“Why, Laney?” I asked. “Just tell me why.”
She blinked, her face a mask of deceit. “Why, what? What are you talking about, Rylee?”
“The text messages!” I yelled across the room. “Why would you send those messages to Stone?!”
I had expected her to deny it.
I had expected her to play dumb.
I hadn’t expected the nastiness that she had convinced me was a fluke to make an appearance again.
“Oh, what?” she mocked. “The hubby can’t take a joke?”
Anger threatened to choke me. “A joke?”
Laney slapped her hands on her hips as she cocked them to the side. “Oh, c’mon, Rylee,” she rushed out condescendingly. “It was just a joke.”
“You think it’s a joke to send someone’s fiancé texts that they’re going to fuck other people at some party?”Was she serious?
“Of course, it was ajoke,” she insisted. “Anyone who knows you knows that you’re not like that. Christ, it’s been decades since the last time you got laid.” The bitch had the nerve to roll her eyes. “It was a joke.”
“Stone didn’t see it that way,” I finally told her.
She arched a brow, and I knew this point was going to go to her. “Well, then, I guess that’s what you get for getting engaged to someone you don’t know,” she replied snidely. “If he did know you-knowanythingabout you-he would have known that there’s no way those texts were serious.”
Itook two steps forward, but still kept my distance. Too close, and I was liable to beat her to death. “Then why erase our entire text thread if it was just a joke? Huh?” I challenged. “If it was just some harmless fun, why get rid of them?”
Laney crossed her arms over her chest, but not before giving me a dainty shrug. “It was an accident,” she lied. “My fingers fumbled putting your phone back in your purse.”
She was lying, but I couldn’t prove it, so why bother arguing about it. “You still didn’t answer why you did it,” I reminded her. “Why play a mean joke like at?”
She didn’t answer. Instead, she deflected. “You know, you should be thanking me right now, instead of throwing a fit.”
“Thanking you?” I asked incredulously.
“IfStone Lexington thinks you’re the type of girl who fucks around, then why would you want to marry him anyway?” She had me there, and I hated her and myself for it. “Do you really want to marry a guy who is going to believe the worst about you?”
“Fuck you, Laney,” Isnarled because her truth cut like a knife. Stone had done exactly that, and Ididn’twant to marry someone who was quick to believe the very worst about me without even talking to me about it first.
The smirk on her face told me I’ve been wrong about thisgirl all this time. “Trouble in paradise?”
I turned my back on her, walked back to my room, remembered Kincaid was still here, grabbed my bags, then started to walk out of the apartment.
The second Laney saw me coming out with my bags, her bitchy demeanor changed. “What are you doing?”
I turned to face her. “If you think I’m going to continue to live with a backstabbing, spiteful, jealous bitch, you are wrong, Laney,” I replied, proud my voice was strong.
“Fuck you, Rylee,” she spat, the façade gone. The pretense no longer needing to be kept up. “You never would have been able to hang on to the likes of Stone Lexington anyway.”
“Because you think you can?” I fired back. “I mean, that’s what all this is about, right? You’re jealous because Stone picked me, and he didn’t pick me just to fuck. He picked me forever, and you just couldn’t handle it.” Her face was flaming red, but she didn’t deny it. “Tell me, what did August Remington have to do with all of this?”
“Nothing,” she said too quickly, the lie obvious.
Staring at my ex-friend, I knew I was done here. “If you ever come near me again, Laney, I will break your face into a thousand pieces,” I promised. “And I will gladly do the jail time for it.”
“Oh,honey, there’s no way I’d let you go to jail for that.” Laney gasped as Kincaid finally emerged from my bedroom, a duffle bag over her shoulder, a suitcase in one hand, and her phone in the other.
Laney’s eyes shot my way. “What is this?”