He snitched on me, didn’t he?
“Aveena, sweetheart, can you give us a minute?” Gaten tells my best friend softly.
“Oh, of course.” Vee takes the hint.
I glance at her over my shoulder, and she musters a small “good luck” smile.
“I’ll be in the car,” she assures me before plucking her keys out of her pocket. She’s driving us tonight. I know I’m in deep shit from the moment she steps outside.
“What the hell is this? Some sort of intervention?”
Gaten releases a deep sigh. “I’m only going to ask you once, Diamond. Were you or were you not alone this summer?”
If looks could kill, Jesse would have a smoking hole in his forehead right now.
My throat aches. “I…”
There’s no point in lying anymore.
“No,” I come clean.
Gaten’s shoulders sink with relief, as though he appreciates that I didn’t lie when confronted, but Dave’s eyes tell a completely different story.
I lost his trust.
Worse, I lost his respect.
“You sat there.” Dave leaps off his chair and charges toward me. He stops inches from my face. “At this very table! Every Saturday for two months, you sat there and looked us in the eyes knowing you were betraying our trust.”
His anger paralyzes me for a moment.
“I… I knew you would tell me to quit. I needed the job and—”
“You had a job,” Dave snaps. “You had multiple jobs, Dia. You were dog-sitting left and right, but you gave it all up for the house-sitting gig. You could’ve left from the moment you found out you were going to live with a boy, but you didn’t. Why?”
He’s right.
I’ve been lying to them, but mostly, I’ve been lying to myself. I told the nagging voice in my head to shut up, that I was only staying because this job paid better than my regular ones, and it was true. At the beginning.
I wanted to make money and piss off Finn.
To show him I was here to stay.
Then it became more.
It became about figuring him out. Cracking his chest open and making sure he had a heart. I stayed because I wanted to see into his soul. I stayed until I didn’t want to leave.
“Why?” Dave urges a few seconds later.
A tear traces down my cheek and dies on my mouth as I whisper, “Because I love him.”
Gaten can’t bring himself to speak, but Dave? He couldn’t care less about my confession. If anything, he must find it funny because he lets out a bitter scoff.
“Give me your phone.” He stretches his arm out toward me.
“W-What?” I stammer.
“You heard me. Give. Me. Your. Phone,” he stresses.