Page 75 of Whatever It Takes

Or ask for it. Or God forbid,needit. Because they’ve already done way too much for me, and they’re not mine. They’re Willow’s.

I don’t look behind me again, but I think I must be walking through the maze faster because Lily and Loren’s voice drifts off. I enter one of the last rooms where fake puke flies onto the wall. I stand there for a couple long moments and literally the robot turns to me and grins. Wait…not a robot. This one isdefinitelyan actress. She starts crawling on the bed towards me like she means to scare me.

I smile.

I don’t know why.

Maybe because she thinksthisis frightening. I’ve been afraid before—really scared—but not from green-puking demons. This is nothing.

She stops and tries to make another “freaky grin face” but I’m over it. I keep walking. Right on out of the maze. Cold air hits me just as I hear a shrill scream inside the maze.

I’m betting that’s Lily. My lips lift into a bigger smile, just taking in the moment. I’m doing something on a random night, and it’s not even bad. It’s kind of fun.

One of the bodyguards nears me and stations next to my side. Like I’m important or something, but I realize in less than a second that he’s blocking my body from onlookers. Girls laugh loudly around the maze’s exit and steal glances at me.

Maybe they want my autograph or for me to divulge details about the core six—the latter is most likely.

I shouldn’t ask the bodyguard, but I do. “Hey, how do you know I don’t want to be approached by people?”

The bodyguards don’t block Lily all the time. Definitely not Ryke or Lo.

“Loren informed us that you don’t want the attention,” he says. “Has that changed, sir?”

I shake my head. No. It hasn’t.

I’m smiling more now, and then I spot Lo. He exits the building, carrying Lily piggyback-style. She’s burying her face in the crook of his neck like she can’t even take a peek without pissing her pants.

My brows knot. “It wasn’t even that scary.”

Loren holds her thighs. “She’s scared of her own shadow when I shut off the lights at night.”

“That was one time!” Lily protests without lifting her head up.

Loren and I both laugh, and then he says to Lily, “We’re out of the maze now. You want down, love?”

Slowly, she lifts her head up enough to rest her chin on his shoulder and then glances around the park. People are laughing or power-walking away from the maze’s exit. No one is bloody or dying on the ground.

“Can I stay here for one more maze?” Lily asks. “Then I’ll drop down.”

Loren nods, and Rose suddenly exits with Connor, both undeterred by the horror element. Connor honestly looks like he just stepped out of his weekly phone conferences with oversea investors. Same casualI own the worldconfidence radiates off him…and his wife.

The golden crowns make this twice as noticeable.

I glance at Loren, and he looks upset. Like maybe the whole goal was to rattle the unshakeable. Nine mazes are left, and I know Connor well enough as my boss—and I’m pretty sure you could put him in a thousand mazes and he’d still exit each one with assuredness and ease.

Rose narrows her eyes at Loren. Probably understanding his ulterior motive.

Loren cringes. “Stop staring at me. I know you like my face, but my face doesn’t like you.”

Rose’s yellow-green gaze pierces him. “You’re achild, Loren.”

They’re bickering is non-stop whenever I’m around them. At first, I thought it was a fluke. Nope. It happens… All. The. Time. For no other reason than they just seem to not get along.

Loren mimes wiping a tear with his fist to his cheek, surprisingly able to hold Lily with one hand. “Go cry about it in your lair.”

“Go dry hump a bed of nails.” At this, she flips her hair over her shoulder and marches ahead in five-inch heels. Her husband is the only person that follows her, able to keep pace with his wife. Their fingers thread together, holding hands.

Don’t think about Willow.