I open my blue eyes wide. I am the picture of innocent earnestness. “Absolutely.”
I can’t dance anymore. The lights are spinning and the floor is spinning. How did they install a spinning floor? It’s amazing. The whole world spins, spins, spins from the balcony where we’re sitting. I try to tap, but I can’t find my leg with my finger, and I laugh. I’m even free from my three taps.
“You know why I don’t want to be with you?” James’s eyes are as glassy as they were the first time we met.
“Because I’m too young for you? Because you’re an evil, manipulative monster and I know it?”
He smiles, and his smile has that edge I know, that sharp edge I recognize. It sings to my own sharp soul. “You knowing makes me want you more. And you aren’t young. You haven’t been young since you were fourteen.”
I smile back. “Fine, then. Because I’m psychotic and I kill people?”
“Nope.” He shakes his head, still smiling. “Because my dad wants us together.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. He suggested it when we left on the yacht. Wanted you to fall in love with me as another way to tie you to us.”
I laugh. “Wasn’t he worried I’d kill you in your sleep or something?”
“I don’t think he’d actually care.”
“Oh, poor James.” I scoot across the dark velvet of the love seat, scoot right onto James’s lap, wrap my arms around his neck. “Why do you care if he cares? Your dad is evil.” Is it the money? Can he not live without bottomless funds? Or does he actually believe in this shadowy network of power his dad is building? I need to know. I let myself ignore it for so long, but the why is killing me. The why of James working for his father. The why of how I can feel like this for him even though he is part of what did this to me.
He looks at my lips, leans in closer. I don’t need to know the why anymore. I don’t care. I’ll care again tomorrow, but now? I close my eyes, waiting, waiting, wanting his lips on mine.
He pecks my nose instead, then laughs. I open my eyes and glare.
“My dad is evil. But I’m a Keane. It’s my duty to care. I owe it to my mother.”
“So, are you finally living up to Daddy Dearest’s dearest wishes? Are you going to seduce me, James Keane?”
He pulls me in closer. “I’ve only stayed away from you this long because he wanted me to do the opposite. I can’t let him win, can I?”
“I won’t tell if you don’t.”
“But what about the Readers?”
“Oh, them? I think ‘I’m boinking the boss’s son!’ at them every chance I get. But only the ones who are in love with you.”
“You are evil.” But he looks at me like I’m not.
I know it’s wrong.
He’s a Keane.
He isn’t his father, but he will be.
He’s almost as good a liar as I am, and I am too drunk to sift through what he’s said.
It’s wrong, wrong, wrong.
But his hands are on my neck and in my hair and tracing my collarbone and it is wrong but it feels right, it feels like falling and I know the impact at the bottom will probably kill me, but I don’t care anymore.
“I’ve wanted to kiss you since that first night in the school. I’ve wanted to kiss you every single day since then.” He shifts me even closer. We are touching, touching everywhere and it’s wrong it’s wrong it’s wrong but right right now and I close my eyes and his lips are even better at the dulling than the drinks or the music. His lips light me on fire and dull everything else and I lose myself in them, and I am so happy and relieved to be lost I could cry.
We stumble out onto the street, wrapped around each other, and I am light-headed and my feet can’t trace a straight line, and I can’t feel anything.
Right or wrong or even my hands.