Gilt: By Invitation Only (Gilt #1) Read online

  Nathaniel is dead. Jameson is a West. And somehow I’ve found myself in the middle of a murder.

  “You're here to be his alibi,” Monroe continues. “I don't know what's more disgusting, knowing that a slut like you touched my brother or that he'd admit to everyone that he stooped so low.”

  “Monroe.” Jonas says her name sharply, but I step forward and wiggle between them.

  “Let her finish. She's been wanting to say this for a long time.” I’m tired of being used by the Wests. First my father was a pawn in Nathaniel’s schemes and then I endured years of shit from Monroe. I hate them all, especially Jameson for using me to get himself out of trouble. All they do is take, and I’m about to give a little back.

  “You never should have been there last night, but I guess I can't be surprised that you threw yourself at him. It's your typical pathetic move.” She’s practically spitting at me now.

  “My typical pathetic move?” I repeat. “Like when you got Jonas drunk at the Freshman Desert Party and had sex with him on a car in front of half of the student body. Classy like that, Monroe? Because one of us is actually pathetic. There's a mirror in there if you want to see what she looks like.”

  Jonas looks positively constipated as I haul up this unpleasant memory, but hey it takes two to tango.

  “Feel free to jump in any time or did she take your backbone along with your virginity?” I tell him.

  “You know Hugo will be back tomorrow to give his statement if you need a pity fuck,” Monroe steps in before I can unleash three years of anger on her boyfriend. “Sorry I can't be more help but I have to plan my father's funeral.”

  She drags Jonas toward the elevator, dumping the coffee cup on the floor. I suppose Monroe and her brother are a lot a like: they both expect other people to clean up their messes.

  Brother.

  The fight had been a welcome distraction from that piece of shrapnel that’s now lodged in my chest about dead center. Jameson didn’t know who I was last night, because he never would have touched a Southerly. Now conveniently I’m his alibi, which no one can ever know. It might kill my dad to know I was out all night with a guy, but if he found out that it was a West, he might kill him. And me. Belle Mère really doesn’t need any more murders at the moment.

  “Come on, Josie. Where are you?” Saying her name a loud works like an incantation because a second later the phone buzzes with a message that she’s outside. I can’t blame her for not wanting to come into the police station. If Detective Mackey is telling the truth and everyone at that party is a suspect, she’ll get her fifteen minutes soon enough.

  Texting her that I’m on my way out, I hit the elevator button. But as I step inside, the door next to my interview room opens—the one on the other side of the mirror. Jameson steps out followed by a man in a suit. He's dressed in his clothes from last night and a five o’clock shadow darkens his jaw. The hair my hands tangled through last night is a mess of coppery, brown tangles.

  Because he slept with it wet. After our time in the pool. After we spent half the night with our bodies entwined. Did he sleep next to me? I push the thought as far back into my gray matter as I can, because if what Monroe told me is true, then he’s dangerous. He pauses to talk to the man who must be his lawyer. Meanwhile the elevator doors are taking the length of a Bible to close. Jameson turns as if he can sense me watching him, and our eyes meet. A charge of electricity runs over my skin as he stares at me. The recognition and the hunger in his gaze calls my body to him while I scramble to press buttons on the control panel. His mouth opens as I stumble my salvation and the doors slide shut between us.

  Chapter Ten

  “You look pretty.” Josie eyes the yellow dress I’d worn to appease my mom this morning. “Personally I don’t dress up to go to the station, but to each her own.”

  I shoot her a look that says I’m not currently to be fucked with. Seeing Jameson ratcheted the warning level on my personal stupidity watch. I’d disregarded my instincts yesterday—a mistake I’d be paying for indefinitely.

  When I don’t offer any information, she presses forward. “Dare I ask?”

  “Give me a minute.” I close my eyes, squeezing them until spots of light appear. Then I hold out my arm. “Pinch me.”

  “What?” she asks.

  “Pinch me,” I request again. “I need to be woken up.” A second later a sharp throb bursts across my skin, and I snatch my arm away from her. “I didn’t really mean it.”

  “You asked me to do it twice!” Josie huffs as she puts the car into reverse and backs out of the parking lot.

  For all intents and purposes, she did jolt me out of my hazy state, which is why I notice that her hair is frizzy like she just woke up. Today she’s the one with the dark circles under her eyes and no make-up. She looks like how I feel. “Hey, you okay?”

  “I was really worried about you last night.” Her eyes stay glued to the road as if she’s waiting for a chance to pull out of the station’s parking lot, but the road is free of traffic. She continues, gazing blankly ahead, “I didn’t get much sleep and then I’ve been watching the news all morning.”

  No. No. No.

  “Don’t work yourself up,” I beg her. Last summer after the accident, Josie consumed every piece of media that focused on Becca’s death. She watched the crash scene news video every night. She collected clippings from the paper. I even found a copy of the obituary stuffed inside one of her textbooks. When I confronted her about it, she admitted that none of it felt real. I understood that, and helping her through it had been easier than focusing on my own grief. I didn’t want to see a repeat of that level of obsession from her again. “This has nothing to do with us, so you need to let it go.”

  She flinches at my gentle redirection, and her voice takes on a wild, uneven tone that mimics the screech of her tires as she pulls out hastily. “They aren’t even saying anything on the news. And don’t tell me it has nothing to do with us when I just picked you up at the police station.”

  “Turn here,” I demand, pointing to the street ahead.

  She swerves into the right lane and does as I ask, navigating to our favorite ice cream shop, Coffee & Cream. We pull into a spot and scramble out ahead of a large family in a minivan. For five blessed minutes, I focus on nothing but deciding what ice cream flavor to choose: a scoop of coffee and a scoop of tiramisu. But as soon as we both have cones in our hands, I’m back to reality. The outdoor patio is empty thanks to the afternoon heat. We might melt but we’ll have our privacy.

  “Spill,” she says after a few licks of her mint chocolate chip. “Where were you last night and what were you doing at the police station today?”

  I pause from my ice cream coma and give her a guilty look. “I stayed at Monroe’s last night.”

  “Like a slumber party?” Josie asks in confusion, which quickly shifts to disbelief. “Did you two freeze each other’s bras and practice kissing?”

  Considering that I cost her a night’s sleep and called her for a jail pick-up, I probably shouldn't have hit her with any more of the bizarre details of the last twenty-four hours so quickly. “I didn’t stay with Monroe.”

  “Oh this is getting good!” she squeals.

  “Eyes on the prize! For all you know I’m a murderer,” I remind her.

  “I know for a fact that you aren’t.”

  “How?” I ask, barely catching a drip of ice cream before it melts on my skirt.

  “Because I know you,” she says dismissively, “but you definitely were up to no good last night if you wound up at the police station. Just not murder.”

  I wish I had as much faith in myself as she has in me. Maybe I didn’t kill anyone but I might have kissed someone who did. But the worst part is that after seeing him at the station, I know I would do spend the night with him all over again in a heartbeat if I had the chance no matter the outcome. I’m not as innocent as she believes.

  “It sounds like they’re going to be pulling in everyone t
hat was at the party,” I say, not ready to delve into the psychological quagmire that my impromptu rendezvous has left me in.

  “What?”

  She pales a shade or two, so I hurry on. “I don’t know for sure. It would take them forever, and they already have a suspect.”

  “Okay, you need to start sharing the details right now.” It’s a demand but the edges are brittle. Josie’s nerves are clearly shot, and I’m not helping.

  “I don’t know where to begin,” I hedge. Maybe going to her with this isn’t the best idea. My best friend is as vibrant and carefree as a butterfly, but she’s delicate like one, too.

  But she’s having none of it. Her lips purse before she releases a deep sigh. “How about you start with why you wound up spending the night at the Wests’?

  “I met this guy.” I have to force myself to say it.

  “How come stories of poor life choices always start that way?”

  “More of your stories than mine,” I remind her, even though Poor Life Choices should be my new band name.

  “True. Continue.”

  “He was funny and sexy and a little arrogant, but it didn’t turn me off.” I might as well work through my feelings if I’m going to rehash all the details of last night.

  “You can say that again,” she says with a smirk. At least talking about a boy is distracting her from all the worrying.

  “We didn’t do it,” I clarify. I’d given myself a nice checklist to meet before I got back in bed with a guy after my disastrous decision to lose my v-card to Hugo. At the very top of it: fall in love first. Cheesy, I know. But my mom is right about a girl having standards. “We just kissed and skinny-dipped and cooked.”

  Josie snorts at this revelation. “So you didn’t do it, but you cooked? You have a weird idea of what is supposed to happen during hook-ups.”

  “Thanks for the reminder. I’ll ask your expert opinion next time—if I can find you!” I know she doesn’t get why I keep my knees together but it doesn’t really matter what she thinks on that topic.

  “So what went wrong?” she asks, a note of impatience coloring her tone.

  They accused him of murdering his father. I might need to break that to her a bit more carefully. “Apparently I really have a thing for bad boys.”

  “You’ve lost me again.”

  “Hang on.” I pull out my phone and do a search for Jameson West; Google knows just who I’m talking about, I realize with a rush. I can’t pinpoint if it’s fear or excitement. I tap images and dozens of pictures flow onto my screen. Thanks to his father's high profile in business and his sister's brush with reality show fame, the Wests are Internet fodder. I hold up the phone so that Josie can see the photo. “Meet my latest poor decision.”

  “He’s about twenty years too young for my taste, but I’d hardly call that a poor decision,” she says with approval.

  “Look at his name,” I prompt. “I didn’t know who he was.”

  “Wait, so if he’s Jameson West and he was at the party that makes him…Monroe's brother? Did we even know she had a brother?"

  "I didn't, but I'm not exactly President of the Monroe Appreciation Club."

  She grabs my phone and scans the information. By the time she's done reading it, she'll probably know more about him than I do. "He went to military school and then attended Stanford," she tells me.

  "That surprises me." I snatch the phone back and scan the short biography included on his father's Wiki entry.

  “Nathaniel's son.” She pauses and stares at me, completely neglecting her ice cream cone which drips all over her hand. “Holy shit, Em. Your dad is going to freak out.”

  “You can say that again.” I brace myself for telling her the part I’ve been leaving out. “Nathaniel is dead. The police called me in to check Jameson’s alibi.”

  “Did he actually do it?” she breathes.

  “That’s what I don’t know,” I admit. Part of me wants to say he couldn’t have done it, even while the rest of me calls me out on my own BS. Two tiny voices have been whispering their opinions since we left the station, and I can’t decide which one to listen to.

  “What did your dad say?” she asks.

  “He doesn’t know, and I hope he doesn’t find out.” I know she won’t say anything to him. I can’t say the same for the rest of the world. How long can I really keep this a secret?

  “As if this isn’t going to be headline news.” Josie drops her unfinished cone onto a napkin and rubs her stomach. “I feel sick.”

  “Imagine how I feel. I made out with the son of my father’s worst enemy, who also might be a murderer. I’m winning at life, wouldn’t you say?”

  “You didn’t know.” But that line isn’t any more comforting coming from her. “So Nathaniel West is dead.”

  “Yeah. Monroe was at the station. I felt bad for her.”

  “Of course you did. You have a heart.” Josie’s head drops to my shoulder.

  “Then I told her off for screwing Jonas,” I add.

  “You also have moxie. This is going to be a really long summer.”

  “I know. I’ve been thinking…maybe I should go to stay with my mom in Palm Springs.” There’s going to be media scrutiny. I could hope that my name wouldn’t get dragged into this, but given that Nathaniel West consistently ranked in People magazine’s most interesting people articles and he’d once been interviewed by Barbara Walters, it seems like a safe bet that anything and everything that has to do with his murder will get leaked.

  “Will they let you?”

  “It’s not that far away.” This morning when my mother suggested it, it was dead last on my list of summer activities right under ‘take a pottery class’ and ‘go vegan,’ but my stepfather knows a thing or two about nosey reporters coming from Hollywood. “It’s my best bet not to wind up on the cover of every tabloid in America.”

  “What about Jameson?”

  It’s strange to hear her calling him that. Even if it is his real name. “What about him? We kissed. We didn’t elope.”

  “That kiss dragged you into a murder investigation,” she points out.

  “Yes, no first date will ever live up to that one again.”

  “Did you talk to him?”

  I shake my head, remembering how he tried to call out to me at the station. Part of me wants to hear him out, but what good could possibly come out of it. The police had a reason to suspect him. “I was in the right place at the right time. He needed someone to say he was busy during the murder.”

  “And you were busy,” Josie waggles her eyebrows, and I elbow her in the ribs. “Maybe he really was with you when it happened. You should call him.”

  “I didn’t get his number. I woke up alone with no note.”

  “Ouch!” Josie exclaims and I can already feel her sassy side coming out. “Never mind if he played you like that, let him fry.”

  “He did fold up my dress,” I say in his defense.

  “That doesn’t make up for stealing the booty,” she chastises me.

  “He didn’t steal the booty.” I can’t help laugh at the indignation on her face. Now I remembered why I called her, because now that I’ve spilled my guts and we’ve faced the worst possible scenario, the whole situation is a lot less nightmarish. Time to return the favor. “What about you? Meet any prospective sugar daddies last night?”

  “Oh look at the time.” She holds up her bare wrist. “I have to get you home.”

  “You are avoiding the question,” I accuse.

  “You hate hearing about my papa bears.”

  “Oh that is gross!” I clutch my throat, pretending to gag.

  “My point is made. I have to meet mom for dinner soon. Want to join us?”

  I shake my head, recalling my vow to never leave the house again. “I think I’m going to stay home tonight. Going out with you gets me in trouble.”

  “Marian would never allow us to misbehave,” Josie reminds me as I dump the remains of my ice cream cone in the trash.
“That’s why I’m glad she works nights.” She winks as she unlocks her car.

  “I think I just want to be alone. I know that sounds super pathetic,” I add before she can state the obvious. “I need to think about stuff.”

  Like packing up and heading to Palm Springs. Josie doesn’t argue with me. A few minutes later she drops me off at home. Dad’s car is still gone and the blinds are only half opened since I got interrupted earlier. It feels like my whole day has been spent coming back to an empty house, and as much as I want to stew, I feel lonely looking at how quiet it is. Maybe being with mom this summer wouldn’t be so bad.

  The window rolls down behind me. “Call if you need me. I could be convinced to stay in tonight.”

  “Promise.”

  Inside, I stare at the fridge for a long time before I slam it shut. Nothing sounds good. The television binge I’d been planning seems a little less thrilling now that I’ve been pulled into my very own drama.

  I spot the bottle I abandoned on the couch. I pick it up and deliver it successfully to the trash. The pile of bills from earlier gloat from the counter. Going to stay with mom might protect me from getting dragged into this any further, but it will also leave dad to his own devices. I pick one up and tear along the envelope seam, drawing out the letter, I nearly fall over. Three months behind on our electric bill. That means any minute the lights could go out. There’s only one thing to do. An hour later I’ve sweet talked the utility company into letting me pay on installment. I hang up the phone and any thoughts I had of leaving Belle Mère along with it. I don’t want to be stuck taking care of my dad forever, but I also don’t want to lose my house.

  Falling into an old routine seems like the most mind-numbing option, so I gather laundry. But even after listening to the whir and rumble of the machines, I can’t silence the inner debate bouncing around in my head.

  On my way to my room with a basket full of folded clothes, I pass the door that’s remained closed since last summer. This was Becca’s house, too. With each day that passes, I forget her a little more. Stupid things like how her laugh sounded or the face she made when she was angry. All those tiny bits of a person that add up to a whole. I’m losing her piece by piece. I can’t lose this house or her room. I need it if it’s going to keep her memory alive. If Becca was here she would know what to do, and that’s exactly what I needed to remember. Heading to my room, I strip off the sundress I wore for my mother and find a comfy pair of shorts and a tank top. Then I pull my hair into a ponytail and throw on my running shoes. I need to clear my head. I need to run. Not away from here but to someone. It’s easy to forget that there’s one other person I can always talk to—as long as I’m okay with her not responding.