“You already are by lying,” she said, her voice curt and unhappy. “Call me when it’s over, but Gil, this is me playing the best friend card. Suck it up. You did it—you tell him the truth.”
“Right,” I said, my throat throbbing from the nerves. “Okay. Okay, I can do this.”
“I love you, no matter what. Now stop stalling.” She hung up, and I called my brother.
“Gilbert, what’s up?”
“You home?”
“Almost. Why?”
“I’m outside your place. I need to talk to you about something, in person.” I cleared my throat, and I swore I heard him suck in a breath. “Everything is fine…just…how soon?”
“Ten minutes. What’s going on?”
“We’ll talk when you get here. It’s about…Samantha.”
“Not making me want to drive faster.”
“Please, Fritz. This is important.”
“Okay, be there soon.” He hung up, leaving me with ten awful minutes to fill my time.
I scrolled through my phone and checked work emails, replying to the NHS sponsor for the high school, saying I’d deposit the money that I collected tomorrow so it could go to the winner. Thinking about Kayla and her smile made me feel a little better. Not a lot though. Headlights appeared on the street, and I gripped the wheel a few times before getting out and leaning against my car door.
Fritz parked his Beemer, got out of the car with his tie loosened, and narrowed his eyes at me. “Okay, what is it?”
“Let’s talk inside?”
“You’re freaking me the fuck out, but fine.” He rushed to get the door open to his place, and once he shut it, he crossed his arms and stared me down with the same intensity he did to anyone who messed with us.
He just didn’t know it was me who screwed up this time.
“What did thatwomando?”
“It’s…about me, actually.” I twisted my fingers together as every part of my body told me to lie, to avoid this, but I couldn’t. “I’m the reason she left you.”
“How do you figure?”
“Because I paid her ten thousand dollars.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
My brother froze.His easy smile was nowhere to be found, and he looked like a gargoyle, stuck in place with hard lines around his eyes and his lips in a flat, disappointing line. Thirty seconds, then forty, went by, him not saying anything or moving at all, and tears filled my eyes at what I had done.
“Fritz…let me explain.”
“You better fucking explain because there is norationalreason that I can think of that makes sense as to what you said. So please, enlighten me.” His jaw turned to stone, and he crossed his arms over his chest and stared at me with nothing but fire and loathing in his eyes.
“She was conning you. I saw her at a bar with another guy and went up to confront her and overheard them talking. She wanted the ring, for you to make it official, so she could steal from you. It was all part of her master plan with this other guy. She knew about the proposal, the bank accounts.”
He swallowed hard and blinked. That was his only physical reaction to my words.
I dug my nails into my palms.
His nostrils flared, and he pushed off the door, pulled on the ends of his hair, and stomped into the kitchen. “And you thought what? Paying heroffwas the right move? You didn’t think to tell me about this shit then?”
“You were going to propose to her, and she was a master manipulator, Fritz. She already prepared for that scenario when she saw me. She would’ve painted me as the bad guy.”
