12
STELLA
IT WAS FIVE O’CLOCK ON Thursday afternoon. Normally, I’d still be at work, but I had somewhere else to be, and thought it would be a good idea to walk. A storm had blown through the city earlier, and I’d been hoping that meant it would cool off some. Nope. Instead, it was still hot, but with the added bonus of being so humid it felt like you could chew the air.
Several days had passed since the party at my parents’, and Theo and I had barely spoken since. Just enough for me to tell him when to pick me up tomorrow and what to expect from our next evening together.
Over the past five days, I’d been desperately trying to balance my current stress load: meditating every morning, doing yoga every night before bed, limiting caffeine to one mid-afternoon matcha, eating the blandest diet humanly possible, and completely avoiding the news and social media. Every time I started to feel even the tiniest bit anxious, I began my breathing exercises, even if I was mid–tattoo session, which had confused more than a few clients. But this, I’d found, was the only way to face a full-blown flare, which I was definitely in, thanks to that absolute shit-fuck, Theo, and the fact that I was three million dollars in debt to him.
My stomach hadn’t been this bad in over a year, burning anytime I ate too much or too little. I woke up every morning with a sore throat because I was forced to sleep upright, my mouth dropping open despite the sling I wore around my head that was supposed to prevent it.
I was constantly nauseated. Constantly in pain. I’d started limiting my appointments and taking hour-long baths after work because floating in a pool of hot water while watching ASMR videos on my tablet was the only time besides sleeping when I had any relief from this hell.
My stomach twinged, and I cut off my self-pitying thoughts, starting up another breathing exercise to slow my racing pulse while a gust of wind
sent raindrops splattering down from the buildings that towered overhead.
I pulled up the hood of my rain jacket, dodging puddles, bikes, and the swaying umbrellas of other pedestrians. Strands of hair clung to my neck. A bead of sweat rolled down my back. I was starting to feel like a bog witch, but one of the best things for gastritis was gentle movement, especially walking, so I was willing to ride out the yuck until I got to the hospital.
What the hell was I going to do about this whole Theo situation? He was such an asshole that I was desperate to find a new way out of my debt.
Maybe I could blackmail him back, find out his hidden weaknesses and use them against him.
Unfortunately, I didn’t exactly know how to do that. It wasn’t like I’d stalked anyone before, and god knew I didn’t have the time to take up a new hobby. I had the shop to run, appointments to keep. I couldn’t afford to take much more time off. Literally. I hadn’t been lying to Theo when I said my inheritance was tied up. I was fully dependent on the shop’s income to pay my bills, so I’d just have to find some other way to find out more about him. A private detective, maybe? How expensive were those? Probably out of my budget.
I could abandon the blackmail plan entirely and set aside my hatred to worm my way into Theo’s good graces. Or I could get him drunk. Drug him, tie him up, and torture him. Fuck him senseless so he’d be so blissed out from coming that he’d drop his guard and answer my questions.
I set that last thought on fire and shoved it off a cliff for good measure.
Rule number one meant sex with Theo was never going to happen. Even without it, I wouldn’t be tempted. Not even if he was the last man on earth.
Not even if it would save my life. I’d rather die without the confirmation that he gave a mediocre wienering, at best.
Men that good-looking were always subpar in bed, because they’d never had to work for it. He was probably as vanilla as they came, missionary only, and cried when he climaxed. I’d tried to tell myself that the kiss in the tattoo shop had been a singular irregularity. A glitch in the matrix. Either that or I’d been so touch-starved that anything would have seemed amazing in the moment.
But then our second kiss at the party was just as good as the first. Which was why I’d been steadfastly ignoring the fact that it had happened, and would now go back to doing exactly that again.
A car drove past, close to the curb, hitting a puddle and sending a wave of water cascading toward me. I barely managed to leap out of the way, blaming the near-miss on Theo. If I hadn’t been so distracted by his dumb, stupid existence, I wouldn’t have almost gotten drenched.
Focusing on the sidewalk, I trudged onward, but try as I might, my thoughts kept circling back to him, as they had all week. How far would he go to get what he wanted? Who else did I know that might end up hurt by him? And was I really going to just play along with his sadistic little game without putting up a fight? If the way I froze in my father’s study was anything to go by, the sad truth was that I just might, and I hated the thought. But what could I even do? My brother’s future was on the line, along with my family’s (somewhat tarnished) name.
I still had no answers when I arrived at my destination half an hour later, passing beneath the hospital’s welcome sign and heading for the nearest elevator bank. Johnson Memorial was the largest medical facility in the city, and I’d been here so many times over the past seven years that I knew the layout like the back of my hand. I took the elevator up to the third floor, signed in at the nurses’ station for visiting hours, and strode down the hall.
“Knock, knock,” I said, sticking my head into a small room. “I hope you aren’t hooking up with a hot nurse.”
The woman in the bed closed her book and sent me a flat look. “Ha, ha, ha.”
Runa Lund was in her early forties, with the pale skin and white-blond hair that indicated her Norwegian heritage. My gaze roamed over her, instantly looking for signs of how she was feeling. Dark circles sat beneath her ice-blue eyes, and her skin was washed out, cheeks hollow, mouth pinched with what looked like pain. She’d gotten out of surgery two days ago, but I knew well enough not to visit within thirty-six hours because she was especially susceptible to medications and was always too loopy to do much more than mumble and giggle.
This time, she was in for TMR (targeted muscle reinnervation) surgery to ease the phantom pain she felt in her legs. Both had been amputated above the knee, but her right one gave her more trouble than her left, and she’d decided to have that one (hopefully) fixed first.
“Don’t give me that look,” I said as I sank into the chair next to her bed.
“It’s not like I haven’t caught you getting freaky with hospital staff before.”
She slapped my shoulder with her book. “How many times do I have to tell you he was fixing the EKG electrode on my chest?”
“Sure he was,” I said, sliding my chair out of her reach. “You know, I bet I could find another person to check your electrode again, if you’re feeling frisky. These private rooms come with all sorts of perks.”
I dodged sideways to avoid the book flying toward my head.
“That’s literary abuse,” I said, scooping it off the floor and tossing it back on the bed.
“I am two seconds away from pushing the emergency button,” Runa threatened.
I held my hands up. “Fine, I’ll behave.”
She eyed me, distrustful, as she settled back against her pillows, and I forced my gaze to remain fixed on her face instead of the wires attached to her. Seeing her like this always brought me back to the first time we met, seven years ago. I was the passenger in Madison Clyde’s car when Maddie jumped the curb and struck Runa.
Maddie fled the scene on foot, leaving me behind to deal with the fallout. While I called 911 and tried to save Runa’s life, Maddie called her parents, who called their family lawyer, who immediately started the process of pinning everything on me. I’d stolen the car from the party we’d been at, they claimed, and Maddie had never even been at the scene.
The only other witness to the accident was Runa, who’d been walking home from a late-night work shift, and she, understandably, couldn’t recall anything but the car rushing toward her and then excruciating pain.
Paramedics arrived after Maddie fled, testifying that I’d been the only one there. My parents’ lawyers had fought tooth-and-nail in court to clear my name, but all they’d managed to do was cast doubt on who’d been driving.
Maddie had refused to be interviewed by the cops or testify, so the judge had no choice but to dismiss the case due to lack of evidence, leaving no one liable to pay Runa’s mounting medical bills.
Against my parents’ and lawyer’s advice, I’d decided to step in and take responsibility, admitting guilt in a civil suit that ended with a ten-million- dollar settlement covered by my family’s private insurance policy. I was deemed responsible for paying any medical bills Runa accrued related to the accident. So now here we sat, back in the hospital, and I prayed her TMR surgery had worked. Not because I was worried about having to cover
the cost of another treatment—I would happily do so—but because I just wanted Runa to be free from pain.
I hadn’t been driving that night, but I felt as guilty as if I had been.
Because it easily could have been me. I’d had close calls before. Drank too much and thought I was okay to operate a vehicle when I wasn’t. And I’d done nothing to prevent Maddie from driving, even though I’d known better. Complacency would be a nice way of looking at our behavior, but that wasn’t it; it was privilege, pure and simple. Nothing bad had ever happened to us. Despite all the stupid shit we’d done before the accident, there’d never been any real consequences. A night in the drunk tank, maybe some community service if we were unlucky. Our lawyers or parents got us out of everything else.
Shame burned through me every time I thought of my younger self. I’d been reckless, careless, so hell-bent on chasing the next high—whether it came from alcohol or drugs or adrenaline—that I never paused to consider my actions. I’d been a bored, spoiled, entitled bitch, an absolutely insufferable human being, and memories of my past behavior would haunt me for the rest of my life.
Everything changed that night seven years ago.
Fuck, Runa had almost bled out and died right there on the sidewalk because I’d been so drunk that I kept fumbling the tourniquet the 911
operator instructed me to tie.
“Stop,” Runa said.
I blinked and came back to myself.
Runa’s gaze was censoring. “You’re doing it again.”
“I’m not,” I lied.
“You literally just started crying.”
“No, I—” The words died on my tongue as I lifted a hand to find a tear streaming down my cheek. Whoops. I sent Runa a tentative smile. “Sorry.”
“I’m fine, Stel. The doctor said everything went as well as could be
expected.”
“I know,” I told her. “I just … worry.”
Her expression softened. “I know you do.”
Our gazes locked, and there was so much I wanted to say to her.
Apologize, again, for my role that night. Ask her how she really was, beneath the brave face she always put on. I wanted to reassure her that even
if this surgery didn’t completely fix her pain, I would pay for another one, and another. As many as she needed or was willing to endure.
She must have seen the words bubbling up in me because she quickly
changed the subject. “How’s Blake?”
I grimaced.
Her eyebrows rose. “Oh? The golden boy not so golden anymore?”
“He gambled away his inheritance.”
Runa’s jaw dropped. “No.”
“Yes, but I managed to get his debt transferred to me, so now I owe a
bookie three million dollars.”
“You’re joking, obviously.”
I shook my head.
She leaned forward. “Tell me everything.”
I opened my mouth, and the whole sordid story poured out. Runa and I had been through so much together that we’d developed this weird kind of relationship where we weren’t, like, besties, but still told each other absolutely everything. More than you would tell a friend. I’m talking the worst of the worst, things you wouldn’t even say to your therapist—the kind of shit you usually took to your grave.
I blamed all the late nights sitting awake in hospitals. In the early days, we didn’t know if Runa would make it, and I’d been almost like a priest to her, a way for her to admit to her sins, tell me all her last confessions and life’s regrets. I hadn’t liked how one-sided it felt, so I started reciprocating, and now, all these years later, every time we were in a hospital room together, we dredged up forgotten memories or horrors and visited them upon each other. It was trauma bonding at its finest, but afterward, we both felt lighter, closer. Less lonely.
So I held nothing back, telling Runa everything, and out of all the details for her to pick up on, including all the awful threats and the fight in my father’s study, of course she chose to zero in on the first kiss.
“In your booth?” she said, looking scandalized.
I nodded. “I crawled right on top of him in the client chair.”
She sniffed and glanced at the ink on her arm. “I didn’t get that kind of
treatment when you tattooed me.”
“You’re not even attracted to women.”
“Still,” she said. “I would have liked the opportunity to turn you down.”
I flicked her shoulder. Carefully, because, god, there were so many wires.
“You want to kiss him again, don’t you?” she prodded.
“Absolutely not. Twice was two times too many.”
“Stella. It’s me.”
I heaved a sigh. “I don’t know. Maybe I do, or maybe I just want to kiss someone. I’ve been alone for …”
“Your entire adult life?” she helpfully supplied.
“Yeah, that,” I groused. “Play-acting like we were all coupley messed with my head. Not like I’ve started to feel anything for him, but it’s made me realize how alone I’ve been, and I think … I want that. Someone to do things with.”
“Aww,” Runa said. “The tin woman longs for a heart.”
I flipped her off.
She sobered. “You should introduce Maddie to Theo. Tell him to get her shit-faced next and drain her entire inheritance.”
“I’d have to see her to do that, and I don’t think I could pull it off without trying to kill her. She told Mom to say hi to me.”
Runa reared back. “No she fucking didn’t.”
“Yuuup.”
“Bring me to the next party. Beating her to death with one of my prosthetic legs would be such poetic justice.”
I choked. Runa’s sense of humor had always tilted toward the darker side of the spectrum, and she was forever saying things that I would probably go to hell for laughing at.
“Seriously, though,” she said. “Are you really going to do this? Help Theo go after your family’s friends?”
“I don’t think I have a choice,” I told her. “I keep trying to think of some way to hold out, but I’m scared of what he might do if I sabotage him.”
Her expression turned contemplative. “What if … you really do tell him to go after Maddie? Or if not her, people like her. The worst of the worst in your parents’ circle. The ones who have gotten away with horrible shit.
People like the Bluhms and Montgomerys and Hatchers. Didn’t Vincent Prout and his son just get away with swindling hundreds of millions of dollars from their investors?”
I frowned, contemplating her words, thinking back to something Theo had said over dinner about how my not liking these people should make my job easier. Maybe there was something to that statement. So far, I’d been floundering, desperately trying to come up with a way to get myself out of this situation, but what if there were another way? What if Runa was onto something?
Previously, all my crimes had been committed while under the influence, and most of them had been accidental. This would be the first time I’d be making an intentional choice, while fully sober, to cause someone else real harm.
God, could I do that? I’d spent so many years in therapy trying to work through all my hatred and resentment toward the people I’d grown up around, and I had just reached the point where I was starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. By doing this, immersing myself back into that world with the intention of helping ruin those people, would I be undoing all of my progress? Reverting to the worst version of myself?
My focus returned to Runa, to the tubes attached to her, the steady sound of the heartbeat monitor at her side. Maddie had done this to her. And then she’d gone on to live a happy, unencumbered life … if her lavish Instagram feed was anything to go by.
Anger burned in my belly. Runa was far from the only person in this city who’d been wronged by the wealthy and left to fend for herself. There were people walking around who had done horrible, unspeakable things, and they’d gotten away with it for so long that I doubted their crimes would ever catch up to them. Those people? If anyone deserved Theo, they did.
Runa caught sight of my expression and smiled, some color returning to her cheeks. “Take your phone out, and we’ll make Theo a hit list.”
“Careful. He is a bookie. Putting hits out on people might not be entirely out of the realm of possibility.”
The smile spreading over her face was pure evil. “In that case, put Maddie’s name at the top of it.”
