Page 24

Lucas

At breakfast the next morning, Haven sits on the floor next to Colton without much protest. She’s still pissed—that’s obvious by the way she glares at the green smoothie Colton makes her lap up again. I almost suggest getting her a dog dish, but I bite my tongue. That could be a good threat to use against her later.

After we’ve finished eating, Colton leaves to get Haven switched over to online classes—something I’m sure she’d have to be present for if it was anyone other than Colton Heverly. Xander has to leave for class, so it’s just me and Haven until I have to leave around eleven.

I retrieve a box from mine and Xander’s room before calling her up to the loft. I nod to the couch, and she sits, her eyes flicking between my face and the box.

“Since we couldn’t get your laptop from your dorm, we got you a new one. By the time you’re done setting it up, all the details for your online classes will probably be in your inbox.”

“Oh.” Haven takes the laptop, chewing on her lip as she does. “This is brand-new?”

“Yep.”

Eyes widening, she lets the box drop the few inches to her lap. “But that—that’s expensive. I can’t—”

“Don’t worry about it.”

She gapes at me. “Lucas, how am I not supposed to worry about this?”

With a shrug, I plop down next to her. “I dunno.”

“Are you going to make me pay you back for it? Is that your plan? Keep buying me things so I’m indebted to you indefinitely?”

“However fun that sounds, no, that’s not our plan. If we wanted to trap you here, we could, and all we’d need is some restraints and the cage upstairs.”

Watching the blood drain from Haven’s face is pretty satisfying, but it pisses me off, too. Again, I feel like I’ve gone back in time, and my brain can’t comprehend sitting on a couch next to Haven and not being on good terms with her. So seeing her afraid hurts, too.

Still, it’s fucking stupid of me to expect Haven to let her guard down around us. She doesn’t have any reason to trust us. Hell, she straight up shouldn’t.

“You promise me this isn’t a trap?” Haven asks, her voice small.

“We promised to take care of you, didn’t we?”

“Yes,” she whispers.

“That’s all we’re doing. Making sure you’re taken care of. It’s just holding up our end of the deal.”

Haven eyes me suspiciously for a second longer than needed before nodding. “All right. Then… thank you.”

“Whatever. Now get that thing out of the box. It’ll take a while to set it up.”

She frowns. “Set it up?”

“Yeah, haven’t you—oh, right. Of course you haven’t.”

“Haven’t what?”

“Ever had a piece of tech that was brand-new. My guess is you had hand-me-downs from Athelia or some shit like that?”

“They weren’t all from Athelia,” she says defensively. “But… yeah.”

Sliding the lid off the box, I pull out the laptop. “Anything that’s brand-new usually needs to be configured in some way. It’ll probably need to update, then you’ll have to create an account, set your preferences, approve or deny some settings, et cetera.”

“That… sounds like a lot.”

Dammit. She needs the laptop, but I had no intention of spending the rest of the morning helping her. But what am I supposed to do? Let her set it up herself? She’ll probably fuck up all the settings, and then I’ll have to un-fuck it later.

I let out an annoyed sigh. “I’ll help you. Take this and plug it into the outlet, will you?”

She takes the cord I hand her and does exactly as I say. And fuck, it’s nice when she does what I tell her to without question. It’s the reminder I need that this deal isn’t one-sided.

“Good girl,” I say quietly when she sits back down.

She goes stiff beside me, and I can feel her glare burning into the side of my face. “You can’t just—”

“I can do whatever the hell I want to.” Turning, I grip her chin, ensuring she can’t look away from me. “And trust me, Haven, you’ll like my praise much more than you’ll like my punishments.”

Fear sparks in her eyes, and it’s so pretty that I could revel in it all day. But we have work to do, and there’s a small side of me that wants to soothe it out of her, so I force myself to release her. She immediately puts a few extra inches between us, and I have to hold back a laugh.

When she’s like this, she reminds me of the fawn I discovered in a bush in the backyard of my childhood home. My mom wouldn’t let me pet it—something that disappointed me at the time, although now I understand why. So I spent all day watching it from the kitchen window.

Eventually, an older deer showed up, and they left together. I was bummed, but I saw the fawn a few times over the course of the year. I watched it get bigger and lose its spots until it looked like all the others. No matter how carefully I tried to approach it, though, it would always run off when I got too close.

Typical deer, I know, but I found it at a point in my childhood when I felt completely isolated. I was hiding so much—from Mom, from Rora, from Xander. All I wanted was a friend who I could be completely honest with. For some childish reason, I thought that little fawn could connect with me in a way that would ease the loneliness my father forced onto me.

Stupid, I know.

“Lucas?”

I blink. Haven is staring at me, her brows furrowed. The laptop is still closed, her hands hovering over it, and I realize she’s waiting for me to tell her what to do.

“Open it up.”

She does, only hesitating for a second.

“Power button should be on your side.”

“Oh,” she mutters, leaning over to look for it. “Right, found it.”

While it starts up, Haven slides her fingers across the keyboard. The laptop is sleek, black, and not too heavy—perfect for her purposes.

“What do I do now?” she asks.

“Patience, little fawn. We have to wait.”

“W-what?” She turns to face me, her stare wide-eyed and shocked. “Why did you say that?”

“Say what?”

“The little fawn thing. What does that mean?”

Shrugging, I lean back, watching the spinning circle on the laptop screen as it updates. “I just think it suits you, that’s all.”

“Suits me?” She sounds a little offended. “How?!”

“Well, for starters, you’re pretty jumpy.”

“I am no—”

“Plus, you’re pretty cute. Timid, too.” I lean in closer so my lips are right next to her ear and whisper, “And easy to scare.”

When I pull away, Haven is glaring at me again. This time, I can’t help my chuckle.

“See? Just look at you. You’re fucking adorable when you’re pissed off.”

“You’re an ass,” she says flatly.

“You can hit the arrow button.”

“What?”

I nod to the laptop. “It’s done updating. Hit the next button.”

“Oh.” Still flustered, she turns back to the laptop and taps on the arrow. “Privacy preferences? Security settings?”

“Here, lemme see.” Turning the laptop so I can see better, I read through each of the settings and do my best to explain them to Haven. She still seems a little lost, so I check the boxes for the settings I’d allow if this was my computer and un-check some of the boxes for the settings I think are too invasive. “How does that look?”

“Um…” She bites her lip, her eyes darting all over the screen. “Sure?”

“All right. Hit next.”

We go through the entire setup process like that. The further into it we go, the more I realize Haven has only learned the bare minimum about tech to get by. She has no idea how to do anything except what she needs—mainly, check her email, write papers, and search for things online.

Once we’ve finished, I make a mental note to take some time to go over the basics with her. Maybe from there, I can teach her a bit more. I don’t think she realizes how powerful the thing sitting in her lap is.

“Check your email and see if your class info has been sent over yet.”

She gets to her email pretty easily, although I think it’s because I imported her bookmarks for her. If I asked her to get in without it bookmarked, I’m not sure she’d be able to.

“This looks like something,” she mutters to herself as she opens the most recent email.

I doubt it’s normally this fast to switch over, but when Colton asks for something, there are no rules. You just do it as quickly as you can.

I read it over her shoulder. The email contains a username—her student email—and a temporary password.

“So I just… click this link?” she asks, her cursor hovering over it.

“Yep. That’ll take you to the portal’s login page.”

“Portal,” she mumbles to herself.

Once the page has loaded, Haven stares at it for a second before seeming to remember what to do. She enters in her email in the username box and then copies the temporary password into the box below it. Once she’s signed in, she scans her dashboard and frowns.

“This is a lot.”

“Looks like you don’t have classes in real time, so you can watch them whenever it’s convenient.”

“So I can create my own schedule?”

“You won’t be creating it, no.”

She turns to look at me. “Why not?”

“Because your time isn’t yours. It’s ours.”

Haven’s shoulders slump, and guilt pricks at my skin. This is what she agreed to—not that she had much of a choice in the matter—but maybe we’re being too controlling. She once told me that one of the worst parts of the cult was how trapped she felt.

To some degree, I understood. My entire childhood, I felt caged—by my father’s anger, by my need to protect Rora from his abuse, by poverty. Our situations were entirely different, but the feeling is the same.

I don’t want to make her feel the way she did back then. I guess neither does Xander, considering his decision to not have her do any housework. Colt, though… he’s his own brand of unhinged.

“You’d better make me a schedule, then.” Haven’s words are razor-sharp. “And if you try to sabotage my grades by not giving me enough time—”

“We won’t do that,” I snap.

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” she mutters.

God. The emotional whiplash with her is enough to drive anyone insane. One second, I’m ready to go soft on her, and the next, all I can think about is wringing her neck.

“What classes would you have today if you were still in-person?”

“Forensic Interviewing and Social Work with Children.”

“Then you’ll do those today, and we’ll plan the rest around our schedules so you’re not busy when we’re free.”

She bristles at that but doesn’t say anything.

“You should get started. You’ll want to watch in a place where you can stay focused.”

I glance around the parts of the house that I can see. Common areas are out because any of us coming and going will distract her. I can’t put her in Colton’s room—he’d kill me.

“My room it is, I guess,” I grumble.

“I’ll be fine out here.”

“Up.” I’m already halfway across the loft, and I don’t look back to make sure Haven is following me.

I push the door to my room open, and Haven scrambles inside, clutching her laptop to her chest.

“You can use the desk—”

But Haven has already climbed onto the bed and pulled the covers over her lap. “I’m cold. Colton said he turned the thermostat up, but I don’t think he did.”

I know he didn’t, but I’m not getting in the way of his mind games with her.

“Fine. Just don’t mess up the blankets too much.”

Before she can make some sassy comeback, I turn on my heel and stalk out of the room. I stop in the kitchen, telling myself I’m making her a snack because of our deal and for no other reason.

If she starts her class now, it’ll take her right through lunchtime, so she’ll need something to hold her over. I cut up an apple and throw a little peanut butter into a bowl for her to dip the slices in. It’s one of my favorite childhood snacks, and it gets her a little protein to keep her going.

Upstairs, Haven is on my bed, her laptop set on the comforter. I place her snack and a glass of water on Xander’s nightstand.

“Is that for me?” she asks, surprised.

“Yeah.” I glance around the room, looking for something hard and flat.

“T-thank you. But… why?”

“I already told you, little fawn.”

She goes quiet at the nickname, and she watches me with her head tilted while I grab one of my textbooks and place it underneath her laptop.

“It needs to be able to ventilate, or it’ll get too hot.” I show her the vents on the back. “See?”

“Oh. I didn’t think of that.”

“Do you have everything you need?” I ask.

“I mean, I don’t have my textbooks, but for now I should be good. I can take notes on here.” She nods to the laptop.

Right. Textbooks. God, those will be a pain in the ass to get.

“I could probably just find the ebooks online or something,” Haven says. “It’s what I did when I first got here.”

“I remember.”

She ducks her head down. “I’ll probably need help finding them, though. Julie already had all of them on the tablet she gave me.”

“We’ll do that later. For now, just watch your class.”

She nods, so I turn to leave. It’s not until I’m almost in the hallway that she asks softly, “Lucas?”

I stop, my hand on the doorframe, waiting.

“Thank you. F-for the snack. And the laptop.”

“You already thanked me for both.”

“Oh,” she says, voice small.

“Did you used to get in trouble if you weren’t thankful enough or something?” It comes out rougher than I mean it to, but I don’t like the look in her eyes when she says it. It reminds me too much of how I used to act around my dad.

“I… um…”

Shit.

“You did, didn’t you?”

“Being ungrateful is thought of as a sin there.” Haven is avoiding my gaze, picking at a loose thread on the comforter.

Fucking hell.

“I’m sorry. That was a mean thing for me to say.”

“No, it’s fine.” She shrugs. “You didn’t know.”

“That place… I’m glad you got out.” It feels weird saying that, especially given how I’ve treated her almost the entire time I’ve known her, but fuck. No one deserves to live through shit like that.

“I should focus,” she says quietly.

“Right. Come find me when you’re done.”

I don’t give her a chance to respond, shutting the door firmly behind me. Only then do I let out a long, slow breath. My mind is all over the place, my emotions out of whack. I need to get my head on straight before practice later, or coach will notice and berate me over it.

That has me clenching my fists. No matter how far I get from home, I can’t seem to escape my father. Sometimes, it feels like I’m fucking cursed, except this isn’t some fairytale. There’s no magic kiss or potion that’ll break it. I’m a beast living without his beauty, a heart of ice without love to thaw it.

Destined to live in the shadow of an angry man forever.