Two Can Play (Celeste and Dominic) novel Chapter 435

SCARLETT

The wedding car had barely cleared the ballroom gates when the first tear escaped, and I blamed the streetlights, because a woman of my reputation did not cry at farewells, and if I did, it was purely a lighting problem.

Jasmine and Maya sat across from me, their bags already in the trunk, their faces set in the brave expressions people wore when they were about to do something they did not want to do. Tasha rode up front with Sparrow, which left the three of us alone in the back, and nobody was saying anything, which meant everybody was about to fall apart.

"Stop it," Jasmine said, pointing at my face. "You are going to ruin your makeup and I am not fixing it."

"It is my face and I will ruin it if I want to."

"You will look like a raccoon in every memory."

Maya patted my knee. "She is right. You cry prettier when you do it silently. More mysterious."

"I do not want to be mysterious. I want to be hysterical. I am being abandoned."

"We are the ones leaving," Jasmine said. "We should be the ones crying."

"Then cry. Nothing is stopping you."

Her lip wobbled. "I refuse to give you the satisfaction."

I laughed, and the laugh turned into a sob, and Jasmine lunged across the seat and hugged me, and Maya piled on top of us, and for a minute the three of us were a tangle of dresses and tears and muffled swearing.

The phones had come the day before, four of them, sleek little slabs of glass and metal that cost more than my first apartment. Sparrow had said yes without blinking, which was its own kind of strange, but I had learned not to question the moods of rich men. We had traded numbers like teenagers, and Jasmine had named the group chat something so obscene that even Maya had blushed.

"Before you go," I said, pulling back and wiping my face, "open your wallets. The app, not the leather."

Jasmine frowned but tapped her phone. Her face went through a sequence of expressions, confusion, then disbelief, then a kind of horror, and her head snapped up.

"Scarlett. What is this?"

"Five million in Bitcoin. Each."

Maya stared at her screen like it had grown teeth. "This is not real."

"Swear it."

"I swear it."

She nodded, wiped her face with the back of her hand, and climbed into the waiting car. Maya followed, and through the window they waved, and I stood in the driveway waving back like an idiot until their taillights vanished around the corner.

Tasha took my hand. "They will be fine."

"I know."

"Then stop crying."

"I am not crying. I am sweating from my eyes."

Sparrow drove in silence for a long stretch, and I let the city roll past the window, the lights smearing into gold, until we turned into a neighborhood so quiet and so green that it felt like another country.