Page 30 of Covetous

“Know what?”

Know what, what? Oh, right. I mentally slap my forehead. I asked her a question.

Isabella’s head tips toward me, her arm hanging off the couch as she brings the joint to her lips, taking a few puffs. I only had five hits before letting her have the rest, and I’m toast. She must be so high right now. “That you were in love with my brother?” She asks the question as if she already knows the answer.

The hell? Oh shit. I’ve been found out. If it weren’t for the weed in my system mellowing me out, I’d be scrambling for an explanation. “You knew?” I ask instead, lying on my stomach and tucking my arms beneath my chin.

“Dude, it was so obvious.” She peers at me with a mix of amusement and pity. “You used to stare at him all the time when you didn’t think he noticed. But I noticed. Especially how devastated you always looked when he started banging a new girl.”

“He said he didn’t know.”

“He didn’t. I sure as shit wasn’t going to tell him. Because if he had known, there would’ve been no stopping him from taking what he wanted.”

“Take what?” I let out a halfhearted chuckle. “My virginity?”

“Everything. That’s who seventeen-year-old Victor was. He got off on the high of making his willing victims lose their fucking minds over him. And after they did and the chase was over, he’d just as quickly move on.”

The weight of her words hits me like a splash of cold water, nearly sobering me. “So seventeen-year-old Victor isn’t the same as twenty-two-year-old Victor?”

“Hold on a sec.” She lifts her head from the couch. “You just said, ‘he said he didn’t know.’ You guys have talked about this?”

“We have.”

Isabella’s jaw might as well be on the floor as I share the details of the conversation I overheard between Victor and Esme. I only briefly mention my subsequent talk with Esme without disclosing the specifics. As I fill her in on the dialogue between me and Victor, she gradually recovers from her shock, now appearing somewhat conflicted.

“Damn” is all she says when I’m through. “What happens now?”

“Nothing. We talked about it, and now we can move on.”

“Sort of like closure?”

I snap my finger and point at her. “Exactly.”

“Or it’s the beginning of something.”

Her comment is insane; I brush it away with a chuckle. “We would still have to want each other for that to happen, and we don’t. Because…hello.” I wiggle my left hand.

She snorts a laugh, then takes a hit from her joint. “Says the girl lying in my brother’s bed.”

As I jolt upright, the swift motion reminds me I’m still high as fuck. “It’s not?—”

“It’s not what? I’ve watched you smell his pillow twice now. You know he has sex with your best friend in that bed, right?”

“Of course I know they have sex. Amazing sex.” I roll my eyes. “They have it all the freaking time all over my house. She’s always like yes, Victor, fuck me harder. Right there, yeah, just like that. Give me your big dick, Daddy.”

Isabella wrinkles her nose. “First of all, gross. And she calls him Daddy? Double fucking gross. Third of all, you missed your calling as a phone-sex operator.”

“Is that still a thing?”

“Fuck if I know. But you sound hot.”

“Shut up.” I throw one of Victor’s pillows at her. It misses her by a long shot, landing with a soft thud in the middle of the hardwood floor. “I think it’s great that they have lots and lots and lots of sex.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

“You sound like Liv. She says great sex doesn’t equal a great relationship, and I agree with her. But can you have a great relationship with bad sex?”

“How bad?”

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