Page 26 of The Ring
Anthony enters my room, perfectly dressed in a blue suit despite coming straight from a transatlantic trip. He holds out a box for me. Ever since I was little, he has always brought me back a gift from his trips. Back then, it was toys—now it’s jewellery and bags.
I quickly get up from my desk, take the box from his hands, and walk over to my chaise longue to sit down and open it.
Inside the box sits a Jemma Wynne pendant featuring a 1.30-carat champagne pear diamond surrounded by twelve white round-cut diamonds, hanging from a delicate ball chain. It’s beautiful.
He sits beside me, and I hug him. “Thank you, I love it.”
“You’re welcome.” As we part, his yellow-green eyes scan me up and down. “How are you with everything?”
My brother is always tiptoeing around me.
I let out a little laugh, returning my gaze to the necklace and letting my fingers trace its surface. “You know, all ourconversations would be more efficient if you didn’t dance around what you really want to ask.”
He smiles at me and nods. “You’re right. How are you feeling about the fight, and everyone finding out about what happened with TJ and… Mum?”
I shrug. “I’m fine.”
“You know, for this to work, the not dancing around has to go both ways.”
“I’m not fine,” I correct myself, meeting his gaze. “But I’m handling it. Sooner or later, it was bound to come out. Sure, there were a hundred better ways for it to happen, but what’s done is done.”
“Very mature approach,” Anthony compliments me. If he only knew. He thinks I’ve handled it all so well. I doubt he’d think the same if he knew what I had done the day before leaving for Paris.
Still, I take the compliment. “Thank you.”
Anthony glances at the cart with barely touched food in the middle of my room. In the morning, it held breakfast, which I ate little of, but Annabelle and Laurie did. Around one hour ago, one of the maids took it away and brought it back with supper, which I wasn’t keen on eating either.
He frowns at it. “Have you eaten anything today?”
I think about lying, but decide not to. “Not much,” I admit.
He looks at me, concerned.
I quickly say, “I haven’t eaten because I have a killer hangover, and the sight of food makes me want to vomit. But once that passes, I’ll eat.” That doesn’t seem to convince him. “I promise,” I add, and that two-word, eight-letter phrase does. I offer him my pinky.
When I was little, we made a pact never to break each other’s promises; that two-word phrase is kind of sacred to us.It’s also why I hold the promises I make him—and the promises I make others—in such high regard.
He takes it, linking his pinky with mine. “Okay, but I’ll hold you to that.”
I roll my eyes playfully.
Anthony looks at me, mulling over something. “Is there something going on between Nate and you?” The question takes me back.
“No,” I say firmly.
“Then what was the fight all about?”
“Nate kissed me, and TJ didn’t like that.”
“So… he kissed you, but there’s nothing going on between you?” he asks, his voice heavy with scepticism.
“Yes,” I say, unsure.
He gives me one of those looks the older generations often give to the younger ones—a look that seems to say,I will never understand you all.
Now that I hear someone say it aloud, I realise how strange it sounds. I’m not even sure I understand it.
I always thought the night Nate and I spent in Paris meant the same to him as it did to me—a way to forget each other’s problems, drowning in each other. But now, with what happened, I can’t help but wonder if maybe it meant something different to him.
