“Shut up,” Adam snaps. “They were supposed to love me. Not him. Not both of us.” He slips his finger onto the trigger.
The tape is half torn now. I twist my wrists in opposite directions. I can almost pull one of my hands free. I turn to Parvati. I wish there was a way to alert her to the exposed sofa coil. I’m going to need her mad fighting skills in order for us to have any chance to survive this. I glance over my shoulder and down to where my hands are tucked inside the cushions. Her face remains expressionless, but she scoots toward me. I see her begin to reposition her own hands.
“I’ve waited so long to get you back. I didn’t know if it would ever happen,” Adam says. “But then people started asking questions and DeWitt decided to move out of the city.”
“How did you end up here?” I ask. “How did you find me?”
“I had already found you online. It was so easy to plant the seeds to come to Vista Palisades.” Adam pauses. “Did you know that it’s one of the best surfing beaches for miles? Claudia always felt so guilty about everything. She was constantly looking for ways to make it up to me.”
“I didn’t know anything about you,” I say. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. And neither did the Cantrells.” Only they had. They had spent time talking to Adam and then decided to adopt me instead. I could see how that might make a kid feel terrible.
And then DeWitt’s cronies had shown up and offered Adam the ultimate acting job. Forced to choose between becoming someone else and getting pummeled by Henry the Happy Sociopath for who knows how long, of course he had jumped at the chance to leave Rosewood.
Adam nods. “I know. My mom—Violet—told me I should give you a chance, that it was DeWitt who should pay.” His voice wavers. “By that time I had already started watching you and the Cantrells at The Triple S. I never saw you being nice to them. You were always complaining about them—how they made you babysit, like it was such a big fucking chore.” Adam bares his teeth. “You took my family and you don’t even appreciate them!”
“You’re wrong. I do appreciate them.” But a tiny pinprick of doubt stabs me in the gut. Would Adam have given Darla a chance to really be his mom? Would she have been better off with him instead of me? My left hand slides free of the duct tape. I separate my wrists slightly, keeping them in the same position so as not to alert Adam.
“Shut up,” he says. “Shut up or I will fucking end you.”
“Preston!” Parvati sucks in a sharp breath. “Calm down. Let’s just talk about this.”
Adam backhands her across the face with his gun. Her head snaps forcefully to the side. I grit my teeth, wanting to lunge for him but not wanting Parvati or me to get shot. I have to wait for the right moment.
“I told you my name is not Preston.”
Even in the dim light, I can see the welt forming on Parvati’s cheekbone, but she shakes off the blow like it was nothing. “Right. Adam. That’s going to take a little time for me to get used to.”
She’s talking to him like we’re all still friends, like this is a big joke or one of their dare games from Bristol Academy. Just like me, she’s trying to keep him going until she can find an opening to make a move. I glance quickly down at her arms. I’m not sure whether she’ll be able to free herself too.
“You only have a little time, Pervy,” Adam says.
She tilts her head to the side. “Come on. You don’t mean that. You have no reason to kill me. We’re friends. I understand you in ways that most people don’t.”
Adam turns to me. “Remember that day in the cafeteria when I told you she was a liar and you said she wouldn’t lie to us? Now do you see? She’s full of shit. She’ll play any side she needs to.” He scoffs. “I bet she’d shoot you herself if I offered to let her go.”
“I’m just saying I’m not your enemy and neither is Max,” Parvati says. “Let us go, Adam. And we’ll help you.” She looks pleadingly at him. “Put down the gun.”
“How stupid do you think I am? You’re trying to manipulate me,” Adam says. “The way you manipulated him.” He pulls the phone with the videos from his pocket. “He doesn’t know about that yet, does he?”
Parvati’s cool expression falters. “Please don’t.”
Adam sneers. “Oh, isn’t that sweet. She’s trying to protect you.”
“Protect me from what? What don’t I know about?” I ask.
Parvati’s lower lip trembles. “Look at us. You won, Pr—Adam. You don’t need to do this.”
Adam ignores her. “I just wanted to take away something you loved,” he tells me. “Things have to be even. I only let you have her so that it would hurt worse when I took her back.” He works the touch screen of the phone and then tosses it down on the sofa between Parvati and me. “Watch and learn,” he says.
Parvati squeezes her eyes shut. A single tear escapes down her cheek.
The screen comes to life. It’s her and “Preston.” They’re curled up on his bed together. She’s got her head tucked beneath his chin, just like she used to do with me.
“I’m bored,” Preston says. “You want to do some coke?”
Parvati sighs. “I told you I’m not doing that anymore, Pres. I’ll never get into the CIA with a drug history.”
Preston cranes his neck to look down at her. “It’s not like I’m going to tell them. Besides, that’s years from now.”
Her forehead wrinkles in concentration as she glances over at the bookshelf. “I swear you want me to be an addict,” she says bitterly.
So that’s what Adam meant when he said it wasn’t his cocaine. Apparently, he’s been supplying Parvati. It explains a lot: her mood swings, her impulsive behavior. She was telling me on the phone about why her parents were sending her to Blue Pointe Prep when I cut her off. I wonder if they found some of her stash.
Pres gets cocaine from the hollowed-out book and cuts it into lines with a credit card. They take turns snorting it off the surface of a compact from Parvati’s purse.
“Suddenly I miss our dare game,” Preston says. “Don’t you?”
Parvati shakes her head and her long hair obscures part of her face. “The game that got us expelled? Not really. I promised my parents no more dares. I’m trying to be good.”
“Good is boring.” Preston tucks a lock of hair behind her right ear. “You miss our dares. I know you do.” He kisses the side of her neck. “Let’s do just one more, for old time’s sake.”
Her body folds inward on itself. She turns her head to expose more of her throat. “What did you have in mind?” she asks finally, her voice a shadow of what it had been.
“You know Max, that guy I sometimes go surfing with?”
“The kid from The Triple S?”