Sweet (True Believers #2)(54)
Author: Erin McCarthy

“Did he leave a voice mail?”

“No.” Did anyone leave voice mails? But then my phone buzzed for a text. I opened it and my heart sank when I saw the picture he’d attached. “Shit.” I didn’t even have to read what he’d written to know it would be a threat, but I did anyway.

WV huh? Location says Cinci and your face says wasted. How much $ to keep quiet?

Yep. That was a threat. Technically blackmail. I stared at the picture that he had clearly lifted off of my Facebook page. Someone had posted it and I hadn’t been on my page in days so I hadn’t noticed. It was me dancing with the guy at the party at the Shit Shack. I had a beer in my hand and a goofy, drunk expression on my face. My cle**age was exploding, and his hand was lower on my hip than I remembered it being.

I was so busted.

“What’s the matter?”

“My brother has a picture of me at the party last weekend. He says he’ll tell my parents if I don’t pay him off.”

Riley’s jaw dropped. “Your brother is trying to extort money from you?”

“I told you, he hates me for no apparent reason.”

“How bad is the picture?” Tyler asked. “I mean, your parents have to know you party a bit at school, right?”

“No. They do not.” I pushed my phone over to him so he could see it. “They also think I’m in West Virginia building houses for the poor with a church mission group.”

Tyler choked on his cereal. “Are you shitting me?”

“No, I am not.” I felt sick. Like throw up sick.

Riley squeezed my knee. “Hey, it’s okay. What does your brother want, like fifty bucks? Just pay the little prick. Or let me talk to him.” There was a gleam in his eye that suggested he wanted to do more than talk.

“You think I should pay him?”

“Well, if you want him to keep quiet, it’s your best option. Though I would personally prefer to beat the piss out of him. What kind of a shit thing is that to do to your own sister?”

How much? I typed to Paxton.

Two grand.

I laughed in disbelief. “He wants two thousand dollars!”

“What? Fuck him.” Riley waved his hand. “Tell him to suck my dick.”

You’re insane. I don’t have 2k.

You have thirty minutes. You can transfer the $ to my acct or I’m going to mom.

That he said Mom instead of Dad was a good indication he was serious. Dad would be profoundly disappointed, but Mom would be pissed.

Why do you care what I do?

Though I already knew it was pointless to try to talk him out of it. Paxton had been looking for the big score, the way to topple me, for years, and he had found it. I had basically handed it to him via vodka cranberries.

Because you’re a bitch.

Well, there you go. My brother thought I was a bitch so he was going to ruin my life. “This is bad. This is so bad. My parents are going to freak.” The grilled cheese sat like a lump in my gut and my mind raced, trying to anticipate the fallout.

“Obviously they’re going to be pissed you lied, but they can’t really punish you. I mean, you’re twenty years old.”

I shook my head. “Oh, they can punish me. They’ll cut me off.”

“Rory’s dad threatened to stop paying her tuition and he didn’t,” Tyler said. “He knew in the end hurting Rory’s future wasn’t worth it.”

But Rory’s father was different from mine and I knew that. Rory had stood up to her dad, and I had admired it when she’d done it. It couldn’t have been easy to tell him she was going to intentionally disobey him. But Rory also knew that at the end of the day, her dad had her back. It was just the two of them, and he loved her.

My father loved me. Sure. And he was a good man in so many ways, a good leader, with deep moral convictions. But those convictions would prevent him from indulging what he was consider the path of my moral destruction. My mother was just like Paxton—she was spiteful. Once she was angry, it took a lot to earn back her affection.

The combination of both of them upset with me was going to result in an order to come home or be cut off. I knew it.

Both of which made me feel like I couldn’t breathe.

“Rory’s dad compromised because he didn’t want to lose her. Mine won’t. I know it.” I tried to give a shrug. “I guess it was going to be impossible not to get busted at some point. I can’t keep pretending to be the perfect daughter. Frankly, I’m surprised they haven’t figured that out already.”

“Maybe they have,” Riley said, reaching over and pulling my hand into his. “They might know more than you realize.”

My phone rang again. This time it was “Material Girl” by Madonna. My mom’s ringtone, and my sense of irony on display. “Wow. Paxton moves faster than I thought. He must have been planning to tell the whole time.”

Resigned, heart thumping, hand shaking, I picked up the phone, wondering if I genuinely felt guilty that I lied, or if I was just sorry I’d been caught. “Hello?”

“If you’re going to mastermind that you’re off doing mission work, then you should have the good sense not to post pictures of you partying like a trashy whore on the Internet.”

How was that for a greeting? “Mom, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for you to find out like that.”

“You didn’t mean for me to find out at all. But I’m not discussing this with you on the phone.” Her voice was cold, her anger barely contained. She wasn’t yelling, but she wanted to be. It sounded like she was trying to not completely lose her shit on me.

I just waited, because there was going to be more. “I’m sorry,” I repeated.

She took a breath and continued. “I don’t want to hear your insincere apologies. Tomorrow night is the fund-raiser. You will be there, and you will do your part to help this family. Then we will discuss your behavior.”

“Mom, I have to work tomorrow,” I protested. I didn’t want to go home. They might not let me leave again. I supposed my parents couldn’t lock me in the house, but they could use emotional manipulation.

“And I don’t give a damn,” she said. “Be at the house by five at the latest and I want zero arguments from you.”

Then she hung up on me. Probably to go throw something to let out all that simmering rage.

“That was fast,” Riley said.

“She said I have to come home tomorrow and go to a fund-raiser. Then we’ll discuss my behavior.”