She shrugged. “I was wondering the same thing about you.”
“I’m here for the same reason you are,” I said. “Harrison Gables. Not that it’s any of your business.”
“It’sallof my business,” she said. “I’llbe the one inheriting it.”
“Whoopty doo. Like I care.” I didn’t care, either. Not one shit for the pile of stuff she’d inherit from that fucking idiot. She was welcome to it.
“Dad only wants you here because he thinks it’s therightthing to do. You’re just his little charity case. His embarrassing little secret.”
“Sure, whatever,” I said, pretending it didn’t sting. Not even a little.
“Don’t think you can show up here and make me look bad. I won’t let you make me look like an idiot, Katie, no matter how hard you try.”
“I don’t need to make you look like an idiot,” I said. “I’m just here for Harrison. How you choose to make yourself look is completely up to you.”
“I heard you did well at some shitty job once. Don’t think that will make you better than me. A shitty job around shitty college won’t make you better than me.”
“I didn’t say it would.” I glared at her reflection.
“No, but youthinkit.”
I laughed. “You’re paranoid. You’ve always been paranoid.” But she wasn’t paranoid, not this time. That steely hard little part of me did want to think it would make me better than her, just this once. I was counting on it.
She tutted. “You’d be paranoid, too, if some little bitch was always after what was yours.”
I turned to face her and I could feel my cheeks burning up. “Since when have Ieverbeen after what’s yours? I’ve never given two fucks about what’s yours.”
And she hissed, she actually hissed at me. She jabbed a pretty little manicured fingernail in my direction and her face was contorted by rage and jealousy and maybe a little bit of fear, too. “I won’t let you take what’s mine. Not my friends, not my company, not my fucking dad. You can just fuck off back where you came from, you should never have come here!”
It took me aback, and for a moment I was a little girl again, unsure of my own footing. “I didn’twantto come here. I didn’twantto know any of you. I wish I’d never even known I had a fucking dad, alright? I wish you people didn’t exist to me.”
“Feeling’s mutual,” she said.
I turned back to the sink, washing hands that were already clean and splashing more water over my face so she wouldn’t see the angry tears pricking.
“You can take your greedy eyes off Carl, as well,” she said. “He isn’t going to fall for your shit, either.”
“Sorry?” I snapped.
“Carl,” she repeated, as though I was a dullard. “I’ve seen the way you gawp and drool, and he’s gay. He’s got a boyfriend.” She folded her arms, so smug. “He’s just not going to be interested in a little skank like you,sorry.”
Oh God, how I wanted to tell her. The urge to gloat about how he’d taken me over and over and over again while his boyfriend rammed his gorgeous cock in my mouth was almost too much to bear. The words were in my throat, burning me, desperate to spring out and slap the little bitch across her spoiled little mouth, but I didn’t. I couldn’t.
She smirked a vile smirk at me. “Of course, the fact that he’s already with someone probably wouldn’t stop you. Like mother like daughter, after all. Adultery probably runs in your skanky DNA.”
“Or yours,” I said. “Probably yours, too, since it’s your lovelydaddywho couldn’t keep his dick in his pants.”
“Your mum chased him, your mum made him do it.”
“You can shut your mouth about my mother,” I snapped, and I meant it. My blood was boiling, pulse racing.
“My mum says your mum was nothing but a gold-digging slut. A cheap-rate whore.”
“Your mum is a bitter, twisted bitch if she thinks that. My mum wasn’t even twenty years old. Younger than we are now, just think about that.”
“Old enough to know better.”
“Young enough to be taken advantage of by a seedy, arrogant, disgusting old prick.”