Page 83 of The Love Losers

Anthony looks like I just slapped him in the face, but the hurt slips away, leaving behind a cold, detached expression. It’s the same look I saw on his face the first time I went into The Peanut Bar.

My heart is beating as fast as a trapped rabbit. Guilt and horror and self-recrimination pound through me with each beat. I can still feel the press of Anthony’s lips on my face and hands, and I just told him he should marry someone else. I don’twanthim to marry someone else. The thought makes me want to puke and tear down the world. But I got a dose of terrible, awful, no-good news in the form of a few texts from a local number.

It turns out I’m not the only one who’s witnessed your dubious waitressing skills. Wilson tells me he saw you at a “special” party.

Consider this a caution from a friend. If you marry Anthony, you’ll both regret it.

Tick-tock.

We’ll discuss it on Women-Drink-Half-Off Wednesday.

As soon as I saw the messages, the truth dawned on me. Wilson was at the circus party. He was the one wearing the dumb Simba mask. Heknows.

Of course, if Nina gets him to tell the cops about my side hustle with Joy, he’ll also have to reveal that he and his friends hired us, but he’s rich and connected, and he won’t be the one who gets in trouble. Even if the charges don’t stick, all they need to do is run my prints through the system, and…

I feel tears pressing at my eyes. “It’s not that I don’t want to, I…”

“You changed your mind after you saw something on your phone. Who sent you a message?” he asks coldly, starting to close the picnic basket. He’s not looking at me. He won’t look at me.

I reach for his hand, and the picnic basket tumbles over. A plate tumbles out and falls at exactly the wrong angle, breaking on a stone jutting up from the ground. He goes to pick it up, and it slices his hand.

“Anthony!” I reach for a napkin from the basket, but he shakes his head and takes it from me, pressing it to his hand before wrapping it into a half-formed knot.

“Anthony,” I repeat, tears falling down my cheeks.

“Who was it? Wilson?” He smiles without the slightest bit of humor, his eyes slate gray and flat. I hear Nina in my head, telling me that at the end of the day Anthony will always be cold. Logical.Nina’s a bitch, I tell myself.Nina’s wrong.“Did you decide to take Nina up on her offer? I saw the way he was looking at you yesterday. It must be some kind of record, stealing two women from the same man.”

The cloth napkin is bloody where it’s pressed to his wound. I’m worried about him, and I’m pissed, and my heart feels like a confusing coil in my chest. I don’t know where it begins and where it ends, only that it’s a mess.

“You know it wasn’t him.”

“I don’t knowanything.”

“You’re being a dick,” I point out. “You haven’t even given me a chance to answer.”

Something passes over his face, and he glances outside the garden wall. But nothing’s visible in that direction other than a gnarled tree, the branches stripped of leaves.

His gaze sticks on it before he looks back at me, his face pale, and nods. “You’re right. I haven’t.” The rest of his rage fades when he gets a good look at my face.

He takes a half step toward me, his hand raised as if to touch my cheek, but he stops himself.

Tears still falling, I decide to tell him everything. He deserves to know. He deserved to know before, probably, but it’s only now, when I’ve probably already lost everything, that I have the strength to share it all. “I told you. My uncle…he was a criminal, and I… What I didn’t mention… What I haven’t told anyone is that I helped him cook his books for a couple of years. Because I climbed that hedge maze when I was eighteen, and I got arrested for drunk and disorderly. He bailed me out without telling my brothers, but he had something on me, and he never had something on someone without using it. He’s gone now, but my fingerprints are on file from that arrest. That’s really bad, because my brothers and I have been using a different last name to hide from my uncle’s successor. Nicole said she could take care of the fingerprints problem for me. I…I hoped….thought…she’s basically invincible, so I figured she could really do it, but it looks like it's not going to happen before next weekend.”

I’ve shocked him. He might be able to laugh off Dom getting baked in the building he owns, but this is something different. My uncle was a capital-C criminal, which makes me just as bad by association. I let him use me, and Roman and Jay took up the torch and used me too, only they didn’t ask for permission.

Anthony’s jaw works, but he doesn’t say anything for a long moment. Then he clears his throat and says, “Your parents were gone, and he took advantage of you.” Anger pulses in the words, as if he’d like to take my long-dead uncle to task.

I nod, my eyes tearing up. Because I’d come to that conclusion a long time ago. “But at the time I liked feeling important. I’ve always been good at finding deals and loopholes. Even then.”

“We’ve all done things we regret,” he says, finally reaching out, his good hand smoothing down my cheek before cupping it.

“I know you have to satisfy the terms of the will, Anthony. I don’t know who has to sign off on it, but I’m guessing they’ll want a thorough background check, and if they ask for fingerprints…”

“Simon wouldn’t go to much effort,” he says, his tone tight, but he lowers his hand from my face, his fingertips glancing off my skin. “But you’re probably right about the background check. Would it come up clean?”

“I’m almost positive,” I say, because Nicole and Damien have confirmed our identities are solid. “But if I ever get arrested, they’ll know I’m not Rosie James, I’m Rosie O’Malley.”

“That’s why you were so worried about getting picked up by the cops the other night,” he says, running a hand over his beard. I have the burn of it all over my thighs. I’ll probably be feeling it for days.

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