Chapter 2
2
Falling in love with Connor was so easy. It didn’t hurt that he was good-looking—with his broad jaw and soulful eyes under dark brows, his sandy-brown hair swept to the side just so. He had the good sense to have ears a little too big for his face, or he would have been entirely too pretty.
It started at one of Harper’s parties. From the moment she introduced us, I had the unshakable sensation that we’d always known each other. There was a glass of wine followed by another, a conversation on the balcony that neither of us wanted to end. So we didn’t end it. We talked until morning, got coffee, walked through the park. He left me at my doorstep after dinner the next night and I went to bed, afraid that surrendering to sleep would break the spell, but he showed up again with breakfast and convinced me to call in sick to work.
It was alarming, how quickly he became as necessary as oxygen. Frightening how rapidly we became entangled. I would burrow against him in the night, the weight of his arm over me, and be seized with the fear that this would end. It was like fingers curling up under my ribs, reaching into the dark cavity of my chest. This couldn’t be real. It was too perfect.
Connor just laughed when I told him. Laughed, and gave me the ring.
Sometimes, he said, you just know.
Then the texts started to arrive.
You’re making a mistake.
Stay away from Connor Dalton.
They were anonymous, untraceable. And very possibly from someone I’m about to spend two weeks with.
“We’re here,” Connor says. There’s a gate across the road—wooden and appropriately rustic, but with a keypad mounted nearby, which Connor uses to plug in a code. The gate swings open with a faint motorized whir. “Welcome to Idlewood.”
Before us, the woods open up, like a curtain drawn back with great ceremony to reveal the marvel beyond. In the middle of it all is a large pond, its edges delicately veiled with ice, the center gray-blue and still. There’s a dock; a dinghy; a boathouse painted the same blue as the sky. On the other side of the water, up a short slope set with stone steps, looms a lodge constructed of glass and dark wood, a striking blend of natural texture and ultramodern angles.
“Is that where we’re staying?” I ask. It’s beautiful, but I can’t imagine living in a place like that, even for two weeks—those huge panes of glass, the interior exposed to anyone walking by. Though that’s the point of this place, I suppose. There’s no one to look in on you. Why bother with walls and curtains when you have a whole mountain to yourself?
“That’s the grand lodge,” Connor says. “Only Granddad and Grandma stay there. We’ll be in the White Pine cabin.” He parks the Jeep next to two other cars and climbs out. He grabs our bags from the back. Apart from the cars, there’s no sign of anyone else at first—but as Connor comes back around, Alexis emerges from the trees to our left, hand lifted in greeting.
“I thought I heard a car,” she says, teeth flashing white. Connor sets our bags down and strides forward to grab his sister up in a bear hug. She’s a narrow woman in every dimension, thin to the point of bony, her dark hair falling straight to the middle of her back. A few snowflakes are caught among the strands. She crinkles her nose when she turns to me. “Theo! So glad you could make it.”
“Glad to be here,” I say, resorting to clichés in my nervousness. The first time I met Alexis was the moment I saw just what I was getting into, dating Connor. I knew he was rich, obviously. But he was nerdy, a little hapless, forgot to iron his shirts. I’d convinced myself that he was just a normal guy, plus money. Then Alexis appeared, oozing effortless polish—expensive haircut, expensive bag, expensive teeth , and the way she moved through the world like it never occurred to her that it wouldn’t step out of her way. She’s thirty-five, eight years older than Connor, a VP in the family company—Dalton Shipping—and by all accounts excellent at what she does.
We hug, that delicate palms-to-shoulders squeeze of reluctant acquaintances. Part of me is disappointed—the part of me that has always wished for a sister, for a family.
“And let me see…” Alexis prompts, making a grabbing gesture. It takes me a moment to figure out what she’s asking.
I dutifully stick out my hand to show her the ring—a confection of white gold, boasting a frankly enormous diamond in the center flanked by two sapphires, with more minute diamonds glittering along the band. It came with a dizzying education in cut and clarity and what the various grades meant—not that there was any doubt that it was the highest possible quality. When a Dalton says “only the best,” it’s quite literal. And god, it’s gorgeous. I want to say I’d be happy with a Ring Pop, that none of this matters, but the diamonds catch the winter sun and turn it to stars, and I know it’s a lie.
Alexis examines the ring with a practiced eye and arches an eyebrow at Connor. “Gorgeous. Excellent selection, Connor.”
He shrugs, as if embarrassed. “I just got the one you suggested.”
“Exactly,” she tells him, and grins. I smile reflexively to hide my surprise—I hadn’t known he even told her he was going to propose. Then she’s looping her arm over my shoulders, hugging me tight against her side. Together, we walk toward the path she came down. “So are you completely terrified?”
“Lex,” Connor chides.
She flips her hair over her shoulder dismissively. “What? We’re intimidating, no way around it. But don’t worry, with me on your side, you’ll emerge triumphant.”
“All this telling me not to worry isn’t really helping my nerves,” I reply, and she laughs. “Is your wife here, too?”
“Paloma and Sebastian are napping,” she says. She points at a cabin set back among the trees, far more rustic than the grand lodge.
Sebastian—that’s their three-year-old, whom I’ve seen on the phone screen over Connor’s shoulder, gabbing about daycare adventures while Connor listens attentively. Paloma has been more ephemeral: a hand guiding Sebastian away for a bath, a voice calling out that dinner is ready.
“You’re in Red Fox this year? I thought they’d stick you in Wildflower,” Connor says. The names of cabins, I can only assume.
She makes a face. “Trevor’s staying with Mom,” she says.
“Ah,” Connor says, and they share a look like this means something significant. He cuts his eyes to me. “Wildflower is the only two-bedroom cabin,” he explains.
“Oh,” I say, and then the conversation hangs and I feel like I should have something more intelligent to contribute. “Is that where you all stayed growing up?”
There’s a hitch before Alexis chirps, “Not really.”
“Dad never liked it. Too close to the lodge,” Connor says.
That’s the wound I didn’t see at first, the scar tissue both of them carry. Their father died young—in his late thirties, when Connor was a young boy. In photographs, Liam Dalton is his son’s doppelg?nger—identical grins, the same way of looking at you like they’re letting you in on a secret. Sometimes it takes me a moment to work out which of them I’m seeing in the pictures that cluster on Connor’s walls.
“Trevor here yet?” Connor asks tersely.
Trevor is the baby of the family, which means he’s my age. Twenty-four. I’ve never heard Connor speak to him, only about him: What’s Trevor done this time?
Alexis’s lips thin. “Not yet. He should be up soon, though. Mom can’t make it until tomorrow.”
“I thought they were coming together,” Connor says.
“Nope. He’s driving himself,” she replies, voice tight. Her eyes cut to me, and then she gives him a pointed look. “Anyway. You two are in White Pine, of course.” To me she adds conspiratorially, “White Pine’s always for the newest couple, because it’s out of the way. Total privacy.” She winks; Connor blushes. “We’ll see you both for dinner?”
“We’ll be there,” Connor assures her.
Alexis releases her hold on me at last. She gives me a look I can’t quite read, analytical but with a smile keeping the edges from getting too sharp. She tucks my hair behind my ear, and it seems like she’s going to say something.
Someone sent me that text. Could it have been Alexis? She was friendly when we met. I mistook her briskness for distraction at the time, but I suspect she’s always paying attention. If she thought I was wrong for her brother, I have no doubt she’d do something about it.
Alexis’s lips close. Whatever she was going to say stays sealed behind them. She drops her hand and steps away.
“I should let you two settle in,” she says. She puts her hands in her jacket pockets. Her weight rocks back on her heels. “Connor, when you get a minute, there’s something I need to talk to you about.”
His brow creases in concern. “What is it?”
Her smile is bright and false. “It can wait. None of us are going anywhere.” With that, she swings around, putting her back to us. “See you later!” she calls, and she’s marching across the snow again, with the same careless grace as when she walks down a city sidewalk.
“She can be a lot,” Connor says when she’s out of earshot.
“I don’t mind,” I tell him, which is at least five-eighths the truth.
“She’s a bit protective. It comes from being the oldest,” he says, still with that apologetic tone.
“That fits,” I say distractedly. He gives me a curious look, and I blush a little. “Alexis—it means ‘protector.’ From the Greek.”
“I don’t know how you hold all this stuff in your head,” he says fondly.
“It comes from being a lonely kid. Fun facts were my go-to social move,” I tell him.
“And what does Theodora mean?” he asks.
My throat tightens. “‘Gift from God,’” I say, trying to keep my tone weightless, unbothered. I don’t tell him that it isn’t my name—not really. There are things about me Connor Dalton doesn’t know. Can’t know.
“Shall we?” Connor asks. He hefts the suitcases again. I know better than to offer to take mine. It’s a point of pride for Connor, to carry things. It makes him feel like he’s being “down to earth,” which I find charming. “I’m sorry my mom isn’t here yet. I was hoping I’d get the chance to introduce you before—”
“Before you have to loose the whole pack on me?” I ask. “That would have been nice.”
“We aren’t ravening wolves,” Connor chides. “And you have pretty sharp teeth yourself.”
I bare them at him to prove his point.
Connor hauls the bags the rest of the way to the cabin and we step up onto the porch. The brass silhouette of a pine tree is tacked to the door, to match its name.
The interior is warm and well lit with electric lights. I turn in a slow circle. The Scotts took me to a cabin one spring when I was nine. It was cold and wet and the roof leaked; I burned myself on the woodstove, leaving a shiny welt across the side of my hand. This cabin has hardwood floors, a full kitchen. Through the bedroom door I spy a king-size bed.
Connor’s watching me with a worried expression—one he wears often. It’s hard to say whether it’s his natural state or if it’s just that I worry him.
“Mm,” I say, cracking a smile. “I see we’ll be roughing it.”
“If you’d rather pitch a tent out back…” he begins, and I smack his arm playfully. He catches my hand. He turns it, slides my sleeve up my arm, and kisses the bare skin of my wrist—and the tattoo that decorates it: a blackwork dragonfly, three circles behind it. Then he draws me in toward him, and now it’s my lips he kisses, slow and deliberate. I hum against his mouth, content, but break away.
“Give me the tour,” I say, faux sternly. He obliges.
The tour doesn’t take long; it’s a one-bedroom, with a spacious living room and a full kitchen decked out with quartz countertops and top-of-the-line appliances. The bathroom is just as generous, the walk-in shower done in shimmering blue tile.
“Rustic,” I say as we walk through the rooms, my eyebrows climbing higher with each new open door. “Charming. Quaint.”
“Some of the others are more modest,” he tells me almost defensively as I experimentally turn on the rainfall showerhead. I hold out my hand to let it patter against my palm.
“I’m not complaining,” I assure him with a laugh, shutting the water off again. “But you can’t blame me for being a little awestruck. Your family owns a whole mountain , Connor.”
“Not the whole mountain,” he protests. Then he grins. “Just the nice parts.”
“Ha ha.”
Connor puts a hand on my shoulder. “If you want to unpack, maybe take a shower, I should really go find out what Alexis wanted to talk about.”
“Oh.” I nod convulsively. “Of course. No problem.”
“Unless it is?” he prompts.
“Don’t be silly. I’ll be just fine by myself for a bit,” I tell him, though I don’t want to be alone right now, right here. It’s important that I not seem too needy. Too broken.
He kisses me again before he ducks out the door, a blast of cool air swirling past him. I stand alone in the quiet of the house, nothing but the drone of the fridge to drown out the sound of my own breath and pulse.
Connor’s left his phone on the kitchen table.
I have a few bad habits. A history of looking where I shouldn’t. Of taking what isn’t mine. But I’ve been good, with Connor. I have to be.
It’s not the same, I tell myself. All I need is to check one contact.
I pick up the phone, and then cross to where I dropped my purse beside the door. I dig out my own phone and unlock it, pulling up the texts. There are five of them altogether.
I know who you are, the first text says. Followed quickly by the second: I know what you did.
And then, a few days after that: I know what you’re doing now.
You’re making a mistake.
Stay away from Connor Dalton.
Each time one of the texts arrived, I hoped it would be the last. But they haven’t stopped. It could be someone messing with me. A romantic rival. Someone with a grudge against Connor. There are at least a half dozen explanations that aren’t the worst-case scenario.
That someone really does know about my past. The things I have never told Connor—can’t ever tell him.
I unlock Connor’s phone, using the code I’ve seen him plug in countless times. I pull up his contacts and scroll through to Alexis’s number. It doesn’t match. But of course Alexis is too smart to have sent anything through a number that could be tracked to her.
I open their messages. The last one is from Alexis.
When you get here we need to talk. Alone.
There’s something I need to show you.
It was sent a few hours ago. And now Connor’s out there, finding out what’s so urgent.
Is it me she wants to talk about?
I put Connor’s phone back where I found it, swallowing against a sick sense of guilt. I go to the bedroom and sink down onto the end of the bed, my phone in my hand.
I should just tell him—tell him all of it. He’ll understand.
But what if he doesn’t? What if once he knows, he doesn’t want anything to do with me?
“I can’t,” I whisper. My vision swims. I turn on my phone, meaning to message Harper to let her know we made it safely. No signal. I give a hollow laugh and throw the phone on the bed.
Well, at least I know I won’t be getting any more texts.
We’re completely cut off up here.