Read Online Poser by Cambria Hebert - Free Book Online

Rome wasn’t still texting.
    “Hey, so how’s Ivy been?” I couldn’t help the tentative nature of my tone. I’d been wanting to ask since I got home from camp. Just hadn’t gotten the chance. The three of us were usually together, or Rim was at work when Ivy was. This was the first time we’d actually been alone in a couple weeks.
    I wondered if maybe I was the only one that thought Ivy seemed a little on edge. That maybe I felt that way as a product of my own emotions and not actually the way Ivy was behaving.
    What happened in the shower was all her. I shook the thought away and glanced up.
    Rimmel tilted her head to study me. “Why do you ask?”
    Damn, she was perceptive. Why couldn’t she just answer the question?
    I shrugged like it was no big deal. “With classes starting up, I think she’s been kinda nervous. You know, after all the shit that went down last semester.” I didn’t mention seeing Missy at Lotus or the way Ivy acted when we first approached the table full of my teammates.
    Rimmel gazed at me with knowing eyes. “You’re worried about her.”
    “It’s my job to worry about her.”
    “It’s your job to love her,” Rimmel corrected but then allowed, “and yeah, maybe worry about her some too.”
    I drank some more coffee and waited for an answer to the original question.
    “But I’ve never known you to worry so much it keeps you awake. Is there something specific that has you so concerned?”
    “What was in that donut?” I intoned. “You sure are full of questions this morning.”
    “I’m naturally inquisitive.” She used her finger to push the black-rimmed glasses up on her nose and gave me a stern look. “And you seem to be empty of answers.”
    I wasn’t about to tell her what was really going on in my head. Hell to the no. But I had to give her something. If I didn’t, I’d never hear the end of it.
    I sipped the coffee and sat back on the stool. “She still has nightmares about him.” I couldn’t keep the harshness out of my voice. I hated just mentioning that fucking menace to society.
    Rimmel frowned and looked into her cup, like maybe the answers would just float right to the surface and tell her exactly what to say.
    Shit, I wished it were that easy.
    I had a corny as hell thought and tucked it away for later… I might need it.
    “I’ve noticed,” Rim replied softly. “She’s more subdued than her normal bubbly self. But I guess that’s not really all that recent. She’s been that way for a while.”
    “Yeah, like since Missy dragged up all the shit she’d been through and hung it out there for all to see.”
    Rimmel shook her head. “No. It’s been longer than that. Since it happened…” She cleared her throat and her gaze slid away. “You know with—”
    “Don’t say it.” I cut her off sharply. “I know.”
    The apology in her eyes was real, but I barely noticed it because guilt and a little side of self-loathing was all I had room for inside my head.
    And in my chest.
    I hadn’t been there. Ivy and I were still doing the spiteful song and dance around each other when Zach took advantage of her. Back then, the only words we ever said to each other were sarcastic and mean. At the time, I thought it was entertaining.
    But now…
    Now it made me feel like a shithead.
    If I had been willing to really look at her back then, to really accept why it was she drove me so insane, maybe this never would have happened. She wouldn’t have been at that party that night without anyone to keep an eye on her.
    He wouldn’t have had the chance to drug her and get her back to the dorm.
    I’d have killed him then. He’d be dead and Romeo’s arm never would have been broken. Rimmel wouldn’t have been strung up like a piñata, and Missy… well, she never would have gotten the chance to act like a raging bitch with a case of inflamed butt rash.
    Well, damn.
    When I thought of it all like that, it was even worse. I could have stopped all this before it