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Nineteen
Annabeth Lambert lived in what could only be termed a mansion. It sat up on a bluff over Lake Michigan, on a stately street lined with other glorious homes made of rambling wings and carriage houses, pools and terraces and acres of manicured lawns. The house itself bore more than a passing resemblance to the one Everly had dreamed about when she was younger, all faded brick and ropes of ivy.
“There’s no time to do any decent recon,” Blue told her as they walked up the long front path that led them through some landscaping to the imposing front door.
He was all business now. He’d slid those sunglasses over his eyes and cut himself off from her completely. And despite everything churning around inside her, Everly couldn’t really complain. She certainly didn’t want him distracted.
And if that meant she had to tag along with him on potentially dangerous errands while her heart felt exposed and much too large and hollowed out at the same time, well, that was just the price she had to pay for opening her big mouth in the first place.
“This is a perfectly normal social call,” Blue was saying in that same urgent undertone. She couldn’t see his eyes, but she could tell by the way he held himself that he was scanning here, scanning there. Looking behind bushes and up toward the house’s many eaves for... whatever it was he looked for. “You’re the roommate. You dropped by to pay your respects in the middle of this troubling time and maybe to see if Rebecca’s been in touch. That’s all.”
“That’s it? No good-cop, bad-cop routine?”
But he didn’t so much as crack a smile. Not even that tiny curve in the corner of his mouth that she’d managed to eke out of him before.
Before she’d gotten all emotional. Before she’d committed the cardinal sin of falling in love with him and, worse still, telling him about it.
“This isn’t a game, Everly.” He couldn’t have sounded less amused if he’d tried. Though she didn’t really want him to try. “Stop acting like it is.”
“Once again,” she said, as evenly as she could, “the only reason people are trying to kill you is because you’re protecting me. I remain the target. And as the target, I assure you, I’m not playing any—”
“Everly.”
She stopped talking. And part of her hated that she did, because surely she should... do something. Fight. Make demands.Something.
What demands would you make?a cynical voice inside her asked.That he love you? What if he doesn’t?
And there it was, ugly and unvarnished and exposed, right there on Annabeth Lambert’s front walk.
Everly’s worst fear.
Not that Blue, specifically, didn’t or wouldn’t love her—but that nobody did. Not really. Her parents were fond of her—she knew that—but theylovedJason. They talked about her brother’s accomplishments constantly. They didn’t always have time to drive an hour into Chicago to see her, but they took vacations out where Jason lived.
She was used to being the disappointing one in her family. No one was ever mean to her. No one ever treated her badly. But Everly had never been as ambitious as her mother and brother, or her father, who had transitioned from academic life to the boards of various charities. And she had always been keenly aware of the differences.
But maybe never so much as she was today, when she’d actually told Blue about her place in her family and he hadn’t cared.
He’d been the older boy she’d looked up to all those years ago. Now he was a hero, and more, he’d saved her already again and again. And she had fallen in love with him because who wouldn’t? He was beautiful and he was dangerous and aside from all that, she liked him. A lot.
But if he’d taught her anything, it was to attack, not defend. To set the terms of the interaction so an attacker could never take advantage.
“I should never have touched you,” she said sadly, because she couldn’t palm strike him in his gorgeouslyunshaved face. “I should have known you couldn’t handle it.”
His lips thinned, but he didn’t say anything. He didn’t snap right back at her, which defeated the purpose as far as she was concerned.
And then they were at the front door, and she wondered why she was trying to provoke him when she had no idea what lay on the other side. Maybe she really was the child he kept telling her she was.
Or maybe she was full up on things to take seriously. A polite meeting with her missing roommate’s mother was low on her list of fears. It turned out that a Molotov cocktail through the bedroom window really reordered a person’s priorities.
“I don’t understand why Rebecca was living in an apartment with me if she came from this kind of money,” she said under her breath to Blue.
“That’s just one of the questions I’m going to need answered,” he agreed. “I told you the financials don’t make sense for either Rebecca or her mother.”
He jutted his chin toward the doorbell, and Everly reached over and rang it.
And then they stood there.
It was a pretty summer afternoon. The humidity had let off and there was a breeze kicking up from the lake, pleasant and faintly sweet. Everly could see the water through the trees, right there where the great houses ended, sparkling blue beneath the sun.