American Prince

And I couldn’t bear driving in the knife that deeply…but I knew it was what Abilene wanted. You have to admit, princess, she is very pretty.

“She was all three,” I tell Abilene, tossing my keys in a dish on the table and going for the bar in the living room. I’m pretty much out of everything except Macallan 12, but it’s my favorite, so I don’t mind. “Angry and hurt and confused. You got your wish. So you can leave now.”

Abilene settles herself in the best chair by the window. “I’d rather not. I want to hear more about Greer.”

I slam back a glass of the warm single malt, wipe my mouth and pour another. I am distantly cognizant that it’s not even three in the afternoon yet. “Why are you doing this? Greer hasn’t done shit to you.”

Something crackles in the air around Abilene. “Hasn’t she, though?” she asks in a low voice. “Because I very much think she has.”

Second glass of Macallan down the hatch, I pour a third and flop onto the sofa. “What did she do, Abilene? Get better grades than you? Get cast for a better part in the school play? Grandpa loved her better? And you’ve just been biding your time all these years?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she says coldly.

“I figured that wasn’t it. She told me that she was unpopular in school, always in your shadow, that you were the one everyone liked.”

The air crackles even more, and Abilene’s eyes flash the kind of blue that makes me think of veins…or a corpse’s lips.

“Is that what she told you?” Her voice is still low. “She was lying to you then, just like she lied to me.”

“She lied to you?”

Abilene keeps talking, as if she hasn’t heard me. “Everyone adored Greer. Every boy wanted to kiss her, every girl wanted to be her. The teachers petted her, Grandpa always liked her more, even my parents wished I could be as smart and polite as she was. But she was so aloof—so quiet—she didn’t even realize. She didn’t get it. She could have been the queen of that school if she’d even once looked up from her books, and that’s what infuriates me. She could have had everything and she didn’t even know. Didn’t care.”

I drink. “I don’t see how all that equals her lying to you.”

She takes a breath, as if she can’t believe what an idiot I am. “She didn’t lie about anything to do with school, dumbass. I meant she lied about him. She lied and she took him from me.”

I intended on facing away from her, but this makes me turn my head to get a good look at her expression. “Him? Ash, you mean?”

“She knew I loved him. He was all I wanted, and she took him away from me before I ever even had the chance.” Her voice is bitter, but when she sees me staring at her, she unfolds from her chair with a small smile on her face. She walks towards me, slowly, deliberately, the elegant lines of her body captivating. I suddenly feel very aware of the two and half glasses of scotch warming up my stomach, very aware of the fight I just had with Greer.

“Somehow, somehow, she got to him first. It should’ve been me kissing him at that party, it should have been me as his bride, and when I tried to tell him that in Geneva, he pushed me away. Told me he loved her.”

Abilene makes the word loved sound sordid, obscene, as if loving Greer is some sort of aberrant act that is beyond the edge of taboo.

She arranges herself on my lap, naturally, like it’s a habit of ours. “She took everything I wanted away from me, just like she took everyone’s affection and love when we were growing up. And if I can’t have Maxen, then she can’t have you. In fact, I don’t want her to have anything.” She places her hand along my jaw and tilts her head prettily at me.

When I was a boy, my grandmother used to have a mechanical bird with gold-filigree wings and ruby eyes. It was beautiful and delicate and when you wound up the key between its wings, it would cock its head and open its beak and flutter its sharp, metal wings. And as Abilene tilts her head at me, I think of that bird. Calculated and beautiful and utterly, utterly un-alive.

Mistaking my examination of her for something else, she leans in and presses her lips against mine. I don’t return the kiss, I don’t close my eyes. I stare at her wondering—how did that impetuous, passionate girl Greer told me about turn into this spiteful automaton? The girl Greer told me was the first to party, the first to fight, the first to laugh. What happened to her? Was it really losing the chance to be loved by Ash that turned her sour?

Abilene opens her eyes too, and pulls back ever so slightly. “This can be fun for us,” she says, again in that convincing purr. “We can both get something out of this.”

Fuck, that scotch is hitting me hard. I want her off my lap, out of my house and my life, but I’m almost too drunk to make my limbs work, to make my mouth say the words. But I finally manage, standing up with her in my arms and setting her down on her feet, not as gently as I could have. “If you were the last person on Earth, Abilene, then I would learn to love sheep instead. Get the fuck out of my house.”

Again she tilts her head, the gesture no longer coquettish but shrewd. “Be careful with me, Embry. It’s not fair that she has both of you, and I plan on fixing that for once and for all.”

“I don’t give a shit what you do as long as you keep your word about Morgan,” I say, walking over to the door and opening it. The scotch is making everything so fuzzy, so watery, and it takes me a couple tries with the doorknob to make it work.