Page 83 of Sinful Crimes for the Artistically Inclined
“Oh my god,” Althea gasped out.
“What?” asked Percy, his stomach tightening.
“Oh my god!” Althea went on, drawing out ‘god’ for entirely too long and drawing entirely too much of Joe’s attention in the process.
“What?” Joe asked.
Percy, realising she had come far too close to the truth already, attempted to intervene, “It was really not?—”
“Were you having a threesome with your brother and his girlfriend?” she yelled, as loud and excited as someone might if they’d just cracked nuclear fusion.
Fuck!Percy’s brain screamed. “No!” he shouted.
“No.” Joe cackled at the ridiculous idea, but a second later, memories of that first night kicked him full in the face. He’d been sure Percy would never hurt his brother deliberately, and he’d consequently blamed Anna for the incident. But now this made a strange, harrowing kind of sense. “Wait… You weren’t sleeping with Eve and Anna… Were you?”
“No—”
“I feel sick…”
Percy had already noted the deathly pallor that dulled Joe’s complexion. “Joe, no. It wasn’t like that?—”
“That’s why he forgave you so easily when you kissed her,” Joe rambled out in a panic. “That’s why you did what you did for her… All that weirdness with you and Anna. That’s why… So many things make sense now…”
“What makes sense now?” Percy shouted. “Nothing makes sense now!”
“I can’t believe you wouldn’t tell me something like that!” Joe shouted back.
“There wasn’t a thing you needed to know about any of that!”
“How can you say that? Of course I needed to know something like that!”
“Joe!” Percy shouted even louder again. “Do you truly believe I fucked my own brother?”
“Well,” Althea added logically, “you wouldn’t actually have to fuck him to pull off a threesome with a girl in the middle?—”
“Althea, you shut your mouth right now or I’m leaving you in the desert!”
“Percy!” Joe snapped.
“Sorry, Althea,” Percy started reluctantly. “I would never actually leave you in?—”
“Percy!” Joe repeated. “Tell me the truth right now. Were you in a relationship with them?”
Percy wrenched the wheel to the right, the tyres screeching onto the side of the lonely road as he hit the brakes. He turned back to Joe, who he adored with all his heart, no matter how angry he was, and he said, “Joe, I have never slept with Anna or Eve. Only a very sick and depraved mind could even invent such a scenario as that. They are like family to us, except, you know, that one is family, to me, but the point is, that would never happen. Any of it. It’s a completely ridiculous notion. You must understand that.”
He could see in Joe’s eyes that he’d already relentedsomewhat, but the doubt lingered. “You would tell me, wouldn’t you?”
“I would tell you,” he replied, his voice as firm and convincing as it ever was. “I kissed Anna, and you saw it happen and that was all. And it was the last time—theonlytime—it ever happened. And it won’t ever happen again. I was a mess and Eve knows that and that’s why he forgave me. It’s that simple.”
Joe looked into Percy’s open, sincere, nervous eyes for a few seconds longer, then hid his face in his hands. “Oh, Christ. Percy, I’m so sorry.”
A sharp splinter of guilt punctured Percy’s stomach.
“I’m so sorry,” Joe said again. “That was— I must be so tired to even think— God, what an awful thing to say to you. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologise,” Percy breathed out quickly, that odd, cold sweat breaking along the back of his neck. “It was a strange time for all of us. Just tell me we’re good and I’ll drive.”
“We’re good?” Joe cried. “How can you be good with me? I don’t even know what’s wrong with me! I can’t believe I said that to you.”
