11. Kael
KAEL
Ash’s reaction is jarring. I recognize that kind of naive excitement. I remember when Alistair first offered his patronage. I felt special. Honored. That feeling curdled fast. Now, every time his name lights up my phone, I don’t think about art. I think about what it will cost.
“He says he can help,” I manage, mouth gone dry.
“Ha! Of course he can help!” Ash throws his arms wide, missing the way I flinch. “I’m calling a friend in Fresno, and you’re texting a billionaire. We’re golden.”
I shrug, the paint box and half-finished canvas dragging at my arms.
“Tell me we can stop,” Ash pants, hitching his pack higher. “What are you doing?”
I keep walking and watching the red blotch on the fire tracker spread like cancer. The dirt road is framed on all sides by the dry, beautiful fuel of pine, brush, and wildflowers waiting to burn.
“It’s close,” he says, leaning in over my shoulder to state the obvious.
“It hasn’t even reached the lake,” I say.
“And when it does, it’ll be right on top of us. No airlift through that.”
“But Paradise—”
“Is a thirty-mile hike. Across mountains, in the dark.” He either doesn’t see my shoulders bunching higher, or he’s choosing to ignore it.
“What if Alistair weren’t an option?” I ask, rubbing Rocky in my pocket like a worry stone. “We’d do the hike, right?”
“Yes. We’d do the horrible, potentially fatal thing we’ve concocted. Except it’s not the only option.”
“Why are you so selfish?” I ask.
“I’m selfish?” His shock only pisses me off more. “You’re a text away from saving our lives, but you’d rather dangle me over the flames for fun.”
“Oh yeah. Real fun.”
Tears prick, and I lengthen my stride so he can’t see.
“You enjoying this?” he says. “You want me to beg? You want me to say you’re a genius for texting Alistair? Fine. You’re a genius. Thank you for using your very ‘special relationship’—which certainly isn’t what the whole world thinks it is—to get us out of here.”
“I told you.” My jaw locks as pressure builds behind my eyes. “I’m a painter.”
“I really don’t care, Kael. Just please get us. The fuck. Out of here.”
One tear hits the dirt before anger catches up to it.
“You asshole!” My voice cracks.
“Are you crying?”
“Are you blind?” My voice cracks again, and I swipe the tears off my face.
Ash is an asshole. He’s also right. We need Alistair, and all it takes is one text. I flip back to my messages, but my thumbs just go back to hovering over the keyboard.
Ash’s tone softens. “Hey. What’s going on? What did he say?”
I hesitate, then read it out loud, fast, before I can stop myself. “He says, ‘This’ll cost much more than rent.’”
The words sit there on my screen, unchanged.
The tabloids barely scratch it. Anyone who’s been to more than one of Alistair’s parties knows the artist room on the bottom floor isn’t really the basement.
It’s the lobby. There are doors beyond ours, hidden rooms you only reach if you’re beautiful enough and willing enough.
I’ve never gone farther, but I’ve seen enough men come back glassy-eyed and grinning to know I don’t want to.
Alistair’s money is bait and his patronage the hook. This text about “more than rent” is him reminding me that boundaries only matter if the man with the money agrees.
I’m not a prude. This really is life or death, and I can’t even say for sure what he’s asking for.
“So we hike,” Ash says, reaching the only conclusion that doesn’t make my skin crawl.
“We can’t hike.”
“It’s our only option.”
I exhale one tired, humorless sound at how he’s turning this around.
Ash sets his jaw in case stubbornness can get us off this mountain. I hate that seeing the ugliest parts of my life seems to make him step closer instead of back away.
“But it’s not our only option.”
“Hey.” Ash stops directly in front of me, squared up, mouth drawn to a hard line that’s ready to argue his way through the fire. “We have the supplies. We can do this.”
He jerks his chin at the bags on his back, then at the little pocketknife clipped badly to his belt.
“You even know how to use that?” I ask.
He reaches for it, but because it’s upside down, it won’t come off. He yanks in every direction but the right one.
Only then do I really look at him. His eyes aren’t plain brown at all, but hazel, laced with flecks of gold I somehow hadn’t noticed before. I step in, brace a hand at his waist, and feel his body tense beneath my palm as I free the knife in one smooth tug.
When I look back up, he’s already looking at me.
My vision narrows until there’s nothing but him, standing too close, mouth parted, with my hand still at his waist.
So I flip the knife open between us. The blade clicks sharp in the space where that almost-something was.
“Boy Scout, bitch,” I say, wrestling my pulse back down from my throat.
“Resourceful.” Ash grins, backing up a pace. “Maybe you should hold that. I’m more the pack mule type.”
“Handsome mule,” I blurt, then wince. “I mean—for an ass.”
He turns his head just enough for me to catch his smirk. Damn it.
He heads down the switchback, toward the river cut into the valley before everything tilts uphill again. Smoke hangs faintly in the air now, a dry, bitter note under the pine.
“You sure you’re okay with this?” I call after him.
“That’s not really a question I can answer,” he says. “If it were me, I’d tell him to go to hell, but if you two are doing it on the regular, then please call the chopper.”
“You’re such an ass. It’s nothing but platonic patronage.”
“You don’t hear how weird that sounds when you say it?” Ash asks. “Like… nineteenth-century, Miss Havisham-style?”
Gravel skitters under our boots, little rocks racing us down toward the river.
“It’s delicate,” I say.
“I can’t believe Alistair bribes guys like this.” He shakes his head. “I knew he dated below his age, but this? He’s willing to let you die?”
“Okay now.”
“No.” Ash laughs once, humorless. “I’m sure it’s real special, what you two have.”
I roll my eyes, but something raw has crept into his voice.
Jealousy? No way.
Even though there’s nothing between me and Alistair, I leave that part hanging. Partly because I don’t feel like justifying myself. Partly because… I want Ash to squirm.
“I’m guessing I didn’t grow up with the options you had,” I say.
“I don’t know. Sounds like you’ve got one pretty unique opportunity.”
“I refuse to be ashamed of permitting a billionaire’s advances so I can do what I love.”
“You can do better,” Ash says.
I stop. “Excuse me?”
“It’s a compliment.” He keeps his eyes on the road. “I’m saying you don’t have to put up with his shit.”
“No,” I say. “You’re insinuating that if you were in my shoes, you’d be doing better, instead of considering that what I said might actually be true.”
“You’re telling me the only way for you to paint is this? I don’t buy it.”
“Sounds like you don’t buy anything,” I say. “And Abel Magwitch is Pip’s patron, not Miss Havisham.”
Ash frowns. “Who even is that?”
At the bottom of the valley, I take one big step into the shallow water and splash him.
“Nice.” He reaches down, forearms flexing as he cups some of the creek in his palm.
I swat it away just before he drinks, my fingers brushing his knuckles, too cold and too intimate at the same time.
“Don’t drink that,” I snap, to cover the flush creeping up my neck.
“It’s freshwater.”
“It’s filthy.” I shove my bottle at him. “I’d let you, but I’m not lugging you around this mountain while you shit your brains out.”
He snatches the bottle, gulps, then wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.
“You think Alistair will be angry?” he asks, quieter now. Less sarcastic. More… worried.
“You’re obsessed with this.”
“You want to talk about something else?”
“He won’t even remember this happening,” I say. “But what do you care?”
Ash hesitates, and I watch his jaw work before he answers.
“No sense keeping this from you now. I was going to ask…” He swallows. “If you could introduce me to Alistair.”
I stare at him.
“I need his endorsement.” His voice is small for the first time since I’ve met him. “To get promoted.”
There goes the fragile bit of decency he’d been building for himself, smashed for a shot at a nicer title from the man who has me under his thumb.