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chapter thirty-one

Graham

“ T hey’re going to have to peel me off of you,” Jill said, her voice muffled against my chest. We’d spent the entirety of her birthday weekend together, most of it in bed, but our clinginess was going to have to come to an end.

It was T-minus three hours before our plane to New York would take off, and we wouldn’t be able to touch each other.

“You may want to peel yourself off of me now, because the others will get here any time.”

It was 5:15 a.m., and we were standing in the eerie, quiet parking light outside of the studio between our cars.

The original plan was for us to carpool, but now we were taking two cars, because Jill had a doctor’s appointment the next day.

She and Meghan were driving separately, which left me as Xander and Chase’s chauffeur.

Please, for the love of God, let Chase call shotgun.

“I’ll never let go,” Jill said, wrapping her arms around me tighter.

I laughed and kissed the top of her head, glancing up at the sports car facing away from us. I’d seen it parked here over the weekend before, so it didn’t strike me as unusual.

“Okay, what’s the verdict?” I asked her. “Did you have a good birthday weekend?”

“Of course I did, because of you.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m feeling a little inadequate about my gift. It wasn’t as shiny as Xander’s.”

I couldn’t see her face, but I knew she was smiling.

I’d worried the gift card to the local indie bookstore was too impersonal, but it made her scream when she pulled it out of the envelope.

She seemed to have a collection of little shopping bags from that store around her house, so I knew where she liked to spend money.

And now, she wouldn’t have to spend her own there.

Not for a very long time.

“I still think it’s too much, especially after everything else you spent money on.”

Was she crazy? She was worth every dime I had. And if things kept going the way they were going, I’d gladly make her thirty-first birthday even better.

God, she had no idea how far into the future I was already imagining us together.

“You know what? It’s all just my way of letting you down gently, because now that you’re thirty, you’ve kind of lost your appeal.” I scrunched up my face, feigning disgust.

“Are you saying I’m too old for you now?”

I nodded. “Sorry, darling.”

Jill threw her head back and laughed, and I kissed her on her neck. I wanted to soak her up as much as I could before we had to go back to pretending we weren’t a couple.

“How are you feeling?” I asked her, resting my hands lightly on her hips.

She’d let me convince her to bring her pain medication on this trip.

I knew sitting in a car for an hour followed by a two- hour flight would probably be a lot for her, and there was no need for her to pretend otherwise. Not with me.

Jill didn’t answer. At first, I thought she was holding back from admitting she was already hurting, but something on the other side of the parking lot had caught her attention.

I followed her gaze to the lone black sports car.

The interior light had flicked on, and the driver door swung open.

I backed away from Jill just as fast as she yanked her body away from mine, and we both watched a shadowy figure emerge from the car.

“Whoa, wuhh!” An awkward voice shot through the darkness as the person struggled to balance two drink carriers. I recognized the curly hair and the awkward, uncoordinated movements at the same time.

Shit, shit, shit. I felt my soul leave my body.

What the fuck was Isaiah doing here at five in the morning?

He ambled toward us, balancing the coffees he carried with all the grace of Linguini from Ratatouille.

“I thought that was you guys—whoops!” A couple of straws fell from one of the drink carriers to the asphalt, and Jill and I stepped even farther apart as we watched him try to calculate how to pick them up without spilling the drinks.

You’d think he’d have it down by now, after spending all summer running coffee orders.

“Stop. I’ll get them,” I said, my voice trembling as I walked over to him to pick up the straws. “What are you doing here this early? Who are these for?”

“You guys,” he said, like I should have known. I took one of the cardboard carriers from him, and he breathed a sigh of relief. “Meghan and Xander made me do this.”

For Christ’s sake. Meghan had started a group text for everyone’s coffee order the night before. Silly me for assuming she was swinging by the coffeeshop herself. “Ah,” I said, glancing at Jill, whose face had gone completely pale. “We didn’t know you were over there.”

Isaiah grinned, looking from me to Jill. “I didn’t know you two were, like, a thing.”

With a short, uncomfortable laugh, I said, “We’re not.” I cleared my throat, scrambling for some kind of excuse that could explain this. “I was just comforting Jillian with a hug. Her… grandmother passed away.”

What the hell was I even saying?

“Oh, that sucks. Sorry for your loss,” the kid said, the ice coffees rattling in his hands. He looked at Jill, who was still frozen with panic. And then he faced me again, clutching the coffees to his chest with a knowing smile. “That was… some hug.”

This kid knew what he saw.

And he wasn’t going to let me get away with it.

Another car pulled into the lot, its headlights cutting through the darkness. My heart dropped to my butt. I needed to wrap this conversation up and nip it in the bud. Fast. “Graham,” Jill whispered, her voice strained with worry.

“Isaiah,” I said, standing up a little taller. This kid was only an inch or two shorter than me; I suspected he was hovering just under six feet. “I trust you’ll be professional about what you saw—or what you think you saw. Loose lips sink ships. And internships.”

He raised one eyebrow at me. “Huh?”

At the very same time, Jill grunted, “Graham.”

Shit, that would have been slightly threatening and totally inappropriate had Isaiah been able to follow.

“What I mean is,” I said, rushing through my words because Xander had just pulled into a nearby space, and the lights on his truck went off, “I’d hate for you to get caught up in the rumor mill, especially over something you think you saw. ”

Isaiah looked over his shoulder at Xander’s truck. “Wait,” he said, slowly turning back around. “Do other people not know?”

“No,” I answered, stepping closer to the kid as Xander’s truck door opened.

“And we’d like to keep it that way, Isaiah.

Get what I’m saying?” My words come out in a rush, my eyebrows raised so high it was a wonder they didn’t pop right off my forehead.

I was grateful Xander was distracted by his phone or something, because he wasn’t walking our way yet.

“Yeah, I get what you mean,” Isaiah said, shifting on his feet. “But it’s like Xander says. The truth always finds a way of coming out.”

I blinked a couple of times. “Xander taught you that, did he?”

Isaiah nodded, looking up as a second pair of headlights turned into the lot.

Meghan and Chase were here. “Yeah,” the kid said, glancing down at the coffees in front of him as if double-checking they were correct.

“He’s always saying that the longer people try to hide something, the sloppier they get when they try to cover it up. So… just be careful, I guess.”

I held my breath with my hand over my mouth, having difficulty finding the words. This could not be happening right now. With an exhale, I dropped my hand and said, “Great. I’m glad Xander’s been… imparting his wisdom on you.”

I’d assumed Isaiah had just been fulfilling drink orders all summer, but it appeared he’d also been absorbing some of Xander’s methods.

And now he was warning me about the consequences of my secret relationship with my employee.

My soul had officially vacated my body, and I was now standing in the pits of hell.

The others sleepily joined us, and Isaiah passed out everyone’s drinks without saying a word about what just went down. But he was more smiley than normal, and he didn’t even break a sweat when Meghan complained about her ice being “all melty.”

Before we got into separate cars, Jill and I lingered in the parking lot between them.

“I want the ground to open up and consume me whole,” Jill whispered, her wide eyes fixated on the asphalt.

I couldn’t think of anything to say. Xander was watching us closely from the front passenger seat of my car—dammit—and I didn’t want to risk him overhearing anything. “It’s going to be fine,” I mumbled, though I didn’t really believe it.

Our fate rested in the hands of a clumsy seventeen-year-old. And for the next two days we wouldn’t even be in Woodvale to control the narrative.

I would not be enjoying this trip.