If Grandmother Ethel cared anything at all about me, I might pull her aside and whisper pleas into her ear, and beg for her help, her advice on how to get what I want, what Ineed: Father’s ear, and an escape from Dray.
She’s a cane in her own right, and if anyone could help me, it would be her.
But Grandmother Ethel is just another sharp face in a line of my enemies.
The ones who claim to love me, like Mother, like Amelia, won’t be any help at all.
Now, after the ball, after learning the truth from the smoky lips of Landon Barlow, I know they are all in on it, and they have been for a while.
Mother, Father, Amelia, Harold, even Oliver.
Grandmother Ethel must know, otherwise she might have whacked Dray for stopping her from caning me, or she would’ve lashed out with her sharp tongue at least.
But she sank back into her seat and took her cane with her.
She accepted his authority—
Something he boldly performed right in front of my eyes.
For someone who doesn’t want me to figure it out, he makes too many mistakes.
Are they mistakes?
My mind reels in sync with my lurching gut.
I blink in the pollution of the roofed terminal, tasting the fumes on my tongue, but I’m suddenly swept back to the dance at the ball. I’m in Dray’s arms, the waltz moving us, and his words echo—
‘I have shifted my attention. Are you enjoying it?’
‘Enjoying what?’
‘All this attention you have tonight…’and he gestured to the watchers, the audience, the aristos and the gentry, and that fooled me.
He was toying with me.
He was playing in the mud of my ignorance, swimming in the pool of my tears, and those smiles of his in that dance, the daring touch of his fingertips down my nape, it was all a game to him.
More than I gave credit to at the time.
Dray isn’t just one step ahead of me, he is a mile in the distance, laughing as I try to catch up.
And he stands with my whole family.
Even Oliver…
Why that betrayal stings as much as it does, I don’t know. Yet, my insides twist as I look at him, my bloodshot eyes burning behind the shield of my sunglasses.
My brother, my twin, once a friend to me. But he and Dray are more like siblings than Oliver and I have ever been.
Looking at them, the pair of them are night and day.
Not a single similarity in their appearances.
Oliver’s coffee-hued hair slips out of place, over his furrowed brow. The richness of his Italian complexion is deepened from all his recent sunbaking.
Dray stands as his opposite, with his sawdust hair combed into place. Only a strand escapes and brushes over the darkness of his shaped eyebrow.
I consider his warm, smooth complexion, a perfect beige. Utterly flawless. Not a blemish or a mark in sight. Not even on those full, pink lips murmuring inaudible words.
