“That would be perfect, thank you.”

“Why don’t you have a seat?” He gestures to the couch.

My legs carry me weakly across the soft carpet and I drop down on the plush red velvet. Hours ago I’d considered how I’d planned to change into sexy lingerie and make good use of this particular piece of furniture. Now I’m sitting here, watching my life fall apart all over again, and the only constant is Lex and my bad decisions. I don’t want them to be one and the same.

I try to breathe through the pain in my chest as the conversations over the past several hours filter through my head, starting with Bane and Lex in this room, mine with Ruby next door, Armstrong’s vicious attempt at blackmail and finally the overheard conversation between Lex and Armstrong.

Dominos line up just to knock each other over, the last one threatening to tip me over the edge.

Lex sets a glass in front of me and sits at the other end of the couch, giving me space. He stretches his arm across the back of the cushions, regarding me sadly. “I think I should probably start with the discord between Armstrong and me.”

“Was I one of your competitions?”

“For Armstrong? Possibly. For me, no.”

“And I should believe you because?”

Lex exhales a heavy breath. “I don’t have a reason to lie to you, Amie. It’s not going to get me what I want and it’s only going to widen the chasm between us. I’d prefer to narrow that gap with long overdue truths.”

I motion for him to continue. My hands are shaking so much I have to hold my glass with two hands to keep it steady.

“Armstrong was my best friend growing up, as much as he could be anyone’s best friend, I suppose. Gwendolyn and my mother had very different approaches to parenting. Gwendolyn wasn’t interested in being a mother, and if she’d had her way, he would’ve been sent to boarding school like Lincoln, but for some reason that didn’t happen. My mother felt bad for him, and as a result Armstrong spent a lot of time with my family.”

“He doesn’t have a relationship with his older brother at all?” I’ve only heard mention of him in passing, Gwendolyn and Fredrick don’t even talk about him. I’m not even sure if he was invited to the wedding at all.

“He didn’t while we were growing up. Armstrong and I are the same age, so for me it was like having another brother. We were in the same classes together all the way through to high school. We joined a lot of the same teams, shared a lot of the same interests. The competitiveness started out innocently enough. It was just the usual kid stuff, who got the highest marks, the most goals, the best golf score.”

He pauses to take a sip of his drink. “We got into a lot of trouble together. I got in more when I was with him, but he was really good at pushing the blame on me, and I took it most of the time because my parents weren’t as hard on me as his were on him.

“Anyway, in high school things started to change. You know how it is, new friends, new interests. I had an easier time making friends than he did, and he didn’t really like that. One day me and a bunch of guys decided to go down to the river and Armstrong wanted to come even though water and heights freak him out.”

“The bridge-jumping accident?”

“Did Ruby tell you about that?” He taps restlessly on the back of the couch.

“She didn’t have much in the way of details. I can’t imagine Armstrong jumping off a bridge into water.”

“He shouldn’t have done it, and it was my fault he did.” He sighs but keeps talking. “Armstrong had managed to steal a bottle of his dad’s scotch, so the guys were all over him being there, even though most of them didn’t really like him, because as you know, Armstrong can be a dick when he wants to. I was used to it, but sometimes it got tiring. We were drinking and being stupid. Armstrong wouldn’t stop one-upping me on everything. It was petty teenage posturing. I should’ve just let it go, but I’d had enough that day, so when the guys decided to bridge jump, I dared Armstrong to do it. At first I didn’t think he would, but I just kept pushing. I should’ve known better.”

“I can’t believe he went through with it.”

“Neither could I, to be honest. He’d had a lot of shots. He was trying to be cool. We all were. It didn’t take long for me to realize it was a really bad idea. He full on panicked as soon as he hit the water. One of the guys took a bunch of pictures of the whole thing, from Armstrong jumping to me going in after him. He almost ended up drowning us both. He pulled me under trying to use me to stay afloat. That’s when I ripped my back open on the rocks. Eventually I managed to get us out.”

I can only imagine how terrifying that would’ve been. And how guilty Lex must have felt after that. “What happened with the pictures?”

Lex exhales a tired breath. “He posted them all over the place. Most of the school saw them and drew their own conclusions. They weren’t flattering for Armstrong.”

“Oh God.” The humiliation must have been awful for him.

“Yeah. It was like teenage social murder for Armstrong. It made me look like some kind of hero and Armstrong just like this self-indulgent brat, when really it was my fault he jumped at all. If I hadn’t gone in after him he might not have survived. I couldn’t have lived with that. Eventually his family was able to have the images removed, but the damage was already done.”

It’s hard not to feel for both of them in that situation. Kids can be cruel to each other, and it seems like there were no innocents here. “What happened after that?”

“Gwen blamed it on me, and my mother blamed it on Armstrong. They separated us. For me it was manageable, I had two brothers, but he had no one, and school wasn’t a great place for him. After that the competition between us got a lot worse, and became less . . . innocuous. He couldn’t get over what had happened so he went out of his way to do things to mess with me. If I was interested in someone he’d find a way to fuck it up or get in there before I could. That wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle, but sometimes it got nasty. I was complicit more than I should’ve been. He’d sabotage me and then I’d do the same to him.”

“Sabotage how?” I don’t know this side of Lex and I’m not sure I like it.

“Some of it was just prank stuff. Once he put laxatives in my protein shake when we were on the soccer team. It was a huge game. I was better than he was, but then I couldn’t play and he got more time on the field because of it. And once I gave him a bogus copy of an exam so he’d memorized all the wrong things and tanked. It ruined his GPA that year.”

I got into trouble, but not that kind. “That’s—”

“Vindictive.” Lex purses his lips, watching my reaction. “It wasn’t good and those weren’t even close to the worst things we did to each other. Armstrong’s retaliations were creative, but mine were just as bad. There were a couple of summers I got sent to work with my dad on projects out of the country because Armstrong and I together was bad news. By college we didn’t get along at all.

“He’d do things to make me look incompetent, embarrass me at family functions, really just anything he could do to make things difficult for me. A few times he managed to hack into my work email and mess with files when I first started working with my father. There weren’t any lines he wouldn’t cross, and it seemed like it was confined to me and no one else. And then he started using people against me.”