Dirty Games (Tropical Temptation)

His name had the power to make her miss a step. “No.” She looked down and dug through her purse for her key. “I don’t plan to. He earned a permanent place on my shit list by selling me out.”

“He didn’t.”

That snapped her attention back to Eddie. “You know who did?”

“Not yet. But I know it wasn’t Luke. There has to be some other explanation.”

She found her key and hit the button to unlock the door. “I get that he’s your friend and all, but you should know he never denied it.”

“He doesn’t have to. I know he didn’t do it. The man is made of ethics. He’s also extremely careful. I trust him, and you can, too.”

The certainty in his face only made her want to burst into tears. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but I’m not the kind of girl who inspires a hell of a lot of caring from anyone.”

“That’s not true. You’ve got a family fairly inept at demonstrating it, but you can’t take their shortcomings and project them onto the rest of the world. You’re not being fair to yourself, or Luke.”

“It doesn’t matter.” She started to shake as the truth of those words sank in—little shivers that, ironically, signaled the melting away of her icy fortitude. Before she fell apart in a studio parking lot, she wrenched open the car door and climbed behind the wheel.

“Quinn—”

“It doesn’t matter,” she repeated, cutting him off. “If I’m right, Luke fucked me. If you’re right…” She broke off to absorb the stunningly sharp stab of pain. “If you’re right, I fucked myself, because he’ll never speak to me again.”

…

Good news never came at two in the morning. Quinn had known as much before she’d picked up the phone, but walking into a police station an hour later only confirmed it. She posted bail on Callum’s behalf, and then waited another hour, all the while thanking God she was sitting in a police station instead of a hospital or a morgue. Eventually an officer brought her brother out, looking pale and hollow eyed under the harsh fluorescent lights.

They both held it together until they were ensconced in the privacy of her SUV. As soon as he shut his door, she turned to him, and even though she’d spent the wait time coaching herself to stay calm, the emotional rollercoaster she’d been on for too long simply bottomed out. She smacked his shoulder, and yelled, “So help me God, Callum…”

“I know. Jesus. Ow! Quinn, I’m sorry. I screwed up. I am so…fucking…sorry.” Then he buried his face in his hands—hands so grimy, even the gloomy interior of the car couldn’t hide the dirt—and for one hysterical second, she wondered just how they fingerprinted people nowadays. Then he broke down in silent, body-wracking sobs.

She’d wanted to see remorse from him. Wanted actual tears, and uncontrolled sobs as evidence he knew what he’d put her through with his choices—what he’d put the whole family through. But now that he was sitting in her passenger seat all wrung out and shattere

d, she couldn’t help gathering him up. He was her brother. Her twin. They’d never existed independent of each other. Their mom had a grainy gray-and-white ultrasound image of them snuggled up together in the womb and whatever link had been forged way back then still tethered them, despite the way their paths had diverged. She never planned to cut that tie.

“It’s okay.” She tightened her arms around him, and pulled him close, startled at how much it felt like hugging a bag of bones, despite the oversize black hoodie he wore. He buried his face against her shoulder, and cried out a torrent of guilt, fear, embarrassment, self-pity, and maybe…hopefully, some relief. Hot, wet tears soaked through the gray cardigan she’d thrown over her T-shirt and cut-offs. “It’s going to be okay,” she whispered again, and kissed the top of his head. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Uh-uh.” He drew away, but didn’t look at her. “It’s not okay, and we shouldn’t go anywhere yet. You don’t know. I did something bad, Quinnie.” He sniffed and wiped his eyes, focused them on some point beyond the windshield. “A real doucher move.”

Mostly to assure him nothing would shock her, she said, “Did you lie? Did you steal? Callum Sheridan, did you sell your body for drugs?”

“No.” His denial was quiet. Ominous. His eyes darted to hers, and then away. “I sold yours.”

Now it was her turn to draw back. “You did…what?”

“When I left Foundations, I hooked up with Damon and Bhodi. Remember them?”

Vaguely. Bhodi was another actor who’d aged out of the spotlight in his teens. Damon, as far as she could tell, was a periodic drug dealer and full-time fuckup. She nodded.

“We partied for a while, but then we needed money to keep the party going. I might have been throwing your name around to look like hot shit—I probably was. Anyway, Damon ran into this friend who had a friend who works for some Gawker-type site, and she had big brown eyes and a baggie of coke, and kept talking about how maybe we could work something out if I could give her an inside track, and I kind of…” He looked away again and squinted out the windshield into the darkness.

“You kind of did what, Callum?” But her heart crashed into her ribs because she already knew.

“I kind of said that I thought I could guess your cloud password—just FYI you need to pick a better one than last name and our birthday—and then next thing I knew, we had more shit, and pictures of you in your underwear were all over the internet. I’m really sorry, Quinn,” he went on quickly. “I understand if you want to walk back into the police station and press charges for identity theft, or hacking or whatever. I don’t care. I have it coming. I’ll do whatever it takes to make you forgive me.”

A landslide of thoughts tumbled through her mind. She gripped the steering wheel to get her bearings, but slowing the rush long enough to pick a sensible reaction out of the torrent felt next to impossible. “I’m not going to press charges against you, Callum. You’re my brother, for Christ’s sake, and you have a problem. But I can’t continue being collateral damage to your recklessness. That can’t happen anymore. ”

“I know.”

She barely heard him. “I have to protect myself. I can’t trust you.”