Make Me (Broke and Beautiful #3)(38)

“Come on.” Honey smiled at her. “Everyone has something. Bad kisses, a wave stealing your bikini top. Camping outside the box office for Garth Brooks tickets only to find out he’s playing the next town over.” She patted her blond hair. “Not that I ever did that last one.”

Shitty-summer-vacation story. Maybe purging the old memories would make it easier for new ones to take their place. “One summer, my parents left me here with the nanny and went to Italy for a month. Does that count?”

No one said anything. She heard Russell curse behind her and frowned. Not the reaction she’d been going for. Honestly, her story hadn’t been as bad as the others, had it? Their expressions told Abby they felt bad for her, and it really didn’t sit well. Not when she already felt bad enough for herself to sink an oil tanker. Not when she desperately wanted to move on from those memories.

“Sorry, Abby,” Louis muttered. “I shouldn’t have—”

“Actually,” she interrupted, striving for a bright tone, “it was a lot of fun. The nanny brought her daughter over, and we made up dances. I still remember it.” Reaching to the very bottom of her liquid courage, Abby stood, dislodging Louis’s arm. “Want to see it? I actually have the song on my phone.”

Roxy whooped. Honey put two fingers in her mouth and whistled loud enough to echo around the pool area. “Hell yeah, we want to see it. DJ, drop that beat.”

“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” Abby murmured, positioning herself in an open space that faced her ring of friends. Again, she felt Russell staring but swatted his attention away like a bug. Her nerves were mysteriously absent. Any kind of public speaking or performing—which had been proven during a disastrous piano recital in fourth grade—typically broke her out in hives. But right now? Recapturing some of the bravado she’d discovered this morning at the office felt like the only course of action. That Abby had started to slip away, and she needed to grab on with both hands, yank her back.

She found the song in her phone, hit Play, and tossed the phone to Ben, who placed the device in the portable Bose speaker and cranked the volume, sending “Everybody Dance Now” blasting through the speakers. Simply hearing which song she would dance to sent her friends into a laughing fit, but the laughter did nothing to detract from her courage. No, she was laughing, too, as she broke into the running man, keeping time to the beat. When the male voice started to rap, she somehow recalled every word from her childhood, closed her eyes, and lip-synced with over-the-top enthusiasm. When she opened her eyes again and saw how entertained and happy everyone looked, satisfaction lifted her spirits.

Then she looked at Russell, witnessed his broken smile, and those raised spirits went plummeting beneath the pool’s surface. He looked happy . . . but the happiness was causing him pain. It refreshed her anger. Screw him for confusing her. For sending her mixed signals. Abby stopped dancing, words rising in her throat that she would surely regret, but wasn’t capable of holding back. What do you want from me? You wreck me and then get sad when I pick my pieces back up? Those words died in their inception when Russell’s attention left her and landed on her lit-up cell phone, vibrating where it was connecting to the speaker, a call interrupting the song.

When Russell stood and reached for Abby’s phone, she lunged for it, but he got there before her, disconnecting it and picking it up before the blaring song could start to play again. “Who is Mitchell, and why do you have forty-two missed calls from him?”

“Give me the phone,” Abby demanded, not caring for his cold tone. Not at all. There was a counterpart to her distress, though. She hadn’t told Russell about her father and the subsequent workload, but she wasn’t entirely sure of the reason for omission. Now, as he waited stubbornly for an answer, phone clutched in his hand, Abby knew. She’d wanted Russell—at least, Russell—to see her as more than a dutiful worker bee. Was it so much to ask? To be desirable instead of reliable? That chance was gone now. Maybe it had never really existed. Not the way she wanted it to.

Russell stepped into her space. “Answer me.”

“Sti cazza. A fanabla!”

“Uh-oh . . . she’s breaking out the Italian,” Roxy whispered.

Riding the surge of defiance and irritation, Abby plucked the cell phone from Russell’s hand and chucked it—still ringing—into the pool. The reduction of pressure pushing down on her chest was so extreme, she bent at the waist, planting her hands on her knees. “Oh my God.” Oxygen seeped from her lungs. “That felt really good.”

Abby’s voice broke on the last word. She felt her friends come up beside her, resting their hands on her back. “Hey, let’s go upstairs,” Roxy said. “I’ll send Louis out for some ice cream.”

“Someone needs to tell me what’s going on here.” Russell’s voice came from behind Abby, harder than she’d ever heard it. “Now, please.”

She straightened and turned on a heel, started to tell Russell that no explanations were owed to him, but his expression stopped her. After what he continued to put her through, she shouldn’t care that he looked haunted. Shouldn’t care that his face had gone ghost white. When would she stop? “I—”

“Abby.”

The new male voice brought all six of them up short. Abby’s pulse went dull for a few beats, then turned erratic along with her breathing. Mitchell, the firm’s lawyer, stood on the deck, looking down at them. She blinked, hoping he would vanish, but there he remained, dressed as though he’d just walked out of a boardroom.