Chapter 2
Madeleine
“Hey, Mads. What’s up?”
I leaned against the window, looking out at the city below. Sapphire had gotten a nice view, facing the water, looking out over the park where we’d just been on the run from a butler, and—I was just such a sucker for Chicago at night. Guess I had a thing for architecture. Who knew?
I could hear Sapphire murmuring quietly to herself in the attached bathroom, her voice muffled under the running water of the shower. The hotel room was quiet otherwise, clean and chic with gorgeous detailing, a recessed space for the bed with custom wall paneling in it that matched the designer lamps and tastefully patterned carpet. I could have just sat there sketching it, taking it all in, but I thought I’d explode if I didn’t share this whole thing with someone, and my boyfriend seemed like the obligatory choice.
“So, funny story,” I said, and he made a noncommittal noise.
“Urgent story? I’m kinda in the middle of something…”
“Ah. Forget it. I’ll dump it on Britt and fill you in once you’re free.”
“Cool. Tell her I said hi, yeah? Chat later, babe.”
“See you.” I hung up, scrolling down to dial my roommate’s number instead—I’d had the incredible good fortune to share an apartment with my best friend, when most people I knew were dealing with the miserable rents by shacking up with a bunch of strangers.
Even if Britt was sometimes my worst enemy instead.
She picked up fast. “Hey girl,” she sang. “I was wondering if you were dead or if you went out clubbing all of a sudden.”
“Weirder, actually.” I sank into the armchair by the window, a beautiful winged piece in a soft blue that matched the décor. “Had to spill to you before I was completely convinced I’d lost my mind. You still bothering Ellen while she’s trying to work?”
She laughed. “I got Meg to come around and play boardgames until Ellen fell asleep on the couch. She’ll be mad at me in the morning for distracting her from her work, but I can’t help being irresistible. I’m hanging out at the apartment making a snack tray right now, so hit me.”
“Ellen’s going to kill you if I don’t get to you first.” I relaxed, leaning back against the wall. “So… I helped a girl named Sapphire in the park to escape from a creepy butler, and now we’re hiding in a hotel room.”
“I’m sorry? ” I heard a scuffling in the background. “Oh my god, girl, forget the snack tray. I’m eating the cheese straight from the container. Tell me everything.”
I filled Britt in on the details—I’d told her I was coming back late because I was feeling the mood to get some sketches done, so I started from the point where an ethereally beautiful stranger tapped me on the shoulder asking me where she could hide, and I built up to the confrontation with Andrew and his business card.
“ Butler? ”
“Mentioned Sapphire’s family was worried about her,” I said quietly, and Britt let out a deep hmm.
“So, what? She’s a rich kid who’s on some joyride away from home?”
“Feels like it. I don’t know, though. She’s not totally with it, but that whole… clueless demeanor turned into some very real fear when she saw the butler coming looking for us. Probably a runaway rich kid, but seems like she’s genuinely afraid.”
She sighed. “Poor girl. Hope she’s okay. It’s really sweet of you to help her out.”
“Figured it was a coin toss whether I was going to get abducted in some harebrained kidnapping scheme, but I couldn’t just walk away and go forever wondering if I’d just thrown her to the wolves.” I paused. “Guess I could still be abducted, if this is a really involved scheme. Maybe I should share my location with you.”
“Please do. Not because I’m worried about you being abducted, because I bet you’d bitch and moan to the kidnappers until they give up and dump you on the side of the road, but because I want to watch your location live and see what happens.”
“Uh-huh. Love you too, Britt.”
She laughed. “I’ll call up Haley and we’ll make it a watch party. You know she’d love it.”
Haley just liked people getting in trouble. But if Britt talked about my coworker any more, I’d start to suspect she wanted to sleep with her. “I don’t know if I love the idea of an audience cheering for my kidnapping.”
“Psh. To each their own. So what now? Camping out there with your new best friend?”
“Not looking to spend the night with her. She’s in the shower right now, and then I want to see if I can drill in and find out some real information about her.”
“Ooh. If you’re drilling her, that sounds exciting. Hals and I would want to be audience for that. ”
“Brittney.”
She cackled. Even with Britt being… Britt, I had to admit she had the world’s most infectious laugh. I shook my head, trying not to smile.
“Tristan’s going to kill you if you keep making comments like that.”
“Ah, boys love that kind of thing. Besides, you know how I feel about T.”
“He’s nice. And gentle. And he’s there for me. Ah—Britt, I’m not here to argue about my boyfriend, I’m here in a hotel room with a stranger on the run from a butler.” The shower shut off, and I glanced back at the bathroom. “Think that’s my cue. She’s getting out of the shower now.”
“Letting you watch?”
“Ew—Britt.”
She cackled again. “Okay, well, go hang out with the precious gemstone and I’ll tell literally everyone about this. I’ll make a snack tray for you too once you’re back, right?”
“No olives. You hide them inside stuff again and I’ll get violent.”
“Madeleine Whitaker, I would never,” she said, in her perfect little angel voice that said she had no remorse for any of the times she’d done it. “See you soon. Unless you spend all night with her…” I could hear the wink in her voice. I wrinkled my nose.
“Britt—”
She cackled, hanging up before I could get a word in. I sighed, putting the phone away as the door opened behind me and I glanced back to where Sapphire was fully just wearing a towel. I did a double-take, and she beamed at me.
“Hi. Do you need to take a shower too?”
“Think I’ll take one at my own place. Uh—do you not have sleeping clothes?”
She laughed lightly, sitting on the bed, her hands folded at her waist. “I don’t have any clothes. Just the ones I was wearing. I probably have to get some more… I’m not used to this. It’s kind of an adventure.”
I paused. Now that I thought about it, she hadn’t been carrying a thing with her in the park. “What exactly… did you bring with you?”
She chewed her lip, looking down with a distantly frustrated expression. “Not much. My wallet. That’s about it.”
I took a second processing it before I sat down on the bed next to her. “So… do you want to tell me what happened? Because I’m dying to know.”
She grimaced. “I couldn’t stay at home any longer.”
I paused. “Out of curiosity, how old are you?”
“Twenty-three. Why?”
“Just seems odd. You’re an adult. And I’m going to guess you weren’t staying at home for lack of funds, if there’s a personal butler out looking for you.”
She kicked at the floor. I shouldn’t have been looking at her legs like this—felt a little obscene—but she was inviting it looking down at them and moving them like that. I didn’t think people with that kind of soft, smooth skin existed outside of Photoshop. “It’s a little complicated…”
“You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to.”
She smiled sweetly at me. “You’re really nice, you know that, Madeleine?”
I looked away, awkwardly shy under the direct address. “I’m just doing all this because I’m dying of curiosity.”
“Well, if you really want to know, I can tell you. I guess I had a fight with my parents… we’d never really gotten on well. My older sister is the perfect daughter and would never take my side, so I just… took some money I’d snuck into a secret account, and I left. Thought I’d just go and make it on my own in the big wide world! But…” Her tone wavered, and I looked back at where her face fell, her hands folded in her lap. She sat so properly, even like this, back slightly arched, shoulders back, chest out, but there was still something small and defeated about her. “I’m out here and kind of realizing the big wide world is scary and I don’t know how it works.”
I couldn’t help an odd little smile tugging at the corners of my lips. “You were a bit sheltered, I’m guessing?”
“Ah, very. Homeschooled by a private tutor. Never got my driver’s license because we had a chauffeur. I never really got to make friends or meet people growing up, so I don’t know how to talk to people…”
“Did you not talk much to your sister?”
“Ah. I mean, I did talk to her growing up, mostly when we were younger. But when she started working more closely with our parents, she was kind of… too good for me?”
Sounded like the perfect daughter type. “Is she named Ruby?”
She laughed. “I get that a lot. No… Seraphina.”
“ Seraphina and Sapphire… what’s your last name?”
She hung her head. “Stanton. My parents’ names are Stephen and Sarah.”
“Jesus Christ. Rich people are weird.”
I guess I was insulting her with that too, but she laughed. “Yeah… no kidding. I went to university and I think that was where my parents kind of lost me, you know? They sent me to a small private place where my father went so I could help in the business, but even with that, I still got to see a little bit of the world outside of them, and I didn’t want to give up that freedom once I graduated.”
I was going to be telling this story to my grandkids one day. Thank god I’d decided to be reckless and get involved in this. I hunched forward, elbows on my knees, looking down at the floor, before I said, “Takes a lot of guts.”
She laughed nervously. “Thank you. I might have had more guts than sense.”
“You don’t have a phone, either?” I glanced back at where she shook her head. “Smart choice. Probably would have tracked the thing. How about your secret account? You’re sure nobody’s able to track that or your card?”
“I’m sure,” she said. “Set it all up with a friend at university. She helped me out. My parents have no idea I’m even with that bank at all.”
“The butler doesn’t either?”
She laughed lightly. “He knows a little bit about everything, but I think even he doesn’t know that.”
I paused. “I didn’t even know people still had butlers in this day and age.”
She shrugged. “It’s not actually weird, they’re just typically called the household manager, affairs manager, personal director, or just labeled a personal assistant. My mom just finds butler … quaint?”
That actually made a depressing amount of sense. “Well, I’m just glad your bank account seems safe. So… you know? Grab a phone tomorrow and get a new number set up, and then you can text me if you need help with something.”
She went wide-eyed, her lips parting into a small o, and she studied me for a few seconds, just long enough to make me think I’d said something completely unhinged. “You don’t have to do all that,” she said, finally. “That’s so much… you’ve already done so much for me.”
“I’m kind of emotionally invested in this story now,” I said. “I’ll be upset if I don’t get to see you get to safety.”
She broke out into a smile thick with more emotions than I could place, her eyes a little misty. “Thank you, Madeleine… I’ve been really stressed. And scared. And a little loopy, if I’m being honest.”
“How long ago did you leave?”
“Last night… kind of pulled an all-nighter wandering in the city.”
“Jesus, Sapphire. By yourself? With nobody knowing where you are, where you’re going—with no idea how to get around? That’s so dangerous.”
She scratched her head, looking away. “I did get followed for a minute by some creep. But I kept moving. It’s really nice to have a place to sleep tonight.”
“I’d say. You need to look after yourself.” I put a hand on her shoulder, giving her a quick squeeze, and I tried not to think too much about the texture of her skin, impossibly soft to the touch, before I stood up. “Get some sleep. I’ll leave my number on the nightstand and you can text me once you have a phone.”
She looked away. “All right… um. Is there something I should know when it comes to buying a phone? Do I just walk into a phone store and say I want a phone?”
I studied her for a long time before I sat back down. “How many nights did you book here?”
“Fourteen.”
“Jesus. Okay. Not bad. We can work with that.” That would be a hefty chunk on my rewards card. Who said I was really doing anyone a favor right now? “You stay here and get rest. I’ll come back in the morning and we can go before my shift tomorrow, get you a phone, some clothes…”
She gave me puppy-dog eyes. Jesus. I had to be careful around her, she could weaponize those things to get anything she wanted. “You would do that? For me?”
I looked away. “Look… like I said, I’m invested now. I’m probably going to regret asking, but… have you ever worked a job before?”
“Um. Not strictly. I’ve done work for my father before, but it’s all been kind of under-the-table.”
“All right. So… you’re going to have to get a job. And then you’ll be able to rent an apartment, once you have a pay stub. It’s a bit annoying, but it is what it is. Rents aren’t exactly easy to deal with if you want to live in the center, too, so, might have to get a roommate or ten. I’m friends with a bunch of starving artists trying to survive in the city, so I can point you to some desperate people if you want to subject yourself to roommates.”
“I don’t mind roommates.” She got a distant tone in her voice, looking away. “It’s nice to be around people… real people.”
“Yeah, you say that until you have to deal with their dishes or they’re getting passive-aggressive about the trash, but hey. Welcome to life.”
She laughed, smiling warmly my way. “Thanks. It’s nice to be a part of it. My family didn’t want me to be—wanted me to look down on it all from above.”
“That why you had a fight?”
“Ah, um, no.” She looked away. “Although it was already there in my head, so that’s why things were… on a short fuse?” She shook it off. “I’ll see if I can figure out how job-searching works.”
This girl really didn’t know anything about anything. But… hey, wasn’t her fault. She was being brave as hell, even if maybe that bravery came from a place of naivety.
“First, just focus on getting some sleep.” I stood up, giving her another shoulder squeeze. “I’ll be back here around, like, eight tomorrow? My roommate might come, too, I told her a little bit of the story and she’s invested. Might, might not. I can never predict what she’s going to do.”
She laughed. “I’d love to meet your roommate. She sounds fun.”
“She’s something, that’s for sure.”
“Can I give you a hug?”
I paused, the thought throwing me. Hadn’t really expected it, but—what the hell. The girl probably needed a dozen hugs. If her parents were as stereotypically rich as they sounded, I bet she hadn’t gotten hugs before she’d left, too. “I’m not exactly a huggy person, so don’t get used to it,” I said, but not without a smile. I bent over where she sat on the bed and pulled her into a tight hug, and she held me with this feather-light touch, like I was a porcelain doll.
“Thank you,” she said, muffled into my shoulder.
“You’re not going to break me. You can hug tighter than that.”
“Ah. I’m not good at this.” She squeezed me tighter, stifling a giggle against my shoulder, and I was not a huggy person by any stretch of the imagination, but I let her have it for as long as she wanted.
I just wasn’t thinking too much about embracing an objectively gorgeous woman wearing only a towel. She smelled darkly floral, too, a delicate and complex aroma, and I had a boyfriend, which meant I probably wasn’t supposed to be holding incredibly attractive, mostly naked women and thinking about how they smelled or how soft their skin was.
“Good night, Sapphire,” I said, stepping back from the hug. She looked blissfully satisfied, although I could already see the exhaustion setting in over her face as she shifted back into the bed.
“Good night, Madeleine. Thank you again. I really owe you something.”
“Hilton rewards points. We’re good.”
She laughed. “I’ll see you in the morning. You’re the best.”
I gathered my stuff, stepping out into the hall, and I walked with that weird sensation where I still wasn’t sure if this was all a dream or not.
Britt was going to love this.