Page 19 of Our Darkest Summer

I should’ve stepped back.

I should’ve stopped this before it became something I couldn’t come back from.

But maybe five months of pushing away was all I could handle. Maybe I should just see what happens, and?—

She drew back like she had been jolted from a dream. Her eyes were wide, her lips pressed into a hard line. I could tell she was torn between what to think, what to feel.

“I—”

“Thomas?” My brother’s voice cut me short from the other side of the door, and we jolted apart like we’d been caught doing something illegal. Maybe we were. “Have you seen Kinsley?”

My eyes flickered in her direction but she didn’t look at me. “Why?” I asked, clearing my throat, and stepping closer to the door.

“She has a visitor.”

Kinsley frowned, then I saw it. Realization dawning on her face. Who was she meeting with?

“A girl from the party,” my brother added, unknowingly answering my question, while Kinsley unlocked her phone.

Her thumb moved rapidly over the screen.

“So, have you seen her?” Connor asked, knocking again. “I couldn’t find her.”

I tilted my head, staring at her. “Have I?”

Her eyes locked with mine with hesitation in them.

“Well, you should know,” Connor deadpanned through the door.

I turned my gaze at the ceiling for patience.

Before I could say anything else, Kinsley crossed the room in three determined strides, and creaked the door open. She slipped out without a single glance back.

“Sorry,” I heard her say to my brother before the door clicked shut behind her, and I was left staring after her.

If she said anything else about why she was in my room, I didn’t hear. I exhaled slowly, resting my head against the bookshelf.

The room suddenly felt cold. Hollow. Like she had taken all the air with her. I walked to my bed and pulled open the drawer of my nightstand. The letter I showed Kinsley last night lay on top of a paper pile, the edges slightly curled from the number of times I had unfolded and refolded it.

It hadn’t occurred to me until this morning—when I found the note from the front door lying on the kitchen island—to compare the handwriting of the two.

I read the name on the envelope, grinding my teeth.

Joshua Rhodes.

Not the man anyone would want as a father. Before my mother disappeared, he was at least a decent man. A busy one, but still a father. After she was gone, he was just busy. Always the businessman first.

When I turned eighteen, things changed for a while.

He started taking me to his business gatherings, showing me around, introducing me to people like I was the next in line. He wanted to leave his firm to me. At least, that’s what he wanted people to believe.

But I knew my father. He loved working too much to ever hand over his company, or even retire. If he could, he’d still be signing deals on his deathbed.

It took me a while to figure out his real intentions.

There was a company he wanted to merge with. And the merger would involve me marrying the owner’s daughter.

An arranged marriage in the fucking twenty-first century.