Page 51 of Wicked Little Secret

In high school, I thought of my first girlfriend as the sun that lit up my sky. I wrote her poems and gave her flowers. I would’ve given her the world and more if she’d only loved me back.Ifshe’d only loved me the same…

It was an emerging pattern that played out in disastrous fashion the older I became. The more times I had myheart broken, crushed, stomped on, the more desperately I clung to the idea I could have what I yearned for most.

Love.

The kind of love that eluded Mom and Dad.

The one thing in their perfect, sanitized, overachieving lives that they’d never been able to accomplish—true, genuine, boundless love.

Love that ran so deep, so integrally, there was no functioning without it. It was a kind of love that you’d sacrifice anything for.

There was no earthly limit to the things you’d do in order to protect it…

My version of love is nothing like the flimsy, cardboard cutout version that’s my parents’ marriage.

“Since when do you cuss?” Theo asks suddenly, pulling me from my thoughts. We’ve merged into traffic as we drive out of the city to the fancy restaurant where we’ll have dinner. “And you say I’m the filthy-mouthed biker.”

I sigh, fixated on the road ahead. “You are. But so am I. Now sit tight. The sooner we make it to this place, the sooner I get to fucking leave.”

Theo laughs, though she yelps as I slam on the gas and floor it. We arrive to Le Canard no more than fifteen minutes later. Dad is predictably already seated and waiting on us, his square glasses perched midway down his aquiline nose. His thin mouth is downturned like it always is, as though he’s pre-disappointed about what’s to come.

Neither of us have lived up to his lofty expectations—he wanted more than an apartment manager for a daughter and a law school professor for a son. Add on the fact that Theo’s a lesbian and neither of us have children, and his disappointment is the palpable fourth dinner guest at the table.

“Sorry we’re late, daddy,” Theo says, flashing a sweet smile like she’s still thirteen. She kisses him on the cheek before claiming the seat on his right.

“It’s alright, Theo. I’ve come to expect it,” he replies dryly.

I skip the hello altogether, taking the farthest seat with the kind of silent, cordial nod I give coworkers.

Dad fixes his unyielding stare on me, peering across the table as if studying a complicated math equation.

If there’s one thing the brilliant and renowned district judge Thurman Adler loves, it’s a problem he believes he can solve.

Somehow, he’s never managed to fix me in his image.

He married young and remained married no matter how unhappy. I’m officially forty-two with no marriage to my name, no matter how unhappy, because I refuse to settle for anything less than a love worth dying for.

We’re polar opposites, and I couldn’t prefer it more.

“Happy birthday, Theron,” he says finally, his tone lukewarm. “I’m glad you made time in your busy schedule for your sister and I.”

“I would appreciate the occasion more if I celebrated birthdays,” I answer. I’m just as deadpan. Equally as unimpressed and bored.

Truthfully, my mind is on one thing only on a night like tonight.

Tonight may be my birthday, but more importantly, it’s Halloween—and Nyssa Oliver has plans.

So far, I’ve resisted checking my phone, where I’ve been logging into her iCloud to spy on her. I vowed I’d do what I haven’t often managed to do in recent times; I’d go the rest of the night without checking on her once.

But as Dad makes forced conversation about the menuat Le Canard and halfheartedly asks Theo about her job managing the college apartments, I give in. My resolve vanishes in a desperate intake of air and I slip my phone out of my pocket, glancing down at it from under the table.

She’s tagged her location as the university campus, which means she’s gone through with it. She’s attending the much-talked-about costume party at the frat house. I’ll never understand why she would want to sully herself at such a place, where drunk losers congregate and trouble always breaks out.

Doesn’t she understand she’s better than that? She’s better thanthem.

Whatever the reason she wanted to attend, it’s not lost on me who else will be there. My plans to frame Samson Wicker have been a success so far. He’s facing removal from the team, but I won’t stop there. I want him expelled.

Far away from Nyssa for the rest of his life.

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