Forty-Six
WE COME OUT ON THE SIDE OF THE HOUSE FARTHEST FROM THE wedding. Music echoes distantly into the night. Quickly, we wipe the grass from our knees in the dark.
Jackson takes my hand and leads me around the house, heading for the front. The house’s high walls look somehow somber in solitude, grandeur with no one to impress.
I don’t pull my hand from his. While Lexi remains a problem, the money in my account makes me feel like I can spare the five minutes Jackson wants. Besides, the longer I stay away with the necklace, the longer I’ll keep security distracted.
It’s pragmatic. Smart planning.
When we reach the front, Jackson continues to the check-in desk, where he asks the woman on duty for his phone.
While she rummages in the plastic containers for the iPhone I know she will eventually retrieve, the one with East Coventry soccer stickers on the case, I eye him doubtfully. “Jackson, I’m not stupid. Even if you show me your messages and there’s nothing there, you could have easily deleted it,” I say.
“You can look through everything,” he insists, unwilling to let his hope falter. “Every text I’ve ever sent. Every photo. Even the deleted ones. Anything.”
The woman hands him his phone. Immediately, he passes it to me.
The device lights up with the movement. “I need your password,” I say, fighting the waver in my fingers.
He has the audacity to laugh. “It never changed.”
Something flips in my stomach. I guessed his password early in our relationship—just joking around, I racked my memory for meaningful digits. Jersey numbers, locker codes, even his “lucky number,” which is fifteen. He didn’t mind when I figured the combination out. After I knew, he would often hand me his phone while he was driving and ask me to message his parents saying he was on his way.
I assumed he changed it when he started cheating. If he never did…
Circumstantial evidence, I counsel myself harshly. Weak circumstantial evidence.
With reluctant keystrokes, not wanting to recognize the password’s implications, I input the six familiar numbers. Like every day in his Jeep with the roads of Coventry flying past us, the combination unlocks the phone. It’s a vexing variable, unsettling the picture I’ve formed in my head of the past few months.
Past the lock screen, his wallpaper startles me.
It’s… us. The same photo from when we were dating, us on the beach—the day we drove out to Sandy Point over the summer. I’m smiling, caught halfway to laughter. The sunset lights our faces in gold. Jackson is kissing me on the cheek while he holds the phone.
He couldn’t have known I would look at his phone, could he? Couldn’t have prepared the right wallpaper to fake dedication?
Could he?
If he didn’t…
In the entryway, marble framing the night where a valet waits for guests who no doubt enjoyed the dramatics of my exit, I feel the world constrict. Not even Lexi’s presence in the study or Cass’s disappearance scared me quite like Jackson’s phone has. If he was honest with me—if Kelly Devine lied—and I distrusted my own boyfriend, the boy I loved… how can I ever repair the damage I’ve done?
Jackson watches me. The elegant lighting plays over the contours of his face, emphasizing every emotion. Defiance, devotion, and desperation joining in my ex-boyfriend’s eyes.
No more hesitating, I tell myself.
I open his DMs and scroll through them until I find the date my heart broke.
Exactly as I expected, Kelly’s handle waits for me. My heart tight like a fist, I click kellsbells816 to find…
Hey. Was thinking about you. You up? Would love to go out sometime if you’re free
The message I memorized, right in front of me.
I look up at Jackson, feeling like I’m going to throw up. Was this just a cruel joke? Did he want to watch me hurt in person? When he meets my eyes, though, not even I can keep up my guarded distrust. He’s… reading me, just as I’m reading him. When he recognizes my wounded confusion, his expression changes to mirror mine.
He grabs the phone from my hands. No one could fake the frantic puzzlement in his face as he reads.
“Olivia. I swear,” he says. “I’ve never seen this before. I swear. I promise I didn’t send this.”
I stand, struggling in the doorway of the home I lost when my dad cheated, when he wanted me to lie for him. In fact, I’m practically in the same exact place I was when I saw him with Lexi. I’m ready to retreat to where it’s comfortable—where I put my trust in no one but myself.
But the pleading written everywhere on Jackson’s face won’t let me.
“Olivia,” he repeats, imploring. His eyes light with wild inspiration. “Why—why would I hand you my phone if I thought this message was here? I know you see the holes in this. You’re you.”
I feel myself shaking my head.
I… I won’t. I can’t.
“I’m not your dad,” he continues. “God, Olivia, please. You have to know I’m not him.”
I don’t know what to say. No, I’m not fully convinced Jackson cheated. I just don’t know how to give myself over to the faith he’s asking of me. But before I can reply, the woman working the phone desk walks over to us, security with her.
Shit.
“Olivia Owens?” the guard asks.
In my peripheral vision, I notice movement. I look to the parking area in front of the house, of which the valets are no longer the only occupants. Millennium vehicles maneuver into position, blocking road access, leaving everyone at the wedding trapped. In minutes, we’ve gone from guests to prisoners.
Hiding my panicked pulse, I put on my spoiled heiress demeanor. “Don’t tell me all this commotion is just for me.” I roll my eyes. “It’s a necklace. I was joking. Jeez.”
The guard frowns. He doesn’t hold his hand out for the diamond, however. He grabs Jackson’s phone, which he returns to the woman at the desk. “You both need to come with me,” he orders us. “There’s been a security breach in the house. So far nothing of your father’s appears to be missing, but every guest will have to be searched before leaving.”
“So we’re all, like, stuck here?” I manage indignant sarcasm despite the desperation driving the question.
“I’m afraid so,” the guard confirms.
Double shit. Diamond-encrusted, multimillion-dollar shit.
“Why?” Jackson asks. “If nothing was taken, then what are you looking for?”
“Cybersecurity threats,” the guard replies.
I know exactly what he has in mind. Phones—like the one in my bag, the ones every member of my crew has. Computers—like Cass’s laptop on which she wired the funds.
With my pouting veil of impatience in place, I grab Jackson’s arm and start to head for the wedding.
“Olivia?” I hear the guard say behind me.
I turn back, fighting panic. I can’t be searched, not yet. I need to ditch my phone.
The Millennium Security guard holds his hand out. “The necklace please?”
I wish I felt relieved. Instead, withdrawing the diamond from my bag, I only feel like I’ve lost something.
And I’m about to lose much, much more.