Chapter 13
thirteen
There were some moments in life where I really hated my brother.
When he almost gave me a black eye with a soccer ball before picture day.
When he accidentally bleached my favorite pair of jeans.
When I desperately needed him to pick me up because I was stuck in the rain and he wasn’t answering his phone.
Clementine and I huddled under the overhang of a closed candle shop, thankfully just far enough back that even the rain being blown sideways by the wind wasn’t hitting us.
If it wasn’t so miserable out, I might have actually enjoyed the rhythmic murmur of the water hitting the roof above us like free ASMR.
We’d been walking home from shopping when the sky had gone from “slightly cloudy” to “blinding downpour” so quickly that it made my head spin, which was why we were now taking refuge here.
We weren’t on a good block for finding stores to duck into, and even if we could find one, we were both already wet and would be downright soaked by the time we ran to them, so I was trying to get Sebastian to come drive us home.
Naturally, this was the one time he wasn’t answering his phone.
“I don’t suppose you know anyone with a driver’s license?
” I asked Clementine. She could drive, but I’d stupidly suggested we walk today instead because it was supposed to be nice out so her car was still home.
Nora and Imogen didn’t have their licenses, Lavender and Dean were out on a date, and Mum was working, which was pretty much the list of people I could call in an emergency.
“Nobody who could come now,” she said, shaking her head. A piece of her pink hair hit the side of her cheek with a wet slap. She sighed deeply. “Too bad Will just left this morning. He would’ve been here in an instant.”
“No matter how many times you say that like it’s normal, I will never stop finding it weird that you have Will Valentine at your beck and call,” I said.
In fact, I was pretty sure when she said her boyfriend would be here in an instant, she meant that his driver would bring him here because that was the sort of thing famous people did.
Clementine laughed. “You and me both. Anyway, what’s the plan—are we walking? Because I feel like my socks are turning into soup.”
“We are not walking,” I said grimly.
I looked down at my phone. My thumb hovered over my contacts list, scrolling past all the people I knew wouldn’t answer. No, no, no, n—wait.
Clementine’s boyfriend couldn’t come get us… but would mine?
My fake one, that is. But he just called in the “appearances” card, so why couldn’t I?
I turned to Clementine. I grabbed her by both shoulders, locking my eyes onto hers with an intensity that made her blink through the water dripping off her eyelashes.
“Clementine,” I said, my voice low and dead serious.
“Yes?” she squeaked.
“I am about to make a phone call.”
“Okay...”
“You are going to see things. You are going to hear things. And under no circumstances—and I mean none—are you allowed to ask a single question about what happens in the next twenty minutes. Do you understand me?”
Clementine’s eyes widened to the size of tea saucers. She was the kind of person who treated gossip like oxygen; holding her tongue was a physical impossibility on a normal day, let alone a day where I was acting like a rogue operative in a spy movie.
“Ainsley,” she gasped, clutching her hands to her chest. “Are you in the cartel?”
“No questions!” I barked, even though the guess was ludicrously funny. “Zero! Zip! If you open your mouth, I am leaving you here to swim home!”
She clamped both hands over her mouth and gave me a violent, dramatic nod. I took a deep breath, dialed the number, and brought the phone to my ear.
It didn’t even ring once. The line picked up so fast I thought I’d accidentally misdialed.
“Ainsley?” Rhys’s voice came through the speaker, crisp and immediate, completely lacking the lazy, drawling cadence he usually put on when he talked to me.
“Rhys,” I began, slightly startled by how fast he’d picked up. “Hey, I—”
“Are you okay? What happened?”
“Nothing happened,” I said. “Clementine and I are just out and we have no way of getting home, so I was wondering if you could come pick us up.”
There was a sharp scrape of chair legs dragging across hardwood in the background, followed by the metallic jingle of keys being snatched off a counter.
“Where are you?” he asked, his tone clipped.
Gosh, I was probably ruining his day by asking this of him—it was a Friday evening, he was probably relaxing at home after a long week and now I was dragging him out into the rain.
I was almost tempted to tell him to forget it, but the rain was showing no signs of stopping, and I had done him a few favors this week, like the frozen peas last night, and going to his soccer game the other day.
This was a pretty small favour in return, especially since I was sure he could find a way to show it off to Kelcey.
“I’m on Quebec Street, by that candle shop that always smells really good?
” My voice went up like a question at the end, because as I was saying it, I realized that I had no idea whether Rhys Montgomery would know the candle shop.
In the background, I heard a heavy door slam shut, followed by the beep-beep of a car alarm being unlocked.
“Stay there,” Rhys cut in, the sound of his turn signal clicking loudly through the phone. “Don’t move. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
“Wait, Rhys, you don’t have to—“
“Ten minutes, Ainsley,” he repeated, and then the line went dead.
I lowered the phone slowly, staring at the screen.
Ten minutes? His house was at least twenty minutes away from the shop if you drove like a normal human being—not that he did, but still cutting the time in half seemed optimistic.
I turned back to Clementine, who was vibrating on the spot, her hands still clamped firmly over her mouth, her eyes bulging with unasked questions.
“Remember,” I warned her, pointing a finger straight at her face. “Not a word. You are a vault. A silent, lock-jawed vault.”
She gave a muffled, desperate hum behind her palms. Just over ten minutes later, a slick, black SUV rounded the corner of Quebec Street at a speed that definitely violated municipal transit codes.
The tires sprayed a dramatic wave of rainwater onto the curb as it pulled up directly in front of the candle shop, hazard lights flashing.
The driver’s side door flew open before the car had even fully settled into park.
Rhys leaped out into the pouring rain, ignoring the storm completely.
He wasn’t wearing a jacket—just a dark grey hoodie, jeans, and sneakers that were instantly soaked.
His dark hair was flattened against his forehead in seconds as he sprinted across the sidewalk toward us, his expression tight with pure, unadulterated panic.
“Ainsley!” he called out, his eyes sweeping over me from head to toe, checking for broken bones or visible blood. “What’s wrong? What happened? Did someone—”
“Rhys, calm down!” I cut in quickly, putting both hands up to stop his momentum before he tackled me into the candle shop window. “Chill! Nothing is wrong! I literally just needed a ride home!”
Rhys stopped dead in his tracks, two feet away from us. Water was streaming down his nose, dipping over his upper lip, but he just stood there, blinking at me as if trying to translate a foreign language.
“You...” He wiped a hand over his face, pushing his wet hair back, his chest heaving slightly under his hoodie. “You needed a ride?”
“Yes,” I said smoothly, stepping out from under the awning. “Like I said on the phone! It started pouring, and we were stuck.” I gestured to the trembling girl beside me. “Rhys, this is Clementine. Clementine, this is Rhys.”
Clementine looked between Rhys—who was dripping wet, built like a division-one athlete, and currently staring at me like he’d just run a marathon—and me.
Her face instantly flushed a shade of bright, unnatural crimson.
Her mouth formed a tight, strained line, her nostrils flaring as she visibly fought the overwhelming, primal urge to scream a thousand questions into the rainy air.
She looked like she was holding her breath to prevent herself from exploding on the sidewalk.
“Hi, Clementine.” His tone went back into its familiar, dry cadence as he realized there was no emergency. He looked at her strained, beet-red face with mild concern. “Are you... hyperventilating?”
“She’s fine,” I interjected loudly, grabbing Clementine by the elbow and marching her toward the idling car. “She’s just exercising self-control. It’s a new program she’s on. Get in the back, Clem.”
I yanked open the back door, shoved Clementine into the leather interior, and shut it before she could leak a single sound. I rounded the hood, hopped into the front passenger seat, and pulled my seatbelt across my chest.
Rhys climbed back into the driver’s seat, bringing the cold, rain-scented air in with him. He shook his head like a dog, spraying water droplets across the dashboard, before pulling out onto the street while I put Clementine’s address into his GPS.
The silence inside the car was deafening.
Not asking questions wasn’t Clementine’s greatest strength.
In the rearview mirror, I could see her sitting stiff as a board in the middle of the back seat.
Her eyes were darting back and forth between the back of Rhys’s head and my profile.
Her hands were clenched into fists on her knees, her face still dangerously red.
Every few seconds, a tiny, squeaky gasp escaped her throat, like a teakettle just starting to come to a boil.
She is going to burst, I thought, staring rigidly out the windshield as Rhys navigated the rain-slicked streets. She is literally going to combust in the back of his car.