13
The world doesn’t revolve around the Cash brothers, but it does revolve around their secrets
Well, I was scared.
But my instinct unleashed my inner fighter, ready to kick and punch if I had to make a run for it.
I wondered if I could make it to the door after kicking Aegan in the balls and punching Aleixandre in the face.
I figured escaping would be tough, since I wouldn’t have time to hit the blond guy, but . . .
Maybe I was blowing things out of proportion.
“Aegan, you’re scaring them,” said the blond guy, acting the peaceful mediator.
“That’s the whole point,” Aegan snarled, ruthless.
“Afraid of what?” I blurted out aggressively. “Of you?”
Blondie stepped in, sensing that we were itching for a fight.
“Look,” he said, pulling Aegan aside a little, but looking at us.
“The thing is, not everyone knows about this place. It’s invitation only, and you have to sign a confidentiality agreement.
We weren’t planning on accepting anyone this year, which is why don’t have any more of those agreements here. ”
So, they ran this place. Well, well, well.
“We’ve got some copies in our apartment,” added Aleixandre. “Let’s take the girls there so they can sign them.”
“Was it so hard to explain that to them?” asked the blond guy with a chuckle, looking at Aegan.
I glanced at the three of them, suspicious.
Although Aleixandre wasn’t as cruel as Aegan, he was still a Cash, so I couldn’t just blindly trust any of them.
The worst part was that I owed him a favor.
As for that blond guy, he came across well, but I didn’t know him, so I had to be on my guard.
“To start, who’s he?” I demanded, pointing at the blond guy.
“Owen,” Aleixandre introduced him. “He’s a close friend.”
“And why can’t we say anything?” I asked, crossing my arms. “Why all the secrecy?”
Aegan kept his murderous gaze locked on me.
The last person I expected to hear from then spoke up. “Don’t worry,” Artie said. “We’ll sign the contract.”
I shot her a sharp look. She met my gaze with a horrified, bewildered look. With my mind, I was trying to ask her, Why are you making a decision like that without discussing it first? And her eyes responded back, seeming to say, Go with it; I’ll explain later.
The blond guy nodded and went to open the door. He stepped aside to allow us to leave first. Without hesitation, Artie obeyed. I had no choice but to follow her.
Before we left, Aegan told us, in a ruthless voice: “You’re barred from here.”
I couldn’t even throw him one of my usual challenging looks. I wouldn’t allow him to bar me, but he didn’t need to hear that right now.
We left the club, followed by Aleixandre and the blond guy.
I didn’t like that feeling of being led away like convicts, but I put up with it.
We went through the parking lot and got into Aleixandre’s car.
We didn’t say a word to each other on the ride there.
I was a bit pissed off with Artie, even though she seemed to know exactly how things were going to pan out.
If we could just get a minute alone, I had a ton of questions I wanted to ask her.
We soon reached a part of the campus where Dash had mentioned the apartments were far bigger and nicer. The difference was easy to see. They had more floors, larger windows, and looked more like the kind of place families lived rather than students. Of course, they were even more impressive inside.
When we reached the top floor and stepped inside, the first thing I noticed was the huge window, the open-plan kitchen and living room, and a hallway leading to four bedrooms. It was a little messy, and everything smelled of aftershave; but what else could you expect with three guys living there?
Not all guys are messy, but those three definitely were.
I saw someone standing in the kitchen. It wasn’t until he closed the fridge door that I realized it was Adrik. Holding a can of Coke, he frowned at us before slowly relaxing his expression into a faint smile.
He gave off the same vibe as Wednesday Addams.
“What are they doing here?” Adrik asked.
Rather than respond, Aleixandre asked us to wait where we stood, and he disappeared down the hall.
Adrik, meanwhile, leaned against the kitchen island, took a sip of his Coke, and watched us with narrowed eyes.
I caught my reflection in the mirror above a small bar next to the window, making me realize just how disheveled I looked; my clothes were torn, and I still had the red mark left by the volleyball on my face. I looked terrible.
“Looks like you got into a fight,” Adrik remarked.
“They broke into the club and then started a fight,” Owen revealed, from where he was leaning against the door with his hands in his pockets.
Adrik blinked in disbelief.
“Did they win at least?” he said. I hadn’t seen that coming.
I wasn’t prepared for my phone to suddenly start vibrating. I took it out of my pocket. It was a text message from an unknown number.
Unknown: Crash with them tonight.
I replied right back, confused.
Me: Who are you?
Unknown: Crash with them tonight.
I texted back, trying again to figure it out.
Me: Tell me who you are first.
Unknown: Crash with them tonight.
It was all really strange. Why should I crash at the Cashes’ place? And who the hell was sending me the messages? Did they know what I was up to? My skin crawled.
Aleixandre was back, holding a couple sheets of paper, and snapped me out of my daze. I put my phone away, and he handed us a sheet and a pen each, his thoughtful gray eyes meeting ours, as if to remind us that this wasn’t a menu we were looking at; this was something far more important.
“We have to read it all,” I said sternly. “And preferably with a lawyer.”
“No lawyers,” Aleixandre answered seriously.
“Having a lawyer is a fundamental right,” I shot back.
“It’s just a sheet of paper with straightforward clauses that can be grasped by having a quick read over it,” he said.
I glanced at Adrik, trying to figure out what he thought about all this. He hadn’t been at the club; he’d been at home stuffing his face. Why?
He pulled his headphones from his pocket and put them on.
“If you need some privacy, you can go into my room,” Aleixandre offered.
Perfect, because I needed to have a serious talk with Artie on my own.
“Well, where is it?” I accepted.
Aleixandre took us to his room, the second-to-last down the hall. As soon as I walked in, I felt uneasy. Not even Monica Geller from Friends could be that manically tidy.
It smelled of disinfectant, and it seemed like even the tiniest items were exactly where they needed to be. Every object—deodorant, watch, lamp, and so on—was perfectly positioned. Even the wooden wardrobe door was shining, like it’d been polished just an hour ago.
Wow, the room was as clean-cut as he was. This was all starting to seem really strange.
He didn’t notice my reaction and left us to it.
“Why did you accept Aegan’s demands right away?” I whispered to Artie, as soon as Aleixandre shut the door.
She stopped in front of me, worried.
“Jude, have you seen any nightclubs around campus?” she asked in response.
Now that I thought about it, I hadn’t. There was a bar, but it closed at six in the evening.
I shook my head.
“That’s because the university regulations don’t allow them!” she revealed, stressing the words don’t allow. “The Cash nightclub is secret because, technically, it shouldn’t be on Tagus grounds!” she continued.
Oh . . .
Oh!
“Ah, so that’s why we have to sign this confidentiality agreement?”
“Yeah, because if the chancellor finds out, the brothers would be kicked out for good.”
I didn’t know how to feel. Aegan was doing something illegal; he was breaking university rules. Maybe he thought that, since the club was a cultural landmark at Tagus, nobody would suspect anything clandestine was going on.
I had to admit it: I hadn’t seen this coming.
As usual, Artie’s concern turned into fear.
“We have to back off; this is serious,” she said. “It’s not about their reputation; it’s about their standing in Tagus. Just imagine what Aegan would do if that nightclub was discovered because of us.”
“You seriously need to stop being so scared of Aegan.” I squinted.
But she’d already made up her mind, and her expression made it clear that I couldn’t say a word about it.
“All right,” I finally said. “I won’t force you to tell anyone.”
“Good.” She nodded.
She went straight over to Aleixandre’s impeccably tidy desk, sat down, and quickly signed the contract.
I was a little bit miffed, but she was right that I couldn’t force her to do anything, no matter how irrational I thought she was being.
At least she hadn’t called me out for planning to go there in the first place.
She could be trusted, but she was a bit of a scaredy-cat.
She’d shown me that she could be brave, but the problem was she was afraid to do more.
Anyway, worrying about Artie was the least of my problems. The “crash with them tonight” message was far more important.
It was unsettling yet intriguing, trying to figure out why it’d been sent to me.
Who wanted me to crash there? Why? Did someone want me to see something?
Did they want to talk? Did they want to unmask me? Were they out to get me?
Too many questions, and only one way to answer them.
I left the room and went back to the living room. Adrik had already locked himself in his room, and Aleixandre and Owen were sitting on the sofa. They were whispering but stopped when they saw me.
“It’s pretty late,” I said, trying to sound calm. “We’ll get in trouble if we go back to our apartment at this time. Can Artie and I crash here?”
It was true that you could get in trouble for going back to the apartments late, but it wasn’t that big of a deal. I wanted to crash there so I could get to the bottom of that strange text message.