Chapter 2
Kinsley
Chapter Two
Welcome to Coldwater, Maine.
I read the sign on the side of the road before stretching my arms out. According to Wikipedia, only 3065 people lived in Coldwater. However, Wikipedia could only be trusted so much, so it might not be 100 percent correct, but one could never have enough information about where they were staying. I pressed my nose closer to the window as we drove through what seemed to be the main thoroughfare. It was lined with charming Victorian town houses, restaurants, cafés, and small shops on the ground floors, but notably lacked pedestrian traffic. There weren’t a lot of people on the street, which, given that this was a lake town and it was almost the middle of summer, was strange, but I didn’t really mind it. What was even stranger was that every single person we drove past turned toward us with a nosy, curious look. I guess what they said about small towns was true. There was no such thing as privacy here.
“Ahh, I missed this place.” Connor’s voice broke the silence, and I startled away from the window. “I didn’t remember it until—” He didn’t finish his sentence as he moved closer to the window, almost knocking his forehead against it. “Isn’t that Kevin? Kevin Miller. He was your friend, wasn’t he?” he asked Thomas, who just shrugged without turning his attention away from the road. “Come on, pull over.” Connor looked from Kevin to his brother.
“I’m not going to—” Thomas grunted before frowning. “That doesn’t work on me, and you know that.” Connor must have made a face of some sort.
“Just stop the car, T.” He sighed. “Jesus.”
The corner of Thomas’s mouth twitched upward, and I felt the car slowing. He pulled over next to where the boy named Kevin walked, and Connor rolled down his window while I sunk into the seat, as if it would make me invisible. After six hours in the car, I wasn’t sure I was up for interactions.
Connor called out to Kevin, who then turned toward us with a frown. He sheltered his eyes from the sun, and a smile pulled on his face when he must have recognized the boys.
“Rhodes!” He crossed the sidewalk and leaned inside of the car, reaching past Connor to shake hands with Thomas first. “Nice car,” he said, resting his elbows on the window frame. “BMW X5?” Thomas slightly nodded, to which Kevin reacted with a whistle. “I wasn’t expecting you unt—” He bit the word in half, and I turned my head in Thomas’s direction, narrowing my eyes. A strange expression passed over his features, before he blanked them again. What had Kevin wanted to say?
“Kevin.” Connor broke the silence, capturing our attention. He spoke with a strange voice that was unfamiliar to me, and from the corner of my eye, I saw Thomas raise his eyebrows too.
“Connor?” Kevin leaned backward, his eyes rounding. “I haven’t seen you since you were like five.” He kept up his smile, but something deeper flashed in his gaze.
I studied Kevin with a frown, biting the inside of my cheek. He looked like those guys you see in the underwear commercials: dark skin, tatted arms, athletic body, and a charming smile.
“I was eight, but yes,” Connor answered, the back of his neck reddening. Was he embarrassed? “Do you still have that pet parrot?” he added quickly while I reached out to comfort him. The moment I heard Kevin shift, I knew I made a mistake.
“Marley? Yes, he’s a happy bird,” he answered Connor’s question, but I could tell his eyes had already found me in the backseat. His gaze burned the side of my face, and I looked away from Connor’s neck. I tried to keep any reaction off my face as I locked my eyes on him. “I see Little Rhodes got himself a girlfriend.” A strange grin tugged on his lips, and I couldn’t stop my flinch.
“Kinsley is a close family friend.” Connor hurried to correct him, and I shook Kevin’s extended hand.
“Kinsley Green.” I straightened. If I was doing this, I was doing it the right way.
“Kevin Miller.” He chuckled. “You seem like a good sport.”
I knotted my brows. “Thanks?”
His grin widened and he pulled his hand back. As soon as every part of Kevin was out of the car, Thomas restarted the engine.
“It was good to see you.” He barely waited for Kevin to react before stepping on the gas and driving away.
We reached the goodbye sign, and Thomas turned onto a bumpy side road. It led us deep into the pine woods that surrounded this whole area. I rolled down the window and poked my head out, letting the wind whip through my hair.
“Kinsley.” I heard Thomas’s warning tone, but I ignored him, focusing on the scenery instead.
It was colder here, where the sunlight couldn’t reach us. I took a deep breath, filling my lungs with the fresh scent of the woods until they screamed for me to stop. My father loved nature. He called it our true home. When I was little, he took me hiking every other week. I closed my eyes, trying to remember him and how he was before his new family.
“Kinsley,” Thomas called again, and this time a hand locked around my ankle. I startled and turned around, almost bumping my head on the window frame. “I told you not to do that,” Thomas said, while I yanked my leg out of his grasp.
I heard Connor sigh.
“Careful,” I replied in a poisonous voice. “It will look like you care,” I teased, turning my eyes back to the landscape.
Thomas snorted, but there wasn’t any humor in the sound. “It would take a lot of my energy to explain a death caused by a fucking tree while you were sitting in the back of my car,” he said, and I rolled my eyes. “You can call it whatever you want, though.”
I was about to argue when Connor cut in. “We are almost there, can’t you two play nice?” he groaned, bumping the side of his head against the window with pretend agony. He was right, though.
Thomas took a left turn, and a huge, rustic house came into view. My eyes widened.
Why had no one told me that the Rhodes’s lake house wasn’t a log cabin as I had imagined, but a mansion?