I thought it was a strange question, but I was preoccupied so I just said, "No. Like I said, it's not a big deal."
The irony was I'd been avoiding Anton lately. He'd always been an overprotective friend, and I knew he'd never understand that I was currently shacking up part-time with the enemy. I barely understood it myself.
When we arrived home, I went straight to my room and locked myself in. Since I'd found out there was a spy amongst my roommates, I'd come to hate the apartment.
I felt trapped there whenever I had to stay, because it was simply not a choice anymore. On top of that, I felt like I was being watched all the time, that everything I did would be noticed and reported to someone I'd despised my whole life.
All of that was bad enough, but add to it my pathetic heart, my incessant, weak longing for all the time I was missing with Dante (hadn't we missed enough?), and it was damn near torturous to put in time at the home I'd once found comfort in.
I'd pilfered several soft white shirts of Dante's to sleep in, and like a deranged addict I made sure that they smelled like him. I wanted reminders of him even when I slept. Needed them. Needed, when I woke up in a panic alone, to have some sort of proof that I wasn't still existing in that old hell where he was completely lost to me.
It used to be that when he was away I could talk myself out of him. We'd gotten way past that point. It was scary how attached I'd become in such a short time.
If I was honest with myself though, and sometimes I was, we'd never really been unattached, not even at the worst of it. I'd hacked at that attachment with a machete more times than I could count, but that didn't mean I'd severed it.
Far from it. Obviously.
I had just changed into one of my stalker Tees when the doorbell rang.
I went to get it myself. If it was someone for me, I preferred to beat Farrah to it. I'd become almost obsessive about keeping as much as I could private from her.
No such luck. She hit the entryway just a beat behind me, which was not good.
I opened the door to find a tired-looking Bastian.
He glanced behind me at Farrah, then back to me. "Have time for a cup of coffee?" He cleared his throat. "Down the street."
"I do," I said without hesitating. I didn't want Farrah to overhear one word of whatever he had to say.
I stomped into some Toms and left the house as is, baggy T-shirt, cutoff shorts and all.
"Mind if I join you?" Farrah asked behind me, sounding frankly curious. Nosy.
How had I not seen her for what she was before? It was so obvious to me the longer I knew the truth. She wasn't really even trying to fool me.
"Sorry, but we need a bit of privacy," Bastian replied because he didn't know who or what she was.
This is going to blow up in my face, I thought as we shut the door on her.
"She's a spy for Adelaide," I said quietly when we'd been walking for a few minutes. I glanced behind my shoulder, paranoid enough to check if she'd blatantly followed us.
"Your roommate?"
"Yes. It goes way back, apparently. Trust me, I was as shocked as you are, but Farrah doesn't know I'm onto her. I'm trying my hardest to keep it that way."
"Dante told you," he observed, tone neutral.
He didn't know, or at least I doubted that he did, that Dante and I had started playing house again. "He did. I guess Adelaide has been getting information about my day-to-day life that only someone living with me could have known. Farrah unwittingly outed herself as the one that must be doing it a few days ago. It hasn't been fun, let me tell you."
"I can imagine," he said, tone so warm and sympathetic that it made me shiver. If the Durant men could bottle their voices and sell it, they'd be rich. Oh wait. "You know Adelaide hates me, obviously," he continued. "She despises all of Leo's bastards, but the loathing she has for you is on another level. Don't you find it strange?"
We were still walking, side by side, but I managed to send him an eloquent look out of the corner of my eye. "She always has. But then again, I've always been in love with her only son, so maybe it's just that simple. It had to be her worst nightmare, him falling for the town trash." No one got the joke more than I did. The town's golden boy and its trashcan girl had never made sense to anyone but us.
"My God. When I think of what she's done to you two. You were always so attached to each other. It was apparent. He's been in love with you since the first time I met him. I think he was ten. That she found a way to poison something like that . . . that shit is evil."
That was certainly an apt description of Adelaide.
"You know," he continued, tone lightening. "Dante and I have been talking a lot lately. We have some common ground now. We're even working together to try to get to the bottom of some of Adelaide's schemes. But there's one thing he won't budge on."
He seemed to be waiting for me to say something, but I just kept walking in silence. I didn't want to bring up anything I didn't have to.
"No matter how I pry," he eventually forged ahead, "how much it would help if I knew, he will not tell me what she's blackmailing him for."
Ah. That. I wasn't surprised. Of course Dante wouldn't share that with anyone. It wasn't his secret to tell. It was mine.