Chapter 21
Twenty-One
Brandon
My heart feels like it’s going to explode from my chest. The expression “almost had a heart attack”?
I never got how visceral that was until now.
My sternum aches. If I had to pick someone to find me in here, it’s Deja, but that doesn’t mean this is a good thing.
I see her confused frown and know I’d better come up with some kind of explanation and fast.
I discreetly tap my phone screen to end my call with Anton and slip my Bluetooth earpiece into my pocket.
“How are you feeling?” I ask, moving over to pull her into the room, and closing the door. In the process I notice the towel I was supposed to lay in front of the door to block light draped over an armchair. I could kick myself, but there’s not time for that now.
“Still not great,” she says. She texted me, “Got an IUD,” after the clinic visit and the next time I saw her, she was passed out on the sofa.
I made some joke about her being drunk to cover up for staring at her so much.
I wanted to take care of her, but my crass joke got her mom to get her bedding and make her more comfortable.
She looked so adorable curled up on her side, her head lying on her folded hands.
“How not great?”
“Pain, mostly. They said there’d be momentary discomfort. They didn’t tell me it would be like the worst period cramps I ever had and that it would last for hours.”
She pouts and I pull her into my arms, kissing her lightly on the forehead.
“I’m sorry.”
“You should be. I’m doing this for you.”
“So I’m the only one who wants to have sex?” I tease. She cracks a smile.
“No, I definitely want to fuck. But a lot less right now than this morning.”
“I like that. Say that again.”
“Fuck,” she says.
“You better stop before I forget your delicate condition. You’re not ready to get back on your knees for me by any chance, are you?”
She giggles, rubbing her face against my chest. Since she came into my room last night, I’ve wondered several times if I’m dreaming.
The tough exterior, the cruel disdain, is gone.
She’s turning into this soft, vulnerable woman.
But how can I blame her for putting up that hard shell.
I was the one who started off aggressive from the moment I walked into this house.
What choice did she have but to give me back the same energy.
She’s not the kind of person to just roll over.
Now, somehow, I’ve earned her trust, and as much as I love this version of her, I also feel guilty.
There’s the reason I’m in Devin’s office. The reason I’m even in this house. What would she think if she knew the truth? She’s vulnerable to me now, open and soft, and I’m still manipulative and a liar. I feel guilty, but not guilty enough to confess all.
“So, I never told you what the plan would have been for this afternoon,” I say, dragging her over to sit on the leather loveseat across from the desk. It’s brown full grain tobacco leather, buttery to the touch. I wonder how much of Anton’s money Devin spent buying it.
“Weren’t we going to come home?”
“I asked Rourke if we could come to his place.”
She frowns. “Rourke van der Hoff? You’re friends with that guy?”
“Why did you think I asked you to come over to his place before?”
“I don’t know. You guys both play soccer? I didn’t think you were on the kind of terms with him where you could just take a girl to his house for sex.”
“He’s not that bad.”
“He’s a drug addict!”
“He’s not a drug addict. He’s a recreational drug user, which by the way so are we.”
“You?”
“I smoke weed.” She looks like she’s considering my argument.
“We’re different, though. I use drugs occasionally, like on a night out or at a party, but I still get A’s, I still make it to practice and games.
Rourke is a mess. Did you know he got caught at school one time with a baggie of cocaine and the only reason he wasn’t expelled is his dad donated an obscene amount of money to the school? ”
“I didn’t know that, but I want to point out that Rourke is one of the top three soccer players at Briarwood and our team is nationally ranked. He makes every practice and game just like you do.”
“Okay,” she says huffily, “but I still don’t really want to go to his house.”
“He’s setting aside a room just for us to use whenever. His mansion is so big we can be in and out without ever seeing him. There’s a maid to clean our room. It’ll be like going to a fancy hotel. He even gave me a keycard to get inside any time I want, day or night.”
“Did you tell him about us?” She seems alarmed.
“No. He figured it out a while ago and he hasn’t said anything about it to anyone. We can trust him, with this secret, anyway.”
She chews that over, worrying her bottom lip with her teeth. I swear she has no idea how beautiful she is. I could just stare at her face for hours, her high forehead, those dark, intelligent eyes, her soft lips.
“If we don’t use his place, then we’re doing it in the backseat of your car or an empty classroom after hours. That’s even riskier than doing it here.”
“Then why not just do it here?”
“Do you feel safe having sex in this house? Because I don’t.”
“Since when? We had sex last night.”
“And it’s a miracle we didn’t get caught.” She seems unconvinced, so I get behind Devin’s desk and gesture for her to join me. She seems uncertain at first, but eventually comes to stand next to where I’m sitting. I log in and the screen resolves.
“What am I looking at?”
“Surveillance video.” On the screen is a grid of eight squares showing different views of the house. I put the cursor over each one, naming the location as I do. “This is courtyard 1, courtyard 2, garage, front door, sliding door, kitchen door—“
“Isn’t that the spot where I, I…” she stammers, embarrassed. The camera has a clear view of the spot where she got on her knees and gave me a blowjob.
“Yeah,” I say. “He keeps adding new cameras. There’s been one outside the gate in the service alley for a while, but he just put this one up a few days ago. It’s probably my fault for dropping a cigarette butt or something.”
“That seems like overkill?”
“It does, and I haven’t even shown you half. Here’s three views of the back lawn, the exterior of the sunroom, inside the sunroom, inside the foyer, inside the family room, inside the kitchen—“
“I get the idea,” she says, looking worried.
“You need to see two more of these.” She nods hugging herself around the middle. This is really disturbing to her, as it should be. It’s alarming to think someone might be spying on you without your knowledge, and it’s worse when it’s someone you trust.
I scroll down and show her a view of the hallway that runs from one side to the other of the second floor, and the interior of the downstairs powder room. Her mouth falls open.
“You think he just sits up here watching us? My friends use that powder room whenever they come over. There were probably eight cheerleaders peeing in there last weekend. People change their clothes in there. There has to be an explanation for this.”
“I don’t know, Deja,” I say. I showed her the video feeds to convince her to come to Rourke’s, but I also think she has a right to know this is going on. It’s a huge invasion of privacy.
“So when I came to your room last night, did the camera capture it? Does Devin know?”
I shake my head. “I don’t think so. There are hundreds of hours of video if you tally everything up. There’s no reason he would look at that specific 30 seconds. The hallway is pretty boring. I doubt he checks it unless an alarm goes off. The only alarms up here are on the windows.”
She doesn’t look entirely reassured, but I can’t tell her that Anton hacked the system and deleted the few seconds of video.
No matter how many cameras Devin puts up, he’ll never see me where I’m not supposed to be.
Anton is willing to cover Deja under that blanket, so I don’t get kicked out; he still needs me here until I find the evidence Devin has against him.
But Anton also had me plant extra cameras and bugs.
I don’t want Anton seeing intimate moments between me and my girl, and I don’t want Deja wondering who I’m texting while we’re together.
“We both have practice tomorrow, but why don’t we go over to Rourke’s Friday afternoon, hang out, and see if you feel comfortable. If you don’t, we strike his place off the list.”
She nods, her expression still tight. I don’t share my backup plan, which is to rent a hotel room.
She might jump at it, but we risk someone we know seeing us, plus she’ll want to know where I got the money to afford it.
I’ll have to ask Rourke not to mention the dealing in front of her.
And here I am again, lying to her by omission.
There are so many already, though, what’s one more.
All of them are because of Anton, but my attitude about him sending me here is changing.
If he hadn’t asked me to spy on Devin, I’d never had gotten this close to Deja.
Imagine if I’d missed out on her, on the way she makes me feel?
There’s so much I still want to learn about her, so many things I want to do with her, it feels exciting, something to look forward to after Anton has what he needs.
Until her, I only imagined a bleak future, waiting for my mother to die. Now things feel different. I have hope.
“I’m starving,” she says, “but one last question.”
“Shoot.”
“How did you find out about this? I mean I knew they had cameras outside the front door and watching the pool, but the ones inside are hidden. And how did you get access to his computer?”
“Sit in the middle of the sofa,” I tell her. “Okay. Now look at Devin’s diploma.” She moves her head an inch or two in either direction before her eyebrows shoot up.
“Wow! The whole screen’s reflected.”
“I was in here listening to him ramble on about responsibility and respect and I noticed I could see the family room. I’d watched him enter his password enough times I had a good idea what it was, so I logged in one afternoon before they got home to check if there was an angle that showed the kitchen door. ”
“Cause that’s where you sneak out, right? To smoke.”
“Selfish reasons, yeah. I snuck up here to see what the cameras could see, and I thought it was weird he had so many. And that’s before I realized he was adding more.”
“What is going on?” She shakes her head.
“I hope it doesn’t have anything to do with our other mystery.”
“How could it?
“I don’t understand any of this shit,” I lie.
It’s only a partial lie. I know why Devin’s obsessed with security—it’s because of Anton.
But why Deja’s mother has been lying to her?
No idea. God, I want this to be over so I can get the hell out of this house and stop lying to Deja.
Maybe I’m overly optimistic to think she’ll still want to be with me when she knows everything, but I have to try.
I don’t want to keep lying to her, but until my mission is complete, I have no choice.