Page 61 of The Spite Date (Small Town Sisterhood #1)

SECRETS, SECRETS, SECRETS

Bea

I don’t want to go back to the living room with the other guests.

But I do want to solve the murder.

Maybe not as I want to convince Simon that we need to pull a Ryker and disappear too, but I can do that after I solve a murder.

“What’s Ryker doing?” I murmur to Simon as soon as we’re out of earshot, his hand warm and solid in mine.

“Exploring the secret passages of the house, I presume.”

“ Secret —” I cut myself off as I realize I just shrieked that, and lower my voice. “Secret passages?”

“Yes, his role is to spy on the evening’s festivities from the secret passages around the house. He has my phone number in the event he encounters any unexpected occupants.”

“There are secret passages?” I’m flushing hot and cold at the same time.

Secret passages .

But also, tight, enclosed spaces.

I shiver.

Simon squeezes my hand tighter and pulls me into his body. “They’re quite cramped, so I had no intention of assigning the secret passage spy role to you. Nor Daphne. I don’t wish for her to know how to navigate my home without my knowledge.”

“But Ryker can?”

“Do you truly think it likely your more reclusive brother would enjoy that?”

“Is that why you gave him that role? So he can have a break from people?”

He smiles.

My eyes get hot. “But he can still be here to tell you to?—”

“Keep your goddamn hands off my sister,” someone says in the wall.

Simon turns to a painting of Mr. Young that’s missing an eyeball, which you would only notice if you looked closely.

“Oh my god,” I say when I’m supposed to tell Ryker to back off, that Simon is my boyfriend and he has permission to touch me .

Which Ryker knows.

“Fucking cool party trick,” my brother adds. “Do your kids know?”

Simon shudders. “I prefer my head to remain on my neck, and it would not if their mother knew that they knew.”

“But if not for their mother?” I ask.

“We would play hide-and-seek for hours and I would have to replace my security agents every other week because of their frustration with us.”

He turns away from the photo as a couple I only know a little bit heads our way from the sunken living room. “There aren’t any clues in there,” the man reports. “I need a better look at that body. Hey. What does your sheet say? Do you know who Lana was having an affair with?”

“I know who you’re having an affair with,” I reply. “In the script. In the script, I mean. I know about your affair in the script. Not real life.”

His wife is grinning at me as she gasps in mock horror. “Gerald! How could you!”

She pretends to slap him.

“Brava,” Simon murmurs.

“If you weren’t such a cold fish, Nancy, then maybe I wouldn’t have had to find comfort in Lana’s arms!” he bellows.

Simon beams at both of them as more people come running.

“Gerald was cheating on Nancy with Lana,” someone says.

“You bitch!” Quincy screams at him. “She told me she was only sleeping with me !”

Wendell gasps. “You cheated on me with a woman ?”

“It was your snoring, Wendell. I cannot live with your snoring anymore. It makes me want to plunge a knife into your body the same way I plunged it into hers to get you both out of my life!”

“Are you fucking serious?” Daphne says over the intercom. “Quincy. You’re not supposed to confess.”

“Maybe I’m not confessing! Maybe I’m not working alone! Maybe I’m so brokenhearted that my lady boo was snatched from me by this Neanderthal that I’m speaking in overemotional metaphors!”

“You know this is why they never let you be the killer at the business association murder mystery,” Wendell says.

“I did not know that,” Simon murmurs to me.

“Could’ve asked.”

“Next time.”

“Is he really the killer?” Hudson asks Simon.

“I think he is,” I answer. “The killer’s left-handed. You can tell by the knife angle.”

Simon lifts his brows at me. “Truly, you figured that out?”

“She’s watched too many of those shows where an amateur detective helps the police solve crimes, and dude, the left-handed killer thing is really too easy,” Hudson says.

“I thought that too, but I didn’t know if the knife angle was intentional, or if any of us were supposed to be pretending to be left-handed,” one of the women says.

“Also, Lana was sleeping with me as well,” Torrence says.

“And me,” another man adds.

“And your wife,” Lana herself says from the doorway. “I was actually sleeping with half of you.”

It’s creepy seeing her coated in blood with a knife sticking out of her dress but still walking around fully alive.

And weirder to see her smiling about her role.

“I warned her she had to have enemies if she were to play the dead body,” Simon murmurs to me.

“Good to know what you do to people in your scripts,” I murmur back.

He winces.

“So you have to handcuff me now,” Quincy says to Wendell. “That comes next, right? The detective has to get pushy and handsy with the murderer?”

“Or we may all retire to the dining room or living room to finish enjoying dessert,” Simon says quickly.

“Can I keep being the ghost?” Daphne says over the intercom.

“Can you truly hear us?” Simon says.

“That’s my secret.”

I look at the painting that was hiding Ryker a minute ago, but instead, I see my brother standing next to it. “She’s listening in through your phone, isn’t she?”

He smiles at me.

Ryker.

Smiling in public.

A real smile.

“Victory,” Simon murmurs.

Ryker’s smile almost dips a little, like he doesn’t want to admit Simon gave him a thrill in letting him in on the secret, but he can’t suppress it.

I blink quickly as my eyes start to water. I haven’t ever dated anyone who went out of their way to get Ryker to smile.

Not that any of my other boyfriends had a secret passage in their house, but Simon didn’t have to show it to him.

The boys rush in from downstairs asking for more food, and some of the other guests grab Simon’s attention with more questions about the house and his plans.

Someone touches my arm, and I turn to find the mom of one of the boys who’s been hanging out with Charlie and Eddie. “Bea? You have that new burger bus, don’t you? And you do parties? My husband’s fortieth birthday is coming up, and I was thinking surprise block party.”

The next hour or two is a steady stream of questions about the burger bus and town gossip and whispers about Simon and the house while we make eye contact and smile at each other across the room, and eventually, I realize half the guests have left.

I knew Ryker would take off early, and he did hug me goodbye before he departed, but I don’t realize how late it’s gotten until Hudson hugs me too. “He’s my favorite,” he whispers.

“Your brother?”

“Your boyfriend. He’s nice, but not too nice. That’s good for you.”

“What does that even mean?”

“He can keep up when you get petty.”

I snort-laugh. “That’s possibly not the healthiest part of a relationship. And I don’t do petty that often.”

“Still, a guy who’ll show you his flaws is a lot better than a guy who pretends he’s perfect and then dumps you after stealing all of your hopes and dreams.” My brother hugs me again. “Have fun. Be safe. Call if you need me.”

He takes off, leaving me pondering how unexpectedly right he is about relationships, and wondering if that’s why he hasn’t yet gotten up the courage to ask Molly out.

But that all takes a backseat to the butterflies fluttering in excitement in my belly as Simon appears at my side again. “My children are about to depart,” he murmurs.

“I heard.”

“I would very much like to check for myself on the status of that present I left you yesterday.”

“I think I have time to help you with that.”

His eyes light up, and my god, the swoon happening in my belly and my starry-eyed vagina right now…

I am so utterly gone for this man.

Daphne yawns beside me. “Wow, I am so beat . Must be time to go.”

And I love her too.

Simon presses a key into my hand. “Slip into my office. It’s just beyond the front door on the right. I’ll come and get you when everyone else has left.”

I’d ask if we need to be secretive, but the boys aren’t gone yet, and we’re still easing into me being a part of their lives. Hanging out at an escape room or for a dinner party with two dozen people is one thing.

Them knowing their father is making plans to shag me is another.

“Next time you do a murder mystery dinner, call me beforehand,” Daphne says to Simon. “I have ideas.”

He smiles at her. “Can the world handle the two of us conspiring together?”

“If not, it’ll be a fun way to go.”

We say our goodbyes to the remaining guests and head for the front door.

Daph hugs me and leaves.

I dash the last few paces to the door on the right and use the key to let myself in.

And when I turn around and take in the office—I crack up.

Leave it to Simon to have left even the office the same.

There’s an ancient wooden desk. A modern office chair that seems lopsided. Plastic plants and sagging ancient bookshelves that I suspect are lined with books that have been here for a few decades.

The only things clearly new here are two closed laptops and two printers, one of which has overflowed itself and is blinking an out-of-paper message.

I used to find Griff’s printer like this too. Practically every day of high school.

If it wasn’t homework—and that one year, it definitely wasn’t—it was baseball plays.

He loved having it in a physical form that he could hold.

And after years of picking up after Griff’s printer, habit has me squatting to grab Simon’s papers that have fallen to the floor, musing that this is probably why his computer was running slower.

He told me it regularly prints things all on its own.

I don’t mean to look at the papers, but as I flip the pile over to put it on his desk, the title catches my eye.

The Mad Corn Dog Ambulance

By Simon Luckwood

Pilot: Betrayal

The… what?

Is this—is this what he’s been working on?

Put it down, Bea. Walk away. Ask him later.

I ignore myself and keep reading.

Act One

An ambulance converted to operate as a food van parked on a country road – dusk

A woman with red hair and a T-shirt bearing the logo for Mad Emergency Corn Dogs cleans up inside the converted ambulance after a long day without enough customers. A man steps out of a truck and approaches. She does not see him.

PORTER JACQUES

Sell more corn dogs when you don’t betray people, Mad.

Madonna “Mad” Bigley jumps in surprise, then aims her cleaning spray at him.

MAD BIGLEY

Get lost, Porter. You can scare my customers away for one day, but you have no idea who you’re dealing with.

PORTER

Everyone knows who they’re dealing with when they deal with you. Fancy city girl who had to come home to raise her brothers. Thinks that makes you special. Well, it doesn’t.

My heart starts a familiar beat as I scan the rest of the page, then the next.

It’s not butterflies fluttering my heart.

It’s not swooning.

It’s not eager anticipation or infatuation or love.

No, my heart is cramping.

It’s cramping the same way that it cramped when Jake told me it was over and I realized he was taking my restaurant.

It’s cramping the same way it did when Will told me I spent too much on groceries to make him gourmet meals every night and it just wasn’t going to work.

The same way it did when Andreas took off to do the Appalachian Trail, solo, because you’re just a bummer with all of this worry over everything with your brothers, Bea, and I need to find the good parts of myself again . I thought someone who did something selfless would be less self-involved.

It might even be cramping the same way it did when my phone rang in my dorm at midnight with Ryker calling to tell me the house burned down and that Dad didn’t make it out after going back in for Mom. That neither of them made it out.

I scan three more pages, confirming what the burning in my eyes and the cramping in my stomach are already telling me.

Simon’s secret project?

The one he’s been working on all summer? The one he’s told me he’ll share with me once he’s put the sparkling finishing touches on it?

It’s about me.

About my life.

He’s telling my story, without permission , for his own personal gain.

It’s Jake all over again, except worse.

Because Simon knows what Jake did to me.

He knows what Jake stole from me.

And he willingly did it too.

I snap photos of the first two pages of the script, and then I call Daphne. “Are you still here?”

“Oh my god, Bea, what’s wrong?”

“ Are you still here ?”

“Just left the driveway. I’m pulling over.”

“I’m coming. Wait for me.”

I don’t say goodbye to Simon.

I just leave.

Because betrayal?

Again ?

Fuck that.