Chapter 3
A golf cart crosses the four-way intersection in front of us, the older couple in it gawking at Crue’s Bronco, probably admiring its lovely new paint job. Crue pretends not to notice, continuing to drive one-handed through the neighborhood full of small houses so tightly packed in no one even has side yards.
It’s too early in the year for the hydrangeas to be in bloom, but every front yard we pass features their bright green bushes, already awakened and preparing for the months ahead when they’ll charm everyone with both their calming colors and pleasant scents. Our property has hydrangeas, too. In Sea Haven, everyone’s does. Mostly in blues and purples, but occasionally you’ll find one with white flowers, which bloom later, usually toward the end of summer and into fall. While ours are professionally manicured, these are all wild and overgrown, blocking entire windows, even parts of people’s crushed-shell driveways. Nobody seems to care about the imperfection. They just live with it. They just live.
Swallowing hard, I tear my eyes away from a quaint farmhouse with a welcoming red door and focus on the man to my left. Without that annoying baseball cap covering his face, I can make out all of it right now, including those moss-green eyes with slight brown central heterochromia near the pupils. And that scar he’s constantly trying to hide? I like it more in its entirety. I haven’t been doing it nearly the justice it deserves. He has a diamond earring in his ear I suspect isn’t real, and every couple seconds, he bites the corner of his bottom lip using his top fang before quickly releasing it. If I could kiss that lip again, I’d bite it, too. It looks delicious. He looks delicious. And since I tasted him for myself, I know he is.
Ignoring me altogether, Crue’s taking in our surroundings, just like he did at Hide and Keep. He was working security then, too. After spending countless hours analyzing his every breath from that eye-opening night, I’d already pieced together as much. He wasn’t patiently waiting for somebody to find him like I assumed. He was doing his job. Which makes what we did that much more…forbidden. He wasn’t supposed to be paying me special attention. And yet, that’s exactly what he did.
I get preferential treatment everywhere I go, to the point it feels stiflingly commonplace, but his was different. Crue didn’t know what my last name was. He didn’t care. He just wanted me , enough to risk his job.
The only way someone in my real life would be willing to do the same is with the knowledge I’d be assuming the financial loss. Not even the hope that I would, but the surety.
Crue was willing to lose his job to be with me. He hesitated at first, but he’d just conceded when my father crashed my very first party.
All the questions I wish I could ask him play through my head.
Is this where you grew up?
Did you love it?
What was the best part?
Or did you move here recently?
Do you…live by yourself?
Do you walk to the beach I can spot at the end of the road?
What do you do once you get there?
But I don’t let myself ask any of them because that’d make him the guy from Hide and Keep, not the prison guard assigned to my cell, and I have to lose the latter.
What I wouldn’t give to keep the former, just for a little while, just until…
Why did it have to be him? For months, I’ve clung to the memory of this man, his lips, his touch, the way he protected me like it was natural for him. That memory was the one thing, the one beautiful, perfect thing in my life that my father couldn’t take from me.
But now he has. Unknowingly. It has to be some sort of cruel cosmic coincidence. There’s no way my father found out who Crue is…to me. And judging by the lack of recognition on his part, I don’t think Crue knows either.
So our first meeting is still my secret. It’s just going to haunt me now, like everything else my father gets his hands on.
When Crue pulls up to a Victorian colonial with an enclosed front porch, I tell him I’ll wait for him out here.
After making a show out of pocketing his keys while keeping my gaze, he says, “You’re my responsibility now. Where you go, I go, and vice versa.”
I can’t. I can’t go inside with him. It’ll be too much. This next part is hard enough without seeing where Crue spends his free time.
“I’m not going into your dumpy little shack.” I flutter my fingers at the house dismissively.
Those light eyes narrow. “Just because it’s not a mansion, doesn’t make it a shack.”
“It looks infested.”
“You’re such a…” He shakes his head but doesn’t finish as he gets out.
Not that he needs to. I know how I sound. It’s not that hard to pull off the snob routine when it’s all I’ve ever been around, ever known. Back in the corn maze, I hid this side of me so far out of sight, he probably wouldn’t have even believed me if I tried telling him who I was.
Opening my door, he props a forearm on the roof and leans toward me, saying, “Look, I gotta go in there and I don’t trust you enough to leave you out here by yourself, so you can either walk or I’ll carry you. Either way, you’re coming inside with me.”
“Despite what my father wants you to believe, I’m not a fucking toddler.”
“Until I see the proof for myself, I’m gonna have to defer to his word.”
“Fine. I can’t believe I have to actually show you this, but…” I pretend I’m getting something out of my shoe, then flip him off as if I found my middle finger in my size-six-and-a-half lululemons. I glance from it to him with a would you look at that expression.
He shoves off his car. “Carrying it is.”
I scramble out of the seat, pushing his middle out of my way, noting the defined abs beneath his shirt. “I’ll walk. I’ll walk. Goddess. Nobody can take a joke anymore?”
“Like your hilarious shirt?”
“Exactly,” I mumble while approaching the door. I point at it. “It’s purple.”
“Good job, Ever,” he says with a voice full of mock praise, then pats my head like one would an actual toddler’s. “Maybe tomorrow you can share what numbers you know.”
My middle finger aches to meet his perfectly chiseled face again.
“Was it like that when you moved in or did you paint it?” I ask, pointing at the front door.
“My mom,” is all he says.
“Your mother painted your door?”
“No, she painted her door. This is her house. And my dad’s.”
“You still live with your parents?” I ask without even trying to hide my disbelief. He’s older than me.
“So do you.”
“But I’m—” I cut myself off.
“What? Rich?”
“Obviously,” I snap. What other reason could there possibly be? Certainly not that my father won’t let me move out.
With a headshake full of incredulity, he unlocks the deadbolt and motions for me to go in first.
One look inside and the bitchiness starts flowing from my mouth.
“It stinks.”
It smells delicious, like basil and broth and some kind of bread I’m dying to sink my teeth into.
“It’s dirty.”
It’s lived in.
“It’s cold.”
It’s warm and inviting.
“It’s ancient.”
It’s the coziest house I’ve ever seen up close and all I want to do is curl up with a soft blanket inside it and just…breathe.
Instead of arguing a single point, Crue bends at the waist and picks me up, carrying me over both thresholds into the living room.
They don’t have a foyer?
“Help! Help! I’m being kidnapped by your son!”
Crue closes the door, then sets me on the carpeted floor, not just hardwood with a carpet rug but actual wall-to-wall carpet.
“Yell all you want. No one’s here.” After doing something on his phone, there’s a series of beeps somewhere in the house. “The alarm is set, so if you open a door or window, I’ll catch you before you can step foot outside.”
“You have an alarm on this place?”
“Yeah. We don’t use it anymore really, but it’s there…just in case.”
“In case of what?”
With a shrug, he says, “People.”
Before I can ask what kind of people, he leaves. Literally. He just leaves me here, all by myself in the middle of his parents’ home.
As much as I’d love to follow him and see his bedroom, I plant my feet and call to his back, “Where are your parents?”
“It’s the middle of the day. Where do you think?”
“The food bank?” With him gone, I cringe at myself, my shoulders shuddering from my own insensitivity. My high school team had a tradition of volunteering at the food bank at least once every December. Luckily, they scheduled the visits at the same time as our practices, so I got to go, too. It was a very humbling experience. Obviously, my father’s never done it.
“Work,” Crue replies. “Not like you know what that is.”
Despite the last part being muttered, I still pick up on it, mostly because I’m used to that insult.
People assume—correctly—that I don’t have to work, but what they fail to realize is I’m not allowed to work. My future is set. My purpose predetermined. My father barely let me cheer at the collegiate level. And even that is being taken from me.
Tears blur my vision.
One quick glance around the room and I bring my hands to my face, covering my eyes with my fingers and plugging my nose with the edges of my palms, forcing myself to breathe through my mouth. I don’t want to commit a single thing in here to memory.
As soon as my eyes are closed though, every detail I just glimpsed is shown in vivid clarity, like my brain already did.
Damn it.
“What’s the matter?” I hear sometime later.
Dropping my hands, I grit, “It. Stinks.” The tears hopefully helping my case.
Brows furrowed, Crue looks around from his spot on the other side of the sectional. “Like what?”
He’s wearing another black, non-descript hat. I got rid of the other one for a reason.
“Like…” I follow his lead until I spy a dog bed in a corner. “Dog.”
His expression turns thoughtful. “Could be. Zeus is out back right now but he’s in here a lot.” He rounds the couch. “We must be nose blind to him. Is it bad?”
“Terrible,” I mumble as I stare at the bag hanging off his shoulder. “You don’t need any of that. I told you you’ll be back tonight.”
“This…” Using his thumb, he tugs on the thick strap. “…is just to get me started. We’ll come back and get more some other time.”
I chuckle. “ We will not.”
“Yes, we will. For the next three years, we will be going everywhere together.”
“Three years?” I can’t keep the hope out of my voice. Did my father tell him that or did he just assume?
“Until you graduate. Your university is a four-year, isn’t it?”
He assumed. Of course.
One year of college—just enough to boast about, not enough to derail my father’s plans.
But Crue doesn’t know how temporary his job is. He should.
“I’m not graduating, Crue Brantley. You might as well walk away now.”
He doesn’t respond right away, just focuses on his phone, pressing a button that disarms the house’s alarm with another set of beeps. When he’s done, he looks up at me through dark lashes, and says, “I’m not walking away, Ever Munreaux. I will do everything in my power to make sure you fucking graduate.”
I have to swallow three times to get all the emotion clogging my throat down.
“You don’t have enough power to make that happen.” If I don’t, he definitely doesn’t.
He gives a huff of humorless laughter. “What makes you so fucking sure? You don’t even know me.”
Because power wraps its insidious limbs around people, changing them, poisoning them from the outside in, but your outsides match your insides which I know firsthand are pure because you asked for my permission, and the corrupt never, ever do.
“Because power stems from money, which clearly…” I hold out my hands, infusing a large dose of disgust into my expression. “…you don’t have.”
“I don’t need a dime to get you to graduation.”
I scoff. “You could certainly use it.”
“You know, I heard about you over the years…”
My chin lifts on its own. Blood, sweat, tears—I wish those were all it took to be as notorious as I’ve become. It wasn’t even the countless insane routines pulled off flawlessly in public. It was the sprains, the concussions, the bone bruises and breaks, along with the perfected smile accompanying it all . I’ve worked too hard not to be notable. If people are talking about me, I’ve either done something incredibly right, incredibly wrong…
“Awful is too nice a term for you.”
Or I was born to a man who did. My father’s influence is a perversion on my life. I hate it. I hate him.
And I hate myself for having to play into the perception, especially with Crue.
“You don’t know me either,” I let slip, some of my own frustration infusing my tone.
“I know enough.” He gives me an inspection that is nothing like the time he did it at Hide and Keep. “You hate me…just because I’m not rich.”
I don’t hate you.
I don’t want to hate you.
Please don’t make me hate you.
Please.
“I hate you because you want to help my father ruin my life.” That is what I need to remember, what I need to hold on to. My short run at freedom isn’t up yet. As soon as I ditch Crue, I can get back to it.
“Jesus, you’re so fucking dramatic. Nobody’s trying to ruin your life. Everyone has rules, responsibilities, obligations. Why the fuck do you think you’re so different?”
It’s not that I can’t handle rules, responsibilities, obligations; I already have plenty. It’s that I don’t want those rules, responsibilities, obligations. Each one is a shackle around my entire existence, chaining me to a life I didn’t agree to.
“I need to use the restroom.”
“Again? Didn’t you just go?”
“What am I, back in middle school, only allowed to pee between classes?”
“You look like it with that shirt.”
“You look at a lot of middle school girls?”
“What? No. I just meant—”
“Mm-hm. Sure. Where’s your bathroom?”
Crue studies me for so long, my hands find themselves behind my back, my fingers twisting together roughly.
“Or can you not afford indoor plumbing? Do you have an outhouse out back or something?”
With yet another headshake, he points at the hall, telling me, “It’s the door on the left. I’ll be watching the alarm system.”
“Like you’d catch me,” I mumble once I’m out of earshot. Lifting weights doesn’t necessarily translate to stamina. Sure, Crue’s muscular, but I bet I could still outrun him, probably on the worst day of my period.
“What was that?”
Whoops. He heard me.
“You’re poor,” I call out sweetly before slamming the bathroom door shut.
Sitting on the edge of the tub, I stare down at my phone, my thumb hovering.
Don’t overthink it. Don’t even think about it. Just…do it.
Do it.
I do it. I dial.