Page 64

Thirty-three
Conner
2010
“Hey kid—you gonna get out or did we just drive out here, so you can stare at the place?”
I aim a sidelong glance at the back of his head rather than meet his stare in the rearview mirror. He’s right. We’ve been sitting here at the foot of the driveway long enough to draw suspicion. A cab parked outside a building in Fenway barely gets a glance. A cab parked in front of a mansion in Manhattan gets the cops called.
All I’m doing by sitting here is drawing attention and delaying the inevitable.
I poke the second hundred-dollar bill through the hole in the partition and watch it drop onto the seat in front of me. “I’ve got your medallion number memorize.” I finally meet his gaze in the mirror, saying it in a conversational tone. “If you try to bounce on me, you’ll regret it.”
“That a fact?” I can tell by the way he’s looking at me that’s exactly what he was planning.
“It is.” I smirk at him. People are always underestimating me. “You’ll have to fake your own death and move to a non-extraditable country to get out from under the mountain of shit I’ll bury you under. I hear Moldova is nice.”
I watch his dark caterpillar eyebrows shoot up, disappearing into his hairline. “You threatin’ me, kid?”
“I’ve given you two-hundred dollars and we’ve reached an agreement.” I find the door handle and give it a jerk. “I’m simply telling you what’ll happen if you chose not to honor it.”
“You’re a real charmer,” he says, finally shifting into park.
“I’m also someone you don’t want to fuck with so just sit here and earn your money.” I step out of the cab and shut the door before he can answer me.
I half expect him to take off on me despite the threat, but he doesn’t. Whether it’s because I scared him enough to stay or he had no intention of ditching me in the first place, I don’t know. I also don’t care.
Climbing the steps, I raise my fist to knock but before I can, the door opens in front of me. Henley’s mother is right in front of me, like she’s been standing here, waiting for me. She is not happy to see me.
“What do you want?”
“Hello, Mrs. O’Connell,” I say, my tone as polite and courteous as I can manage. “Is Henley home? I’d like to speak with her.”
I’m sure she’s about to slam the door in my face. Tell me to leave her daughter alone. Instead, she moves aside, opening the door wide enough for me to pass through.
“Come in,” she says, sweeping me in with a wave of her hand before shutting it behind me. Before I can say anything else, she starts walking toward the back of the house. Leaving me no chance but to follow. “We may as well get this over with.”
She leads me into a spacious kitchen where a pair of uniformed maids are bustling around. The entire back wall is made of glass, offering a pretty spectacular view of a small garden and the East River behind it.
It’s not the river I’m looking at though, it’s Henley. All I can see is the back of her head, her wild, bright red hair pulled into one of those loose braids she always wears to tame it. She’s wearing a school uniform, legs bare under a knee-length plaid skirt, the sleeve of her crisp white shirt rolled up. I can see the cluster of freckles—the one that looks like Mickey Mouse—from here.
She isn’t alone.
Beside me, Henley’s mother starts to talk. “I’ve known about you and my daughter for quite some time, Conner.” I can hear it in her voice, how happy she is that I’m here. That she can show me this. “While she claimed to be at the library, she was with you, doing god knows what.”
I think about the hammock. Her feet propped on my chest while I count the freckles on her ankle.
Sitting on the floor of my room, her head on my shoulder while I read to her.
The wide leather chair in my dad’s den, her wide eyes aimed up at me when I gave her my ring.
Beyond the window, I watch the guy sitting next to Henley flick a quick look at the window, his gaze landing on me before he drops a casual hand on her bare knee, his thumb sweeping along the inside of it while he says something to her and gives her a besotted grin. I can hear her laughing from here. He flicks another glance at me before leaning over and kissing her. As soon as he puts his mouth on her, I feel my gut clench. My lungs seize and sputter in my chest. My heart stops, mid-thump.
He’s kissing her.
He’s kissing Henley.
And it takes every shred of self-control I have to keep myself from charging through the door and ripping his fucking head off.