Fool Me Forever (The Confidence Game 2)

She’d shut down. Sleepless and shocked and panicked about how she would have to be the one who supported Mom and Mallory alone, because she couldn’t rely on Easton.

Then there was forgetting to eat, eating badly and putting on weight, and getting the flu. The coughing hung on forever, the weight never came off, and her clothes didn’t fit right. Sometimes, she felt like she could stay in bed with the covers over her head forever.

She held it together for Mom, who’d never wanted for anything a day in her life, and whose hair had started falling out when people Dad had stiffed screamed at her in the street. For Mallory, who was just a kid, but at sixteen found the excuse she’d always wanted to be a brat, and for Easton, whose loss of face baked his usual arrogance into something meaner and sharper.

Only Fin saw how much energy just getting through all the shocks took. Fin watched her go from a trust-funded Wall Street princess with opportunity to burn, to a broke-ass, society blacklisted pariah in the space of time it took for Dad to exchange his safe deposit box pin code for an inmate number.

That was before Fin tangled with America’s Most Wanted con artists.

Lenny shouldn’t have shouted at Halsey just because she was losing it and he was big and safe and could handle it. After today, she never needed to see him again. Halsey could take his straight out of the 1950s with an updated aesthetic that was all Paul Newman on a wooden speedboat in the Italian Riviera and shove off.

The Sherwoods could go fuck themselves into criminal oblivion. Any association with them was risky and foolish and detrimental to her health.

“I’m done with your accounting software.”

She put her empty glass down and turned toward Halsey’s voice.

“There’s an issue I need to— Have you been crying?”

She touched her face to check in case she was leaking. Her skin was clammy, but no tears. “Why would I cry, in front of you, of all people?”

He took a step closer. “You’ve had a rough time.”

“No, this is me on an average day. If we’re squared away, you can go so I don’t have to listen to you telling me things I already know.”

“I hope this is not your average day. You’re frowning, corners of your mouth are down, shoulders are up, jaw is tense.”

“That’s me every day. A frowning, scowling, tight-shouldered, tense-jawed bitch who wants you gone thirty minutes ago.” And well before she gave him any more involuntary insights on how she was feeling.

“You keep touching your neck. That’s a self-soothing motion. And when you’re not doing that, you’re using your hands in front of your body as a barricade.”

She dropped her arms to her sides and scowled harder and immediately wanted to touch her neck again.

“Your weight is on your toes, like you think you might need to make a defensive move.”

She ground her teeth and eyed the empty water glass. It would make an excellent missile. “Thank you for that charming insight about my body language.” She pointed at the door, arm outstretched, an unmissable instruction.

“All that one-sided shouting I heard from behind your closed door, as in you weren’t the one doing it, that was fine with you? Not upsetting.”

“Water off a duck’s back.” She wagged her hand at the door. “Are you spatially challenged? Would you like a map to get out of my vastly complex corporate headquarters?”

“Extortion. That’s what I heard. Dealing with that is something you do every day? That guy was doing a classic stand-over move. Trying to intimidate you into giving him money. If he’s your boyfriend, you’ve got an even bigger problem.”

She laughed, slapping her hand to her side. Amazing to think all this could actually be worse. “Boyfriend? That’s how much you know about people who live in the real, law-abiding world. In that world, when your father defrauds the city’s best and brightest out of their life savings, you don’t get to have a boyfriend.” You barely got to keep any friends.

“That was your father’s undoing. Mark selection. After that, it was all downhill. It was only a matter of time until he screwed up.”

She picked up the glass, wrapping her fingers tightly around it. She’d thought Halsey was sweet when they met. A sharp dresser. Polite and gentlemanly, kind of shy, which was all sorts of cute, because he was a big, compellingly handsome guy. She must’ve been drugged. Something in the hamburger to make her think he was an acceptable human being.

“Takes a screw-up to know one, I guess,” she said.

Halsey blinked his too blue eyes and sighed. “He wasn’t your boyfriend, which means I don’t need to worry he’s abusing you. That doesn’t make the conversation I overheard any less disturbing.”

“You don’t need to worry your pretty little head about me at all.”

He put his palm over his brow. “Wow. I feel so objectified.”

She squeezed the glass.