“You didn’t mean to what?” Watt asked, hating himself, and yet saying it anyway, because the words were written right there, prompted by Nadia, and he was too shocked right now to formulate any words of his own.
Leda looked up at him, her eyes wide and trusting, brimming with tears. “Eris,” she said simply. “You know I didn’t mean to push her off. I just wanted her to back away—she kept trying to hug me, and after everything she did to me—I just wanted her to leave me alone.” Her hand clutched his so tight he felt like the blood was being cut off. “It was an accident. I didn’t mean for her to fall. I never, ever meant that.”
Got it, Nadia declared, in evident satisfaction.
But Watt’s human mind was snagging on Leda’s words. “What do you mean, after everything she did to you?”
“You didn’t know?” Leda asked. Watt shook his head dumbly. “I thought you knew everything.” This time her words were completely devoid of sarcasm.
“I never really paid much attention to Eris,” he said, which was true. Avery had always been the one he’d focused on.
Leda nodded, as if that made sense to her. “Eris was having an affair with my dad, before she died.”
“What?” Nadia, how did we miss that?
Watt felt a sickening sensation of being trapped in something much bigger than he was. He’d fallen too deep, and now he was at the bottom of a bottomless black hole, and he couldn’t come up for air.
Most of all, he felt an overwhelming sense of self-loathing. He’d tricked Leda into opening up her most private, vulnerable self to him—all so he could destroy her.
Leda reached for his hand, taking a shuddering breath. “I don’t know why I brought this up. Let’s go back to the party.”
“I’m sorry, I just—” Watt snatched his hand away, ignoring Leda’s startled look. Don’t send that footage anywhere, Nadia. Don’t you do a damn thing regarding Leda without my approval, okay?
“Watt? What’s wrong?” Leda frowned, sounding puzzled, even worried for him. It killed him, that she was thinking about him at all after what he’d just done to her.
He took a step back, running a hand through his hair. He couldn’t think, not with Leda so close, looking at him in that wide-eyed, wounded way. He felt dazed and shaky.
What had happened to him? When had he become the type of person who tried to trick other people into revealing their darkest secrets?
“I can’t right now. I need to … I’m sorry,” he mumbled, and ran off, steeling himself to the hurt that flashed across Leda’s face.
LEDA
LEDA STOOD THERE in shock as Watt’s figure retreated into the cresting night.
What the hell had just happened? She’d offered him her deepest and most dangerous truths—told him all the ugliness in her family, in herself—and he’d turned and run away.
She sank onto a suspended bench, propelling it with her heels to rock slowly back and forth. She was far from the party now, in some sort of multilevel botanic garden. Around a corner she heard the hushed voices of couples walking along the shadowed paths, stealing furtive kisses. Colored lanterns bobbed along in their wakes. She felt very distant from them.
Did Watt leave because of what she’d done to Eris? But he’d known that already—that was the nice thing about being with Watt, she’d thought, that they understood each other for who they were, and all their secrets.
Maybe Watt hadn’t fully appreciated it until now. Maybe when she bared her soul and he realized all the darkness that lay coiled there, he had realized he wanted no part of it.
Leda bit her lip, replaying the conversation in her mind, trying to determine what she’d done wrong. She felt strangely on edge. What was it about Watt that kept nagging at her? Hadn’t there been something odd in his expression, his eyes …?
He hadn’t blinked. The realization came to her all at once, with an animalistic certainty. He’d been watching her the entire time without blinking, as if he’d been a cat patiently waiting for a mouse.
Had Watt been filming their conversation? she thought wildly.
Surely not, Leda’s rational brain hastened to remind her—she would have noticed, would have heard Watt say “record video”; that was how contacts worked, after all. She closed her eyes, slightly comforted.
Except that Nadia was in his brain.
It had been so easy for Leda to forget Nadia’s presence, to get caught up in the excitement of being at the party with Watt—but of course Nadia had been there the whole time, listening and recording and transmitting and god knows what else. Leda had no idea what Watt was even capable of, with Nadia inside his mind.
She curled her hand into a fist, so tight that the nails dug painfully into the flesh of her palm, but the pain was good: it kept her focused.
She thought of all the times Watt had seemed to watch her a little too closely, whenever anyone mentioned Eris. And he’d agreed to be her date to the Under the Sea party, and to rehab, so readily. She hadn’t thought anything of it at the time, but it was strange, wasn’t it, that he hadn’t put up any sort of a fight? Could he have actually been playing her the whole time—getting close to her in the hopes that something like this would happen, that Leda would eventually get drunk and trusting, and admit the truth?
Leda reached up to wipe away a tear. She shouldn’t really be surprised. But it hurt more than she would have guessed, realizing that all time they’d spent together had been a lie.
How stupid of her, to think that Watt could care about her for real. She didn’t even blame him for wanting revenge. She would have done the same, if their roles were reversed. Hadn’t she said more than once that she and Watt were cut from the same cloth?
An old familiar instinct for self-preservation was stirring, urging her to fight fire with fire—to use every weapon in her arsenal to destroy Watt, before he could destroy her—but Leda found that she didn’t have the heart. Besides, with that quant in his brain he’d probably already sent her confession video to the police. They might be coming for her right now.
Leda felt a heavy dullness settling over her, turning her entire body to lead. Perhaps it was resignation. Or despair. Leda Cole had never been resigned to anything before, but then, she’d never met anyone who could best her, until Watt.
To think that she’d found the one boy in the world who was her equal, and fallen for him; yet in typical Leda Cole fashion, she’d managed to make him her sworn enemy.
She got up and trudged toward the nearest bar—a lonely table set up among the lemon trees near the edge of the garden path. It was so remote from the party that it felt as if someone, maybe providence, had brought it here in her hour of need. She might be heading to prison tomorrow, after all. Might as well enjoy her last few hours as a free woman.
“Whiskey soda,” Leda said automatically as she approached. “And another after that.”
The bartender looked up at her, and for some reason Leda’s brain sparked in recognition. “Have we met?” she asked.
The girl shrugged. “I work at Altitude. My name’s Mariel.” She began to mix the cocktail with quick, practiced motions.