Series: Webs We Weave Series by Krista Ritchie
Total pages in book: 147
Estimated words: 145038 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 483(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145038 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 483(@300wpm)
“You have a literal centimeter of itty-bitty space to be angry at me.” Oliver squeezes his fingers together. “You do realize that? You’re sleeping with my sister—so you can’t be mad that I’m with yours.”
“We are not the same,” I growl back. “Because I had the decency to at least inform you that Phoebe and I are a thing.”
“Olly and I aren’t a thing.” Hailey hops off the counter. “Not like you and Phoebe.”
My brain short-circuits. “What the fuck does that even mean?”
Oliver buckles his belt. Casual, unconcerned. “It means it’s just sex.”
“Just sex,” Hailey echoes, fixing her nose ring in the mirror. I read people, places, and rooms, and the comfort and ease between them tells me this is not new for them. This is familiar, routine.
Hot breath sears my throat. Yeah, I never pried because I didn’t want to know. There’ve been a thousand times I thought maybe…maybe something happened between the two of them. Now I’m in too deep to leave without poking this beast.
I grip the doorframe, filling the exit so Oliver doesn’t dart out. “For how long has this been going on?”
Hailey is avoiding my gaze. “Rocky—”
“You can sleep with whoever you want, Hails,” I tell my sister. “But why the secrecy? Sure, I would’ve been irritated, but I’d live with it. Like I do everything else that irritates the fuck out of me.”
“We never wanted it to be a big deal among everyone,” Hailey says while Oliver sidles close to her at the sink. “We were afraid it’d affect the group dynamic, and it’s just sex.”
Just sex.
Just sex. I can’t even imagine being involved with someone in our “group” and eliminating feelings from it. A one-night stand in Brooklyn, who you’ll never see again, is not the same as getting into bed with someone you would follow to the ends of the earth. Someone you trust in ways that normal people could never understand.
Oliver cradles her life in his hands every single day. With the knowledge of who she is—knowledge that could send her to prison. Just like I cradle Phoebe’s.
Just like they cradle ours.
They can’t tell me that this begins and ends with sex. But really, what the fuck do I know about emotions—I’ve only spent decades trying to control mine.
“We’ve been sleeping around most of our lives,” Hailey reminds me, like being promiscuous is in the Grifter Handbook that we’ve all opened.
“How long have you two been keeping this a secret?” I ask.
Hailey slips a tiny help me look to Oliver.
“Why don’t you drop it here?” he suggests.
“Why don’t you answer my question?” I snap, aggravated now. He doesn’t get off the hook just because he’s Oliver Graves.
“And if I don’t answer the question, what are you going to do? Shove me in the ocean like you did Nova?”
“Maybe. Give me a minute and I might come up with something more creative.”
“It’s been years,” Hailey cuts in, exasperated. “Okay? Off and on.”
“Years. Years.” I nod a couple times, not shell-shocked. Their body language already gave it away, but still, I can’t imagine being that intimate on and off for years and severing the emotion. I had feelings for Phoebe before we even slept together.
Hell, almost having sex on a job nearly shattered us. Maybe I shouldn’t be comparing my relationship to theirs—maybe that’s not right. But it’s all I’ve got. There is no other viewpoint or window to look through than the one that exists with me and her.
“How old were you?” I ask them. “When this first started?”
They’re not paying attention to me. Oliver is inspecting himself in the mirror. Hailey is on her tiptoes and drawing down the collar of his button-down. A hickey has formed on his neck.
“I’ll go grab Phoebe’s makeup,” Hailey says, as if this has happened many times before.
I don’t budge from the doorway. Blocking Hailey, I tell her, “Phoebe? You mean your best friend, who knows nothing about you bagging her brother?”
Guilt pools in my sister’s eyes.
I immediately regret the shot I took.
“I’m going to call her, Rocky. Right now. I’ll fix it. I can fix it. I can fix it.” She tears through my arm with panic I didn’t mean to fuel, and my stomach clenches painfully.
“Hailey!” I call after her, but I let her go.
Because Oliver says, “We were fourteen.”
“Fourteen?” My eyes flash angrily to him. “You took her virginity?”
“Yeah.” Oliver faces me more than the mirror. “And she took mine.” He’s as calm as Lake Placid.
I’m not sure how I feel other than annoyed, irritated, furious that Hailey and Oliver have been hooking up since they were fourteen—but it was Phoebe and me that were somehow the objects of our parents’ obsession.
Jealousy claws at my insides.
In a different reality, if Hailey and Oliver were open about their connection, would Phoebe and I be left alone? Could we have become a couple sooner without our parents’ needling?