Page 93 of Filthy Elite

I glance out the back window to make sure they’re still smoking. They’ve moved on to cigarettes, so I pick up Colt’s wallet from where he left it. Maybe tonight will be the night I make it happen. How many pills does it take for him to black out now? It keeps going up.

I flip open the bifold to make sure he has his credit card and the secret, emergency pill he stashes in there that he thinks I don’t know about. I’ve seen him take that one a time or two.

“You didn’t say she couldn’t love me,” Duke says out on the tailgate.

“Who?”

“Your sister, dumbass,” he says. “You could have said she couldn’t love a man like me. That no one could love me because I’m a monster. But you didn’t. You know she still does. Don’t you?” His tone is belligerent, daring Colt to contradict him.

But I’m barely listening. Because in the cash compartment of his wallet, along with the bills, here’s a picture of Gloria, folded in half down the center.

He has a picture of her in his wallet.

There’s another one behind it, but I can’t look. My fingers are suddenly numb with cold, and I don’t want to touch it. I want to slam his wallet and put it back and pretend it never happened, that I don’t know.

No, I want to actually forget I ever saw it, forget as thoroughly as he’s forgotten her.

Or so I thought.

My heart dies a little inside my chest.

Did he ever forget? Was it all a lie to throw me off the scent, so they could sneak around behind my back and I wouldn’t suspect a thing? Or did she give him this, tell him about their time together? It was only a week, but it was worth giving up all the years he’d spent with me.

Rage billows inside me, and I lift the folded picture, expecting to see a naked Gloria in the next photo. Instead, it’s Duke, posing with his arm curled to make a muscle, a black swan tattooed onto his olive skin and a cocky grin on his face.

I sit there a minute, trying to tell myself it’s a good thing, that it means the photo of Gloria is meaningless because he also has a picture of Duke. They’re bent to contour to his wallet and the edges are worn, like they’ve been there a while. Maybe he had plans for revenge when they were his enemies.

I wish I could believe that.

“You could fuck every single person in my family, but none of us will get you closer to Mabel,” Colt is saying outside.

“Is that what you’re trying to get me to do?” Duke asks. “Fuck you? You really did like blowing me, didn’t you?”

My heart is withering inside me. I remember walking in on them on New Year’s Eve, how fast they jumped away from each other. How Duke said Colt came onto him.

“Are you in love with me now or something?” he taunts outside. “You want to go skipping around holding hands like a couple homos?”

“Go home, Duke,” Colt says, and the truck shifts when he hops off the tailgate. “You’re drunk.”

“Stop telling me what to do,” Duke growls.

“Be a good boy and do what you’re told the first time, and I won’t have to tell you again.”

I don’t put the pictures back, even though I could fumble them into place and drop his wallet back before he gets in the cab, so he’d never know I saw. But I just sit there, numb, staring at the two faces smiling up at me.

“You still owe me one,” Duke calls from behind the truck.

Colt swings open the passenger door and climbs in, slamming it hard before he sees me.

“Why do you have pictures of Gloria and Duke in your wallet?” I ask, my voice flat.

“Why are you going through my shit?” Colt demands, grabbing them off my lap. He tosses his wallet back where it was, the photos loose on top.

“Are you gay, Colt?”

He chuckles under his breath. “My girlfriend thinks I’m gay.”

“Are you?”

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