Page 96 of Foolish Games

“I don’t want him,” I insist. “I want you.”

“No, you don’t. You want an Ivy League boyfriend. I was never going to be good enough for you and your perfect family. I’m not like you. I don’t act like a different person at parties. I don’t know how to read your mind. I don’t know how to make relationships work for a whole year.”

“So we figure it out,” I say. “Together. I can help you.”

He shakes his head. “I should never have pushed you to do all that stuff. I’m a fuck up, Viv. I was always going to hurt you.”

I swallow the agony in my throat. “Then don’t do it,” I say quietly. “Don’t hurt me.”

He shakes his head. “This is who I am. I always have to get my own way, and fuck anything that stands in my way. But I didn’t know that would be you. I’m sorry, Viv.”

I pinch my lips together and don’t speak. I don’t trust what will come out of my mouth.

“But you know what?” Sebastian asks. “I may be a fuckup who never goes to an Ivy League school, but I’m going to do something good with my life. Not just make good money. I’m going to do good. Can any of your precious founding families say the same?”

“What the fuck, Viv?” Robert says, and I hear his footsteps crunch on the gravel behind me as he approaches. He wraps his jacket around my shoulders and glares at Sebastian. “Leave, asshole.”

“On my way,” Sebastian mutters, turning on his heel without so much as a goodbye.

“Don’t walk away,” I warn. “If you walk away…”

A sob chokes my throat, and I can’t finish. Robert wraps an arm around me and forces me to turn and go back inside with him. My teeth are chattering, and I’m soaked through, but I don’t care.

I stop in the foyer, covering my face as the tears flood out. “I can’t go back up there,” I say. “I’m going home.”

Robert sighs. “I hope you know I’m giving up a chance to get laid, not to mention the best party of the year for this.”

“Go back up,” I say. “I brought my car. I’ll be fine.”

“You’re not driving home like this,” he says.

I nod into my hands, trying to get myself under control.

“How’d you know?” I ask at last.

“I’m your brother,” he says. “I figured it out.”

“Aren’t you going to say I told you so?”

“Yeah,” he says, throwing an arm around my shoulders. “But not while you’re crying.”

I laugh through my tears, embarrassed that I’m such a mess. I don’t even want to think about what everyone upstairs is saying, and how I’m going to face Chaz and Krissy at school now that they know what I did. Even more pathetic than faking that I could land a football player, I fell for the biggest player in school in the process.

And in the end, I lost him too.

twenty-eight

Sebastian Swift

“What was Rob talking about back there?” Lexi asks when I climb into the truck with them. “You weren’t really dating Vivienne?”

“No,” I admit. I don’t bother explaining more. There’s nothing to say.

“Dude, give us back our money,” Tony says, reaching forward and punching my shoulder hard enough to leave bruises.

“I fucked her,” I say, turning to the window, where a few drops of water are trickling down the glass on the inside from a leaky seal. “But we were never together.”

I couldn’t give the money back anyway. I don’t have it anymore. I don’t have her.

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