Cruel Money (Cruel 1)

I nodded. I would be. That much was vividly clear to me. I’d spent so much of my life trying to be a better person, and then the one person who had come into my life that I actually cared about…was throwing that all into question. Would an ethical person make a bet like this? I couldn’t figure out how the one person I thought made me a better person also made me a worse person. The conflicting sides of my character tore at me like a real-life angel and devil on my shoulders. And anything I did to fix it all…could only make it worse.

A buzz drew me out of my deep thoughts.

Lewis pulled his phone out of his pocket. “It’s Natalie.”

I froze. “Calling you?”

He shrugged. “Looks like it.”

“For what?”

“I’ll put it on speaker, but you need to stay quiet.”

“Fine.”

Lewis answered the phone. “Hey, gorgeous!”

He pressed the speaker button and placed the phone on his coffee table. He put his finger to his mouth, and I nodded.

“Hey, Lewis,” she said. Her voice was shaky. She sounded like she had been crying again. “Is Penn still with you?”

“No, he just left,” Lewis lied.

“Okay, good,” she said with a sigh.

I pursed my lips in anger. She was glad that I wasn’t there while she was on the phone with Lewis. What the hell?

“What’s going on? I heard you two got in a fight, and I’m sorry to hear about your job.”

“Yeah. Yeah, we did. I probably need to talk to him about that. I said some things that I shouldn’t have.”

Lewis looked up at me and raised his eyebrows. “That sometimes happens in arguments.”

“Anyway, that’s not why I’m calling.” She took a deep breath.

I could tell that whatever she was thinking was eating at her.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes. No. Maybe. I don’t know. Katherine came by,” she said softly.

I jumped to my feet and cursed softly. Lewis glared at me and waved his hand to tell me to sit down and shut up.

“What did she want?”

“Well, she claimed she wanted to comfort me. I think she thought Penn and I were breaking up, and she wanted to gloat. I remember what you said at the concert about her being worse if Penn and I were together. And then she said something that was just…ludicrous.” Her breath hitched. “Just so ridiculous that it couldn’t be true. She was just trying to force us apart by whatever means necessary. But she said that, if I didn’t believe her I could ask any of you…and you’d tell me the truth. So…can I ask you?”

My eyes locked on Lewis’s. We both were frozen in place, as if we knew exactly where this train wreck was going but had no way to stop it.

“Of course. What did she say?” Lewis asked.

“She said that I was just a…bet.” Natalie slowly breathed out.

“A bet?” Lewis asked with his eyes on me, as if to ask what I wanted him to say.

But I didn’t know. This wasn’t how I’d wanted her to find out, but fuck, I couldn’t keep lying to her.

“Yeah…she said it was a bet to sleep with me and make me fall for him.”

Lewis arched an eyebrow, and I finally slowly shook my head.

“There was no bet, Natalie. That’s Katherine trying to get in your head.”

“Oh,” she said with a big sigh. “Oh okay, good. That’s what I thought. But I just…I had this voice in my head, saying that I had to check. And I knew you’d tell me.”

Lewis narrowed his eyes at me. “Anytime. Hey, I have to head out now. Do you need anything else?”

“No, I’m okay. I’ll just wait for Penn to get back. Thanks, Lewis.”

“Anytime, Natalie.”

He hung up the phone and then vaulted to his feet. “You have me lying for you now!”

“How is that different than any other time?”

“She asked me point-blank, and I told her it wasn’t true.” He spread his arms wide in anger.

“It will all be over in three days!”

“Are you that blind and stupid? Katherine will never let this go. Natalie deserves to know.”

“I know. I know, but it’s not the right time.”

“It’s never the right time,” Lewis spat at me. “You did this. You can’t keep stringing her along.”

“I’m not stringing her along. I care about her, and I don’t want to hurt her. I just want this whole thing to be over with.”

“You are unbelievable,” Lewis said. He shook his head and stormed away from me. “You have this girl. This amazing, beautiful, confident, funny, brilliant girl. A girl any guy would die for, and you’re just going to sit there and say, Let’s wait three days and hope it all goes away. News flash: it’s not going to go away.”

“Jesus, Lewis. Since when do you even care?” I demanded.

I was staring at my best friend and hardly recognized him. For all the years we had known each other, Lewis had always had my back. He’d been the one to egg on my antics. To amp everything up to make it worse. To be there when things went south. And now, this?