21. PAIGE
TWENTY-ONE
PAIGE
Well, it finally happened.
I’ve snapped.
Something I wish the leather still twisted around me would fucking do.
I can nearly hear Gram cheering and wooing through the air whipping around me in the driver’s seat while my brain backfires through the last . . . hour? Who the fuck knows!
I grabbed my shit and quite literally tore ass out of The Window, only able to slip on my zip-up and shrug on some leggings a block before I got to my car.
A heavy sickness is still sitting in my gut, but at least the old lady that lives in my head is having fucking fun.
“ Keep going. ” I keep hearing that in my head too. Just like yesterday when I went home. But I’m not sure if the voice is Gram. Me. Him. Maybe a weird, dissonant harmony of all three.
It’s driving me fucking crazy, that’s for sure.
It’s literally driving me somewhere else too. Somewhere even more insane—surely only meant to send me over the edge completely.
Maybe that’s what “keep going” means. The reckoning of my soul is about to send me fully into madness, and honestly, I find myself welcoming it.
Which is why when I left The Window, I texted the only person I could think of that might know Linc’s address.
I found the contact and texted—
Me
Any chance you can find the new security guard’s address?
It’s Selene!
Gimme 10 minutes.
And the bitch got it to me with two minutes to spare.
I mean, we’ll see. When she texted me the address—when I saw it was to a house way the fuck out here—well, I thought if nothing else, the drive might help me calm down.
But I suddenly come to where I need to turn and see a small security booth. A gate.
Pulling off to the curb, putting on my hazards, I blink.
Fuck.
How the hell does he live in a gated community? In Hidden Hills?!
I’m sure Oprah and her dogs live somewhere nearby, a Kardashian or two . . . How?
The sick feeling in my gut from earlier twists at the sudden thought. What if he’s married?
I scan my memory of him. I was in too much shock to really pay attention to anything other than the rugged, man-version of the boy I once knew, but . . . I don’t think I saw a ring.
Just tattoos.
Lots of them.
After a small shudder from the memory, a buzz hums below my skin. I use the current to force the idea that Linc is married —or attached in any way— out of my head.
It’s not true. It can’t be true because it threatens to reason with my bizarre need to drive out here and maybe take an illegal peek around.
Just to see . . .
But fuck. This is not a complication I saw coming, and my chest deflates.
I can’t go back to the apartment yet, either. Even through the whirlwind of seeing my runaway soulmate, there’s been a very real fear that the men I just stole ten grand from —without providing the . . . service— will be looking for me.
Beck knows them, and he has access to my address.
Fuck.
But the infuriating reality is, it’s probably not even the money that will send one of them after me. The massive amount I’ve tucked in my backpack, in my trunk, is chump change to someone like Sharktooth. But it’s the fact that I took it. Swiped it right off his lap and bolted away before he could force me to suck his dick.
I’m sorry— take, not force.
What the fuck was that?
Cringing, my mind works to shove the memory away and I refocus, eyeing the security booth again. My weight shifts, and the leather rubber band wound around me digs into every nook and cranny, sparking an idea. A shitty one, but it’s the only one I’ve got.
If Linc does have a wife, this is definitely going to fuck shit up.
Unzipping my hoodie, I keep it on my shoulders, but reveal the front of my leather get-up, then finally pull back onto the street and turn onto the small road leading up to the mountain, rolling my window down as I reach the booth.
Taking a deep breath, I tick my lips up in a practiced way.
“Good evenin’,” the man says.
“Hi, there,” I say quietly. I’m trying to temper any shake out of my voice as I say, “Someone ordered my services for Lincoln Morrow, 22 Hilltop.”
The man looks older. White hair, brown eyes. Looks to be about retirement age, and harmless, but gives a small chuckle. “’S that so?” he muses, then shrugs. “Well, I’ll just give him a quick call—”
“—Wait!” I say, too quickly.
Shit . . .
“Uh—they said they’d like to keep it a surprise. Uhh—” I fumble, gracelessly opening my glove compartment, as every fast-food napkin imaginable falls out of it.
But so does my emergency twenty dollar bill. I don’t want to break into the trunk stash, but I’ll do it if I have to. My curiosity is on another plane of sanity. Clearly, as I try to bribe my way into an exclusive community with twenty fucking dollars.
And still, I timidly hold it out asking, “Will this keep it between us?” My speck of dirt on the mountain of millions in front of me.
Keep going, keep going.
Keep going, Pip.
The words thrum through me, allowing my sheer will to let this happen. Please, let this happen. I just . . . I need to see . . .
I don’t know who I’m begging to—like any other silent plea to Buffy and the universe, I expect this to go the same, but then the man smiles again and says, “Sounds good, darlin’.”
Wait—really?
That worked?
He walks back to his little booth, tucking the twenty into his pocket as he hits the button to open the gate.
“You have yourself a good night. Give my best to Mr. Morrow.”
Un. Fucking. Believable.
After parking at a vista point about a half a mile from the address Selene gave me, I walk the rest of the way.
Now, I can see the house that belongs to my destination—about three hundred feet away. And it looks . . . intense.
A dark charcoal gray cube, nearly wedged into the cliff with a giant balcony overlooking the mountain range.
Must be fucking nice.
How does he live here?
The Lincoln Morrow I knew could never afford this . . .
I reject the idea, again, that he married some rich bitch with Daddy’s money. The idea stops me right outside the fence—which seems more like a wall surrounding the property line.
Maybe I can slink onto the balcony. Worst thing that happens is I plummet—something I can’t be certain I’m not already doing just by being here.
I start to move toward the balcony, slowly, pulling my hood over my head. I take a tiny step, then another, and in an instant, a bright light turns on in the corner where the wall meets the house.
Motion sensors —fuck!
At the grip of my panic, I remind myself, no one’s home.
No one can be home, because if they are, then I really will just take the next couple steps.
“ Not funny, ” I distantly hear—I think it’s Gram’s voice, but I can’t be sure with the blood whooshing through my head as I curl into the shadowy corner.
But it’s too late. The door to the massive wall starts to slide over, creating an opening like a new-age castle, and I swallow hard.
Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.
I prepare to see some big-titted, silk-wearing bitch that I’m about to throw down on —for no other reason than I’ve lost my mind— but for the third fucking time tonight, I’m struck speechless.
Paralyzed, when I see who walks through the opening.
No tits. No silk. No woman.
Familiar, sandy blond hair finally meets the light shining above me, but the shadows of night mute the green eyes I remember so well.
“E-Ellis?” I croak out.
Like Linc, he’s filled out even more, but I’m too . . . fucking rocked to fully take in all of his differences as he casually crosses his arms over his chest.
His expression is studying, also confused, and while there’s a tiny glint to something resembling warmth, he mostly looks irritated. “When Ted called ten minutes ago and told me there was a hooker on her way up, I got worried the poor girl had driven straight off the mountain or something. Got lost.”
My irritation with Ted deflates completely at the weighted feeling of his last two words. They almost come out as accusatory, and I swallow hard.
“I—” I start, but then shake my head.
Goddammit. I wasn’t prepared for this.
Which is crazy because a reunion with these two assholes has been at the forefront of my mind for years.
Since it all fell apart.
“Well, you’re here,” he finally says, a cold and matter-of-fact tone.
And I deserve it. I deserve all of his anger.
I nod. “I—” I’m cut off, as suddenly he’s right in front of me, grabbing my chin, looking at my cheek.
Fuck me. I barely felt the pain from the slap anymore, but the growing rage in his eyes is enough to send cold, hard dread through me.
“What happened?” Ellis says quietly, still holding my chin.
My breath leaves me at the contact, swallowing hard at his question. And so does any semblance of control as my limbs start to shake.
He looks at it a second longer, his jaw ticking, and his eyes flick down to meet mine.
“I work at . . . The Window,” I tell him, absently, like that somehow explains it, and his eyebrows pinch.
“And hitting women is normal practice there? Linc left that part out,” he mutters, and a zap of something happens in my chest at the mention of Linc.
But his statement reminds me. “You guys—you live together?” Dumb question, but it’s the only one that surfaces through the shock.
He nods, and I feel my weight wobbling again, but Ellis’s hold on me tightens as he feels my body sway.
I feel like I went to work and left the building into a new fucking reality.
Two ghosts have reemerged tonight.
Ellis. My oldest friend. A friend I was no longer able to be a friend to, as of seven years ago.
He sighs. “Come inside. Let’s put some ice on this.”
Surprise lifts my eyebrows. He’s inviting me in?
The bad-idea alarm in my head starts up, but something bigger and warmer knocks it away like a bumper car.
He finally steps back and tilts his chin toward the opening. I walk behind him. A few silent steps force the leather somehow even farther up my ass, the X s crossed over my nipples burn again and I grunt, “Uh—do you have scissors?”