Nina couldn’t walk off into the dark with Daphne’s boyfriend. Not after what had happened the last time they were alone.
Some part of her registered how completely the world had upended, that she was turning away from Jeff to protect Daphne’s feelings, but what had her mamá said? The world was funny like that.
“I should really get back to the party.”
“Nina…” Jeff sounded hoarse; he swallowed. “Please, just for a minute. Just to talk.”
Just to talk. It was as close to an acknowledgment of that night on the couch as either of them could afford to make. Anything more would be a confession of guilt.
Nina couldn’t bring herself to walk away from Jeff, not when he looked at her like that.
“Just for a minute,” she conceded.
Jeff led her down the steps and onto one of the side paths—the ones wreathed in shadows, which Nina had just been thinking were probably full of couples taking advantage of the darkness.
“Jeff?” she asked hesitantly.
They reached a secluded grove. The sounds of music were soft and muted, overpowered by the roar of the ocean and the spray of a fountain behind them.
“Sorry,” he told her. “I just wanted to get away from it all.”
Nina’s heart was hammering, her breath catching in her chest. “What did you want to talk about?”
“Nothing. Everything,” he said confusedly, and sighed. “I just…So much has happened this year. It feels like everything is changing.”
Nina couldn’t help it; she reached out and took Jeff’s hand, the way she had a thousand times with Sam. “Of course it’s changed. You lost your father,” she said gently.
It struck Nina that this was one of those instances where the English language fell short. The word for losing something insignificant—a baseball game, a library card—shouldn’t be the same as for losing someone who defines you, someone you love. There should be a word for losses you can recover from, and a different word for the life-shattering losses, the ones that leave you forever changed.
“I thought things would get easier,” Jeff croaked. “But lately Beatrice has been gone and I’ve been the Regent, and suddenly it all feels…I don’t know. There were things I thought I knew for certain, and I’m not sure about them anymore. I don’t know what I can count on.”
“You can count on me,” Nina whispered.
He smiled hesitantly. “I’m not any good with words, Nina. Not the way you are. You make it look so easy.”
Somehow she was closer to him than she’d been just moments ago, her face tipped up to his. “Make what look easy?”
“Saying how you feel.”
Her eyes locked with Jeff’s, and Nina knew in that moment that they were not friends. That wasn’t what this was between them, not at all.
Jeff had clearly come to the same conclusion, because he leaned down and kissed her.
Nina and Jefferson were kissing.
Daphne stared at them in numb shock, her mind screaming in silent denial. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected when she followed them—for Jefferson to confess that he was worried about Daphne, for Nina to defend Daphne’s erratic behavior. She certainly hadn’t expected this.
She should have shouted, sprinted forward and yanked them apart, slapped both of them across the cheek. Yet Daphne’s vocal cords were stuck. She felt paralyzed by déjà vu, because she realized now that she had been here before, in this exact same situation: the night of graduation, a year and a half ago, when she’d come up to Jefferson’s room and seen him with someone else.
The girl in his bed that night had been Nina.
At the End of Session party, when she’d accused him of cheating, Jefferson’s eyes had cut guiltily across the rooftop. He’d been looking at Nina, hadn’t he?
Of course he had. Daphne should have known it was Nina. It was always Nina, back then and now.
She turned and ran off, but this time she wasn’t stumbling down the hallways of Washington Palace; she was racing through the gardens at Bellevue, lit by torchlight that flickered and danced in the wind.
At the turnoff to the garden’s central pathway, Daphne paused, then turned again. She couldn’t face the crush of the party right now. She felt like someone had split open her chest with a cleaver and now all her raw nerve endings were exposed to the air.
When she found a bench that looked secluded, Daphne collapsed onto it, the folds of her purple dress slippery around her legs. For once she couldn’t bring herself to care about snagging her gown. She closed her eyes, trying to ignore the monster of truth that kept roaring from within.
You’re wrong, she thought at the monster. Nina wouldn’t sell me out. She’s my friend.
The reply came in her mother’s voice. You stupid little fool, Nina was never your friend. She was working with Gabriella to get rid of you.
No, Daphne insisted, more feebly this time. Nina wouldn’t betray her.
Except that she’d just seen Nina betraying her.
Daphne dug her hands into the sides of the bench so hard that it hurt, as if the pain might bring things into focus. It all made a savage kind of sense.
Nina had wanted Jefferson from the beginning; that much was obvious. After Daphne suggested that they join forces against Gabriella, Nina must have cast her lot with Gabriella instead of with Daphne. She’d gone with the more powerful ally, which Daphne should have foreseen, because it was exactly what Daphne would have done in Nina’s shoes.
Nina had approached Gabriella, and in exchange for Nina going double agent against Daphne, Gabriella had clearly promised to get her financial aid reinstated.
Then Nina had pretended to go along with Daphne’s plan, had pretended to be her friend, because it was always easier to break something when you were on the inside.
She remembered that when Nina had come over to her room, her eyes had drifted to the photo on Daphne’s nightstand, the one that Daphne had recently shared with the Daily News. That must have been when Nina figured out that Daphne was selling photos of herself.
And the whole time, Nina had been at college with Jefferson, acting like they were “just friends”—as if two people with romantic history could ever be just friends—and Daphne, like a fool, had believed her. Had trusted her.
It had been a lie, all of it. Nina had been acting, and Daphne should have seen it coming, because this was court and they were all actors here.
For so long Daphne had done just fine without any friends. Friends were a liability. Friends made you vulnerable, and vulnerability meant weakness, which meant blood in the water. Friends could hurt you.