Sun’s up.
Time to go.
“Unless you want to put your hands down my pants, you’re not going to find it,” I tell her.
“Already looked there when I thought you were dead.”
I freeze, momentarily believing her.
She smirks and settles on the floor, reaching between the mattress and the box spring of this ancient bed again.
I scoot closer to the edge to squish her hand. “What’s your price?”
Sleep has made everything clear.
I don’t know what she’s doing these days, but I know she doesn’t have money. Her family cut her off after one too many public scenes, and she’s living—actually, I don’t know where.
Most of what I know about her situation came from my best friend, since she was disinherited after Margot and I broke up. Not long after, but after. I wasn’t part of the family discussions on that one.
I know she has a real job somewhere outside the city where she’s relatively anonymous and she’s living like—dammit.
She’s living like I want to.
Like a normal person.
While I have the resources to live like she used to.
Never thought I’d see the day when I’d be jealous of Daphne Merriweather-Brown, but here we are.
“Price for what?” she asks.
“For your silence.”
She snorts again and pushes her arm deeper under the mattress like I weigh nothing, which is annoying. “Nothing about me is for sale.”
“You don’t want a pony? I thought all girls wanted a pony.”
She flips me off.
Probably deserve that.
I know full well my ex-fiancée’s sister has no interest in owning a pony. She’d rather set them free.
I heard about it enough times at various Merriweather-Brown family dinners while I was dating Margot.
“A donation to your favorite charity that rescues dogs from dog-fighting rings,” I try again.
I don’t care how late it might be in the morning, it’s still too early for that kind of side-eye.
“No, thank you,” she says primly.
Primly.
Daphne.
The girl who once told me to eat a bag of dicks in front of her grandparents because I’d suggested—kindly, I might add—that she suffer through not getting herself arrested for a few months so that she didn’t have to listen to her family berate her about it.
“Everyone has a price. What’s yours?”
