not like, you know, the way we were, but I’ll always—” She stopped.
Always
didn’t mean much. Not anymore. “I just hope you don’t forget the way things used to be. Before. And Adam … thank you. For tonight and … just for being … you.”

Then she waited. For ten minutes, then twenty. Hoping that it would get easier. But when it didn’t, she knew she couldn’t wait any longer. Reed had gotten a new cell phone the month before, but rarely remembered to turn it on. “Why bother?” he’d always asked Beth. “The only person I want to talk to is already here.” She didn’t want to just leave him a message; she wanted to talk to him. Not because she thought she’d be able to change anything—she was past that kind of stupid hope—but just because she wanted to hear his voice again. Even if he was angry, even if he told her again how much he hated her, she wanted to hear him say her name.

He didn’t answer.

“You know who it is and you know what you want. Speak.”

But Beth didn’t know what she wanted. “Reed. Reed …” Saying his name was all it took, and she burst into tears. She pressed a hand over the receiver, hoping to muffle her sobs, and quickly choked them back, forcing herself to talk. “It’s beautiful here,” she said in a thin, tight voice, trying to work up to saying something that actually mattered. “It makes me think of you. It makes me think … I’m not sorry, not about us. I shouldn’t have lied, and I shouldn’t have—I did a terrible thing. I know you hate me. I know you can never forgive me. You shouldn’t. I hate myself for what I did to you. But … I love you. And I know what I have to do now.” She shut her eyes against the lights and tried to picture his face—but all she could see was Kaia. “I can’t stand what I did to you, to—” She hiccupped through her tears and had to pause to catch her breath. “What I did to all of you. Not anymore. I’m sorry. For Kaia, and for us. For everything. Just try to remember that—and maybe someday you’ll even believe it.”

She hung up the phone before she realized that she’d forgotten to say the most important thing of all, maybe because saying it out loud would make it true, and she wasn’t ready for that yet. She needed more time. Not much, just a few more minutes of breathing deeply and staring up at the sky and holding on.

A few more minutes, and she would be ready to say good-bye.

Miranda felt sick. The food still churning in her stomach, she could feel the fat moving in, unpacking, making itself at home. She needed to do something about it. But before she could, her phone rang. And, glancing down at the caller ID, she discovered what sick
really
meant.

“Stevens, we need to talk,” he said as soon she picked up the phone, giving her an extra couple of seconds to decide what to say. It wasn’t enough.

“Kane … I …” Her face blazed red just thinking about him and what he’d overheard. There was no way she could face him.

“Meet me back at the hotel, by the pool,” he ordered.

There was no way she could disobey.

“Half an hour? You’ll be there?” he pressed.

She nodded.

“Well?”

She suddenly realized he couldn’t see her through the phone. Thank God. “Yeah. Half an hour.” She hung up and, nibbling at the edge of her thumbnail, wondered what would happen next. The options:

He wanted to let her down gently. Which would be humiliating, excruciating.

He wanted to pretend nothing had happened. Which might be better—or even worse.

He wanted to tell her he was madly in love with her, and now that he knew she felt the same way, they could—

She forced herself to stop. She’d promised herself no more lame daydreaming. And it was nearly morning—she was too tired to lie to herself anymore. Kane Geary didn’t lurk around in corners, afraid of his feelings, pathetically waiting for a sign.

No, that’s me,
she thought wryly. When Kane saw what he wanted, he took it.

And he’d already chosen to leave Miranda on the shelf.

She considered ditching him, just sneaking back up to the room and finally getting some sleep. But she never considered it very seriously—doom-and-gloom expectations or not, she needed to know what he wanted. And she needed to prove to herself that she could handle it.

He got there first; maybe he’d already been there when he called. He was sitting on the edge of the pool, his jeans rolled up and his feet dangling in the water. He had his back to her, and Miranda assumed he hadn’t seen her come in—but after she’d stood in the entranceway for several long minutes, he called out her name.

“Come here.” he urged. “I won’t bite.”

She slipped her sandals off and sat down next to him, cringing as the unheated water lapped over her toes.

“You just have to get used to it,” he told her. “Then it feels good.”

“I guess I can get used to anything.”

There was about half a foot of space between them, except at their fingertips. Her right hand and his left hand were both pressed flat on the damp cement, less than half an inch apart.

Miranda put her hands in her lap and tried not to pick at her nails.

Silence.

“So,” Kane finally said, staring straight out at the water. “Our friends are pretty fucked up, huh?”

Miranda’s tension spurted out of her in a loud snort.
Very attractive,
she told herself irritably.
Lovely
.

“Yeah.” Miranda kicked her feet lightly in the water. “I just can’t believe Beth …”

Kane tipped his head back, as if to look up at the stars, but they were covered by a reddish haze. “I should have figured it out. Maybe I should have seen it coming.”

“If anyone should have,
I
should have,” Miranda countered. “I knew how angry she was about what Harper—”

“What
we
did to her,” Kane corrected her.

Miranda barely heard. “But I should never have said that to Harper. I thought it would help, but … she was so upset and miserable, and I had to go and tell her it was all her fault.”

“You didn’t tell her that.”

“Yeah, but I might as well have. It’s what she heard. And it’s no wonder she said all those—” Miranda kicked herself. She’d steered the conversation exactly where she didn’t want it to go.

“You told her the truth,” Kane insisted. “Beth wouldn’t have … done what she did if …”

Miranda shrugged. “But that doesn’t mean I had to say it.”

“I gave her the drugs,” Kane said suddenly, in a very quiet voice. She spun to look at him, and he met her gaze.

“What?”

“I gave her the drugs,” he repeated, more steadily. “As a present. I thought … it doesn’t matter what I thought. I didn’t expect her to keep them. Or use them. But I gave them to her. And I helped ruin her life. Hell, I started the whole thing. Which I guess makes me to blame too.”

Miranda didn’t know what to say.

“Doesn’t it?” he asked, his voice rising.

She shook her head, then caught herself. “Yes.”

He nodded once and let his head hang low with his chin resting against his chest and his shoulders slumped. It was a pose she’d never seen his body make before, so it took her a moment to identify it: defeat. Miranda lifted her hand and, with painful slowness, reached out for his shoulder. But she stopped, just before she touched him, her fingers trembling. She put her arm down, and they sat in silence.

Something jerked him out of a fitful sleep, but by the time he sat up in bed, whatever it was—the noise, the movement,
something
—was gone. Reed looked around, bleary-eyed and confused. The blinds were mostly drawn, but a thin band of darkness beneath the cheap cotton suggested that morning hadn’t yet arrived. His lips were dry and cracked, head foggy, and a sour taste filled his mouth. And the bed was strange, unfamiliar, as was the room….

Oh.

He lay back against the uneven mattress and shut his eyes, as if that could block out the reality he was beginning to remember. He was in Vegas. With Beth. But Beth had—

You’re a fool,
Kaia’s voice told him scornfully.
You fell for it. You fell for
her—
after
me?

He wanted to hate Beth: for Kaia’s sake, and for his own. But lying there m the dark, it didn’t seem possible. And he hated himself for his failure.

Something began to buzz, and he felt a steady vibration against his hip. His phone, alerting him to a message—its ringing must have woken him up. He flipped it open, and even the dim light of the screen was blinding in the total darkness. There was one voice mail, and as he listened to it, he realized his hand was shaking.

He wanted to hang up in the middle; he wanted to hang up as soon as he heard her voice. But he listened to the whole thing. And he couldn’t help but remember: Kaia had left him a voice mail too, once. She had begged his forgiveness. And she had died before he could deliver.

He could picture Beth’s face, her lips trembling, tears magnifying her eyes to look like pure blue reflecting pools. She just wanted him to try to understand.

“I can’t,” he whispered, snapping the phone shut. “I just cant.”

“Hey … it’s the middle of the night,” a girl’s voice complained. “Go back to sleep.” Star
la rolled toward him and draped an arm across his bare chest. She pressed her lips against the nape of his neck, and he felt her tongue darting back and forth, as if tapping out a private message in Morse code. He resisted the urge to push her away.

What did I do?
he asked himself silently. But it was a rhetorical question. He remembered everything.

“Sorry I woke you,” he murmured, holding himself very still.

“Everything okay?”

He grunted a yes.

“Well, since we’re both awake …” She began playing with the dark curls of hair on his chest and then, slowly, her fingers began walking their way south. “Want to play?”

Though he didn’t want to touch her, he grabbed her hand and tucked it against his chest. “Let’s just go back to sleep.”

“Mmmm, sounds good.” She yawned, then nuzzled into his back; moments later her breathing had settled into a deep and steady rhythm. He dropped her hand and lay quietly with his eyes wide open, staring at nothing. There was something about Beth’s message. Something wrong.