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“Go away,” I tell him.
“We need to talk.”
“I just want to be alone.”
“We’re a couple, sweetheart, and that means we talk to each other about what’s bothering or upsetting us.”
“We’re not a couple,” I snap. “We’ve fucked a few times, that’s all.”
If I hope to have shocked him into leaving me alone, I’m about to be disappointed. “Bullshit,” he says. “I love you.”
I stop as we reach my house, and I unlock the door. Then I turn to glare at him as he moves forward as if to follow me in. “Go away. You don’t love me. You don’t even know me.”
“I know enough to love what I see.”
“Stop it. You don’t love me.”
“Don’t tell me what I feel.”
“See, want, take? That’s what this is. You want me, so you’ve decided you’re going to have me. But don’t my feelings factor into this equation?”
His lips twist. “Of course.”
“I like you, Orson, but I don’t want any part of your lifestyle. Or your world, which values money and belongings above people.”
“Jesus, come on…”
I’m so upset that my words flow like water out of a broken pipe. “You think money can buy anything, including affection and love. You think throwing money at me—taking me to nice places, eating good food, buying me expensive jewelry—will make me fall in love with you, but you’re wrong.”
“That’s not what I think at all…”
“Look what money did to my father.” Tears well in my eyes again. “It’s like acid. It eats away at all the decency in a person. He was a good man, and he opened this commune and the retreat because he wanted to help people, and to live with others without the burden of money and capitalism weighing us down. He wanted us to be a real community, and rely on and help each other. To be like a family. But then Mum got sick, and he was terrified of losing her. The real world doesn’t care about who gets the treatment, though does it? As long as the drug company gets its money. Your mum got her treatment because you could afford it, but my family couldn’t.”
He looks away, across the green. I feel a twinge of guilt deep inside—it’s not his fault that he has money. If we were rich, Dad would have gotten the treatment without a second thought. But I’ve gone too far to stop now.
“He would never have done it if it wasn’t for Mum,” I say.
Orson looks back at me. He hesitates. Then he says, “Blue pill or red pill?”
I start shaking. “What do you mean?” Surely there’s nothing more?
But he says, “Do you want to know everything?”
I swallow hard. “Yes.”
He nods. “It wasn’t the first time.”
I blink. “What?”
“It wasn’t the first time he’d stolen money.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Orson
Scarlett’s jaw sags. “What are you talking about?”
I pause, having second thoughts about telling her. She’s very upset, and this is only going to make things worse. But it’s too late now. She wanted to know everything.