Pure Sin (Privilege 5)

Just focus, she told herself. Just breathe. Palmer doesn’t know anything. How could he possibly know?

She looked at Palmer out of the corner of her eye, hoping he would be the picture of chagrin. But instead, he was still watching her, as if he was trying to see inside of her. As if there was something odd there that he was trying to understand. This boy needed some serious distraction. And he needed it now.

“Look, I don’t know if I’m a bringer of drama or what,” Ariana said, turning her knees toward him. “But I do know that thinking out loud is a highly overrated pastime.”

She lifted her leg, crooking it over his, and slid even closer. Palmer raised his eyebrows, intrigued.

“Oh yeah? Did you have some other activity in mind?” he said, slipping his arm around the back of her chair.

“Most definitely,” she replied.

Then she leaned in and touched her lips to his, fully aware that the entire population of the library was watching them. She cupped her hand around the back of his neck and drew him into her, deepening the kiss and eliciting a moan from the back of his throat. Any second now, this was going to get broken up by one of the librarians, but until it did, Ariana was going to make sure that Palmer was good and distracted.

She was going to make him forget all about Ana Covington as a potential bringer of drama.

“So that is when I told Fellini, if you want something done right . . . let me do it!” Maria’s father said, his voice booming across the small parlor.

The small crowd that had gathered around Maria’s parents laughed heartily, and Mr. Stanzini sipped his mimosa. His slim, couture-clad wife hung on to his arm, her huge sunglasses pushed casually back into her short brown hair. They were every bit as glamorous as Ariana had imagined, but she was having a hard time paying attention to this parental conversation too. She had lost sight of Lexa, which, considering they were standing in the very room where Kaitlynn’s death had transpired, was very not good.

“Will you all excuse me for a moment, please?” Ariana said.

Mr. Stanzini nodded, which was enough for her. Ariana shook her head at a passing waiter as he offered another full tray of mimosas and ducked past Mr. Montgomery’s elbow as he gestured his way through another story. She saw Jasper eye her with curiosity as she glanced around the room, but she ignored him. There were far more important things on her mind than Jasper and whatever it was he might be thinking.

Finally, out of the corner of her eye, Ariana saw a flash of red. She paused, and her heart squeezed. Lexa was walking through the yard outside the parlor windows. Walking toward the rose bushes.

You let your guard down for two seconds . . .

Ariana rushed to the French doors that led out to the garden. The sun shone down on the lazily falling leaves, and her feet crunched through them as she hurried to join her friend. The disarray of the yard was just another testament to the fact that they had chosen the right burial plot for Kaitlynn. Clearly no one ever came back here. It seemed that the Greenes had even neglected to hire a landscaper to rake the leaves.

Lexa stopped just inches from the recently turned-over earth. She reached up and toyed with her gold necklace, shivering as a cold November breeze rustled the bare branches of the rose bushes.

“What are you doing?” Ariana hissed, coming up behind her.

Lexa flinched but didn’t turn to look at Ariana. Her gaze was trained on the base of the bushes. The exact spot where Kaitlynn’s body now rotted away.

“Nothing,” Lexa said. “Just . . . going for a walk.”

Her bottom lip trembled, and tear

s brimmed in her eyes. Ariana felt the briefest pang of sympathy for Lexa—clearly the girl was not as strong as she’d originally hoped—but the sympathy quickly hardened into anger. This weakness could get them both in serious trouble.

“You need to relax,” Ariana told her, standing just behind Lexa’s shoulder. “Whoever Keiko hired to fix the window did a perfect job, and it’s obvious no one’s been back here and no one’s coming back here. Unless, of course, they come out after us.”

“I don’t understand how you can be okay with all of this,” Lexa whispered, not looking at Ariana. “It’s like you’re a robot or something.”

Ariana’s face warmed. “Thanks a lot.”

“All I can think about when I stand here is the blood. All that blood,” Lexa whispered, ignoring Ariana’s comment. “It took forever for me to get it off my hands, and sometimes, it’s like it’s still there.”

“Lexa,” Ariana said in a warning tone. “I—”

“My life as I knew it . . . it’s over,” Lexa whispered harshly, turning to her. “It’s ruined, all because of her. Because of—”

Behind them, someone opened a window, and laughter wafted its way toward them on the breeze.

“Lexa!” Ariana hissed through her teeth. “Your life is not ruined. Look around.” She grabbed Lexa’s arms and forcibly turned her, making her look back at the huge windows and the party going on behind them. “Your friends are still your friends. Your parents are doing just fine. Everything is just as it was, and do you know why? Because no one knows. And no one else will ever know. Unless you screw it up.”

Lexa glanced at Ariana, her eyes wide, as if startled. As if it had never occurred to her until that moment that she was responsible for her own fate. Ariana could have smacked her across the face. Was she the only person around here who knew how to count on herself ? Who knew that the future was all that mattered?