RIOT HOUSE (Crooked Sinners #1) - Callie Hart Page 0,27
lake?” It’s shitty to have to leave just because Dashiell’s showed up, more than likely with Pax and Wren in tow, but we’re not at Wolf Hall now. I don’t want the weekend ruined by their bullshit.
Carina shakes her head. “He’s seen us. It’ll look weak if we bail now. We should just chill and make the most of it. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to react that way, it’s just…Dashiell knows exactly how to get under my skin.”
She might not want to talk about it, but my curiosity’s getting the better of me. I have to ask her. I have to know. “I take it something happened between you guys? Something…romantic?”
“Hah!” She shakes her head, looking up at the ceiling. “Romantic? Yeah. I guess you could call it that. He was charming, and polite. A real gentleman. Treated me with respect. Took me out to dinner. Wined and dined me. Made me feel so special that I thought I was the only girl he’d ever been interested in. And that fucking accent. He got me good, Elle. I swear, I’ve always prided myself on being smarter than the dumb girl who gets duped by a handsome guy with a few cheesy pickup lines. I should have seen it coming. I should have seen him coming a mile off, but he totally blindsided me.
“I was saving myself. Hadn’t even let a guy graze my fucking kneecap with an index finger before. I was a virgin. And I’m talking virgin. No experience whatsoever. And then, low and behold, Lord Dashiell Lovett the fourth comes along with his family fucking title, and his airs and graces, and he looked deep into my eyes and told me that he loved me, and I just…” She throws up her hands in disgust. Her knuckles bang the table, clipping the wood when she drops them. “I just spread my damn legs for him like it was nothing. Two days later, he asked me to meet him in the observatory after dinner. So I went along, excited about getting to see him, getting to kiss him, getting to tell him that I’d fallen head over heel in love with him…and I walk in to find Amalie Gibbons on her knees with his dick aaaaaallllll the way down her throat.”
A tear streaks down her cheek, and my heart squeezes tightly, aching for her. Reaching across the table, I hold her hand, shaking my head. I don’t even know what to say…
“And you know the worst part?” she says, laughing shakily, batting away the rogue tears. “The worst part was that he didn’t even care. He wasn’t embarrassed. Didn’t scramble to push her off him, or pull his pants up, or come after me. He saw me, standing there in the doorway, saw the hurt and the pain in my eyes…and he fucking laughed. He said—” She clears her throat, frowning deeply. “He said, ‘Looks like I might have made a scheduling error. Can you come back in an hour? I should be ready to go again by then.’”
“Wow. What an unbelievable prick.” So, so, SO shitty. Who does something like that? Any guy with money, a title, an accent, and a name like fucking Dashiell? a voice in the back of my head offers. It seems so obvious after the fact, but I get it. Carina is a smart girl, but guys like Dashiell are master manipulators when they want to be. They’re exceptionally talented and very well practiced at getting what they want. It can feel so real at the time…
I can’t count how many guys I’ve come across like Dashiell Lovett. The only reason I never fell for their bullshit and gave them precisely what they wanted was because my father would have murdered me ten times over and then some. He only let me hang out with Levi because he knew he was gay. It never ceased to amaze me that my father could hate so many people to such brilliant and astonishing degrees, for all kinds of stupid, pointless reasons, but he never had a problem with me having a gay friend.
“I wish I’d been here then,” I tell her. “I’d have kicked his ass for you, no question.”
“There’s still time,” she jokes, smiling lopsidedly through a fresh round of tears. “You’re a good friend. Maybe if you had been here, you might have been able to talk some sense into me and stop me from making such a fool of myself.”