Laura wanted to cry, but she had nothing to cry about. Monsters shouldn’t take all the tears.
Hayley didn’t seem to be struggling at all. In fact, she was laughing. As if this was a happy memory. As if this was so fucking funny. She’d laughed at the time, too, along with Laura. And all the while, Laura had felt Daniel’s gaze on her, heavy and approving—for now. And she’d hoped that maybe he’d be kind to her that evening, maybe he’d admire her instead of seeing only her flaws.
“I shouldn’t have done that,” Laura mumbled, but she could barely hear herself over Hayley’s chuckles. So she repeated it, louder, sure this time. “I shouldn’t have done that. It wasn’t funny.”
The laughter faded. “So why did you?” Hayley demanded, immediately belligerent.
“Because… because…” Laura released a breath, and then the words came in a reckless torrent. “Because I was afraid that the whole thing would remind Daniel how I used to waitress. You remember? And he doesn’t like to think about that, or for people to know.” The Albrights were supposed to be the Burnes’ equals, Ravenswood royalty just like Daniel. She knew now that her name was the only reason he’d taken her in the first place.
And he’d wanted desperately to hide her family’s little blips. The things nobody talked about. The fact that her parents had poured the Albright funds down a drain called drink when Laura was just a kid, and she’d been fighting secretly to survive ever since.
She’d succeeded, too. She’d dragged herself back up to the position her family deserved. And when the staff got too comfortable, Laura skewered them. Better that than allow anyone to remember she’d once been them.
At least, that was how she used to think.
“Look,” she sighed, because Hayley’s silence was a little too stretched-out and sullen for her liking. “All I’m saying is, we could both stand to climb off our pedestals. It wasn’t that long ago I was waitressing to put us through uni. We don’t have to act like we’ve always been this way.”
“Don’t start getting all We the people,” Hayley snapped. “You never minded spending Daniel’s money.”
Laura swallowed down her bile. If her sister was… unpleasant sometimes, well, that might be Laura’s fault. She was the one who’d raised Hayley. She was the one who’d spent years being a stuck-up, smug, superior bitch.
And now she was trying to be Little Miss Perfect, just because she’d seen the error of her ways. Wasn’t that stuck-up, smug and superior all over again?
“You’re right,” she sighed. “I’m sorry.”
There was a pause before Hayley sniffed, “Don’t worry about it. Listen, I’ve got to go, okay?”
“Okay.” Laura tried not to feel relieved. It was disloyal.
“Bye, sis. Love you.”
“Love you.” She put the phone down and stared at the blank TV, and wondered what love really meant.
10
“Samir.”
There was nothing so satisfying as the sharp slice and firm thwack of a knife gliding through onion to hit a chopping board. Samir made the sound again and again, pounding out a beat that matched his heavy pulse and grinding teeth, slashing the onion to pieces and ignoring his stinging eyes.
“Samir.”
Some people might say that the diced slithers of onion beneath his hands were too fine to be further attacked, but those people just weren’t committed enough. Or determined enough.
Or frustrated enough.
“Samir.”
Focus destroyed. Rhythm blown. The blade faltered, then glided across the side of Samir’s thumb, spilling thin, tomato-red blood all over his fucking onions.
“Shit,” he hissed, sticking his thumb in his mouth. Gross. Onion and blood was, it turned out, a horrible combination.
Samir turned to glare at the man who’d thrown off his concentration. Max arched a brow in the face of his boss’s mightiest glower, patently unaffected.
“Cut yourself?” he asked, as if he didn’t know.
“Nah,” Samir said. “I’m just sucking my thumb cuz I’m still seven years old.”
Max’s second eyebrow rose to join the first. “You sucked your thumb ’til you were seven years old?”
“Jesus, man, what do you want?”
“I want to know what’s going on with you.” Max folded his arms and leaned back against the gleaming, steel counter, his eyes as careful as his posture was relaxed. “You good?”
Those two words were heavy as stone and soft as marshmallows all at once. You good? It was the question they’d agreed, years back, to ask each other regularly. A question they’d agreed to answer honestly, too. Always.
And yet, something thick and uncomfortable lodged in Samir’s throat when he tried to tell the truth.