Page 6 of Filthy Little Pretties

I might be an asshole, but I’m not a monster. She’s my stepsister, and even though Caroline is fucked up, that doesn’t mean she doesn’t feel. Sometimes, I think she feels more than most.

“Kai left?”

“You should quit, Grey,” she complains quietly into my shoulder, extending her slender arm and moving the cigarette holder, revealing my lighter.

There are few times when Caroline shows her vulnerability, and she usually makes it easy to forget she has a heart since it’s buried under layers of contempt for the world. She’s a long-legged viper with perfect brunette waves and ice-blue eyes. She’s intimidating, as if she’s judged you and found you wanting.

The reality is that she has, and you probably are. But she’s also an eighteen-year-old girl whose mother has left her alone to fend for herself in a world that tries to beat her up and reduce her. A world that wants to make her feel insufficient in every way, something I’m sure she believes as fact.

I understand why she has baggage. It’s the only reason why I give her this comfort when she needs it. That, and I need to use the muscle called my heart so it doesn’t atrophy. There’s a dark part of me that worries that one day I won’t remember how to keep it beating.

Scared I’ll be doomed to become my father, just like Liam will become his and Caroline, her mother. We’re all broken. Each of us perverted with different cracks in our Waterford crystal, but with cracks, nonetheless.

I light my smoke and inhale the sweet death, blowing it out slowly. “You know, your problems would be solved if you dated someone you fucked.”

Caroline sits up in my lap and stares at me, her face serious with an expression of disgust. She grabs hold of my cheek roughly, making me clutch my cigarette between my teeth.

“Grey, don’t be so bourgeois.”

I bring a hand up, inhaling again, and pull it from my mouth, tilting my head up to exhale around her face as she continues.

“People like us shouldn’t ever love. Love makes us weak, and weakness has no place in building an empire.”

“Someone’s been taking impeccable notes from Evan McCallister.”

She grabs the Nat Sherman cigarette from my hand, placing it between her plump lips and taking a long drag. As she exhales a winding cloud of smoke toward the ceiling, her walls slip back into place, and just like that, she’s no longer a sad, lonely girl. The bitch is back.

Caroline hands my cigarette back over and stands from my lap, shooting me orders, pretending her rawness never happened.

“Speaking of Evan. You need to make more of an effort this year to toe the line for our father. I don’t want to hear the dean of schools bitching about you again. Shit rolls downhill, Grey. For instance, your uniform is back from the cleaners. Wear it. You can’t blow off the rules this whole year, Grey.”

She wipes her legs as if sitting on my lap made her dirty.

“Is that so?” My voice is laced with humor. It’s amusing that she thinks I’d listen to anything she has to say.

Crossing her arms, she smirks. “Yes, it is. Stop going out of your way to rile Evan. It’s immature and very unbecoming. The McCallister name—”

“Don’t talk to me about my name. It’s only yours on loan.”

I’m sure my answer doesn’t sit well, but I don’t care to witness her embarrassment, so I level my eyes on the smoke coming off the elongating ash between my fingers. If she were smarter, she’d take less pride in having the McCallister name. It comes in handy when shoving authority down someone’s throat. Otherwise, it’s just a reminder of a cruel legacy.

“You’re such an asshole. I don’t know why I thought you’d ca—”

“Me either,” I agree quickly, slipping back into the natural roles we play with each other.

Her eyes narrow on me, and I can see her mean readying on her tongue, but I beat her to the punch.

“Don’t you have a dick to suck? I believe the garbage picks up in the alley around this time.”

“Cocksucker,” she fires at me harshly.

I wince when she says the word and put the half-smoked cigarette out in the ashtray, Caroline seems puzzled as I do it, but I smirk.

“What? You reminded me of where your mouth’s been.”

Sneering, she stomps out of the room, and I reach in for another smoke, grinning to myself.

I win.