Page 162 of What's Left of Us

My shoulders tense.

I gesture around us. “Look around you, Georgia. How can you be miserable when I’ve given you everything? You have a roof over your head. The cupboards are full of food. Your shelves are full of books. What more could you want?”

“You can’t just keep throwing money and sex at our problems, thinking they’ll disappear.”

Is that what she thinks? “I buy you things to make you happy. To remind you that I give a fuck. What hashedone for you?”

This time, she doesn’t answer. Instead, she grabs her bag and walks to the door leading downstairs.

I put a hand on it. “I don’t want you to leave.”

“Well, I don’t want you to keep lying to me, so I guess we’re both going to wind up disappointed tonight.”

Using all of her strength, she yanks open the door and walks down the stairs with me following a few steps behind.

“One day, you’re going to realize that the person you’re trying to see the best in is not who he says he is.”

She stops at the bottom of the stairwell. “And what about you? Because you’re not the person you used to be either.”

I start to reply but close my mouth.

Putting her coat on, she reaches for the door handle and hesitates. “When my father told me that you were digging into him, I didn’t want to believe it. Because I only have room in my heart for one liar, and he took that spot. I thought you, of all people, could understand when I said I needed someone to trust.”

“If you know he’s a liar, then why give him the benefit of the doubt?”

She opens the door. “I’m not giving him the benefit of the doubt. I’m trying to fix everything he’s done.”

“That isn’t your responsibility.”

“Then whose is it?Yours?”

I don’t answer.

She grips the bag in her hand. “He’s the only family I have left, and I’m doing everything in my power to save him from crossing lines he’ll never come back from.”

“You have me,” I remind her.

Her eyes skate down the front of me. “No,” she whispers, shaking her head. “I don’t think I do anymore. I don’t think I have for a while. If I did, you wouldn’t have hired somebody to follow me like I’m in on one of my father’s schemes.”

She walks out but stops halfway.

Looking over her shoulder, her eyes dim.

“I kissed Luca Carbone today.”

My hand on the stairway railing tightens, the wood creaking in my grip.

I don’t say a word.

Neither does she.

I watch her get in her car and back out of the driveway, not looking back once as she disappears down the road.

That’s when a new kind of fury takes over.

*

The same big-boobedsecretary is sitting at the desk when I storm into Carbone Reality. “Mr. Danforth, it’s lovely to—”

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