Page 102 of Gilded Fake

“It’s really over,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

“Do you love her?” she asks, peeking up at me from under her lashes.

“Yes.”

At last, she slides off the ring and drops it into my palm. “What are you going to do with it?”

I pinch it between thumb and finger, looking at the tiny diamond. “Probably throw it in the river,” I say. “I can’t believe you accepted something so small. Gloria would never.”

“You said you’d get me a bigger one later,” she protests. “It’s not like I picked it out. You asked me in the middle of the night. We couldn’t exactly go to a jewelry store and get the one I wanted.”

“And I just happened to have this one lying around?” I ask. “I must have thought that’s what you were worth when I bought it. What an insult. I really was an asshole to you.”

She huffs, clearly torn between defending herself and jumping at the chance to remind me how badly I wronged her. “That goes without saying,” she answers at last, giving me a wounded look.

“The funny thing is, I don’t remember buying this,” I say. “I forgot the month before the attack, but that’s when I broke up with you, so it couldn’t have been then. Maybe I didn’t buy it for you at all.”

“What?” she demands. “Of course you did!”

“I don’t know,” I say, examining it another minute. “It doesn’t look like something I’d choose, and if you didn’t choose it… Maybe someone else did.”

“She didn’t,” Dixie grits out, glaring at me.

“It’s almost as if I didn’t buy it at all,” I muse. “I guess I could look at my credit card receipts to make sure. Too bad there’s no record of me asking you. I’m surprised, really. It seems like the kind of thing you’d have your phone out for, so you could get a video for your blog.”

“You asked me,” she cries. “You bought the ring for me!”

“Did I?” I ask, drawing a cracked, old phone from my pocket. I lay it face down on the bed beside her. It’s dead now, but I didn’t have to turn it on to know it’s the phone I had on me when Royal beat me. Maverick doodled all over the case one night a few months before the attack when we were hanging out, just fucking around before the tattoo parlor closed. There’s not another one like it.

“What’s that?” Dixie asks, but her face has blanched of color.

“You got hit on last day of school,” I say. “I went by your locker to make sure you’d already cleaned it out. Imagine my surprise when I found my phone. Oh, and these.”

I pull out a wad of panties from my pocket and drop them onto the bed.

“What are those?” she demands, recoiling.

“Don’t worry, I won’t out you,” I say. “I’m not a homophobic piece of shit. But for someone who tried to destroy her enemy by implying she was a desperate nympho because she might have done stuff with other girls, you sure have a lot of used panties in your locker. And don’t tell me they’re yours because I know you don’t wear anything that skimpy.”

“They’re hers,” she snarls, sweeping them off the bed onto the floor. “Is that what you want to hear?”

“No,” I say. “I want to hear why you have them.”

“Because you had them,” she says. “Was I supposed to leave them in your drawer so you could jerk off in them? You’re disgusting, Colt. You’re lucky I stuck around as long as I did.”

I bend and swipe them from the floor before stuffing them back in my pocket. “So you went through my stuff and stole them. Glad you’re finally admitting the truth now that it’s over.”

“It’s not over,” she snaps. “Maybe for us, but not for her. I’m going to make her pay for what she did.”

“Or you could accept that it’s done and move on.”

She snorts. “While she’s locked up with no phone, and she can’t destroy me like she tried to do at school? Like I’d give up that chance.”

“She didn’t try to destroy you,” I say. “She defended herself.”

“By running me over?” Dixie demands, picking up her phone. “I’m the one defending myself. I’m going to make her wish she’d never been born.”

“You fight with words,” I say. “There’s no rule that says other people have to do the same.”

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