“You really don’t like the attention, do you?” X asks, turning the truck around and then heading down the driveway as the gate slides open into blissful darkness. No flashing cameras, no recording phones, no shouting people. I let out a sigh of relief.
“Not at all. Who wants to be famous for being kidnapped?” I ask, leaning back in the quiet shadows of the cab. It’s almost like Parrish isn’t there at all. Except … I can almost feel him behind me, pretending to be engrossed in his phone when he’s actually listening to every word. Probably filing them away to use against me later, no doubt.
“Fair point,” X agrees, glancing my way again. He quickly turns his attention back to the road, but not before my mind flickers with his words from the coffee shop. “I’ve got a girlfriend, and she’s pretty awesome so …” Ugh. I ignore that, burying it deep down where it belongs, locked away tight. My sister is the single most important person in the world to me, and I won’t compromise that relationship for anything.
Instead, I turn around so I can look at Parrish.
“Why did you tell me that stuff about Saffron?” I ask, my heart aching for the woman I grew up believing to be my mother. She lost her baby? How? When? Was the child a similar age to me? I never really liked Saffron—Maxine never liked her either for that matter and she really is her kid—but I also felt empathy toward her. She just seemed so fucking sad every time we saw her.
“Because keeping the truth from you is only making things worse,” Parrish snaps back, like I’ve supremely annoyed the shit out of him. He turns away from me toward the window, shutting off his phone and slipping it into his pocket.
“Just ignore him,” Maxx offers, his words dragging a scoff from Parrish’s perfect lips. “The fact that you were kidnapped as a baby shouldn’t affect your OnlyFans subscriber count.”
A laugh escapes me, one that’s just a little too loud, a little too raucous. I clap a hand over my mouth as Maxx flashes me a white-toothed smile. It’s big and gorgeous and most definitely still not a treat my cringe-worthy ass needs to be nibbling on.
“OnlyFans?” Parrish echoes, his voice strained and honestly, a bit like a tightrope walker onstage and wobbling. I glance over my shoulder, give him a tight smile and a lift of my brows, and then turn back to the front windshield.
It seems too dangerous to talk to him now, too dangerous to speak to X.
I pretend not to be interested in either of them as X chooses a playlist on his phone and The Script begins to play. The Last Time is his song of choice. Interesting. And not quite what I expected.
By the time we arrive at the party, I’m more than ready to get some space from the two boys.
“I’ll drive you guys back in about two hours,” X says, giving Parrish a look when he scowls. “I know it’s not much time, but I have to be up crazy early.”
“Whatever,” Parrish says, putting his freshly-tatted left hand on the shoulder of Maxx’s seat as he leans forward. “Old man,” he hisses with a laugh, and then he’s sliding out the back door, dispersing into the crowd, and leaving me and Maxx alone.
It is awkward as fuck in there, I’ll tell you that right now.
My gaze moves past the limned outline of Maxx’s profile and toward the house. It’s a five-story monstrosity made out of glass and cement, much like our house but a little flashier, like the person who owns it really has something to prove.
“Bourgeois,” I murmur under my breath and Maxx chuckles again, turning off the engine and then leaning back in his seat, his body bathed in shadows and outlined with the golden glow from the patio lights. We’re parked near an open gate that leads into the backyard, the grass littered with luxury cars. Comparatively, Maxx’s Jeep Gladiator looks like a cheap hunk of junk. Still fancy to me though.
“You have no idea,” he murmurs, leaning forward and crossing his arms on the top of the steering wheel before resting his chin atop them. The song switches over to another track from The Script. I chew on my lower lip which is most definitely not a normal fidget of mine and realize that I’m subconsciously imitating Maxx. God. Damnit. I stop the action immediately and squeeze my hands together in my lap, knowing that I should rightfully bail out this door and never climb in another vehicle with Maxx Wright ever again. “Be careful with them: they start off nice but the deeper you get in Whitehall, the worse things you see.”
Maxx glances my way, and even though I know it’s impossible in the darkness, it feels like I can see the emerald glimmer of his irises. Okay, that’s it. Get the fuck out of the car. I reach for the door handle, but nothing happens. My fingers betray me, resting atop the handle but refusing to press down on it.
“They’re all stereotypical rich assholes, aren’t they?” I ask and Maxx chuckles at me, the sound somehow even more effective than it was during the daylight.
“Maybe not stereotypical,” he muses, like he’s chewing over some old stories, “but rich assholes? Oh yeah. Don’t let them intimidate you.” X sits up and reaches for his own door. His hands, however, do not betray him. I hate you, I think at my hands as Maxx climbs out and glances toward the house, letting out a tired sigh. “Am I gonna be ‘that guy’ tonight?” he muses aloud, looking back toward me with another smile. “Like, an old guy creeping around a high school party?”
I lift both brows and then finally convince my frozen fingers to move, opening the door and climbing out. Maxx comes around the hood to meet me.
“Should I take your silence as a yes?” he asks, but if I were to answer truthfully, I’d probably get myself in trouble.
“Oh yeah, you’re definitely the old creeper,” I say, giving him this … this terrible punch in the shoulder like we’re bros or something? Gross. I sweep past before X gets a good look at my face and knows just how insane I’m acting. I’m sure I’ve got pink cheeks and a crimson chest. That’s where I always blush most, on my boobs.
I shuffle into the backyard in my Pokémon pants and hoodie, staring at the sea of girls in designer body-con dresses and thousand-dollar heels and know instantly that I’ve made a mistake.
Oh yeah, that’s right, we’re not in freaking high school; we’re in Hollywood high school. Everyone here is a goddamn model.
“Great,” I murmur under my breath, dragging a hand over my face.
“What's the matter, Little Sister?” Chasm purrs, sliding up beside me like the pervy shadow he is. “Realize you missed the rules of the dress code?” He looks me over and then shakes his head, making an exaggerated tsk-tsk sound that has me rolling my eyes in a particularly dramatic fashion. “Nice Pikachu pants, by the way. Are you fucking twelve?”
“You look like a HotTopic ad from 2002 vomited all over you,” I spit back, probably reconfirming the idea that he has of me being twelve. Nice one, Dakota. Really, spectacular. You could be a professional linguist. Hell, you could be a fancy writer like your bio-mom at this point.
In all reality, Chasm looks … well, shit. Chasm looks really good. Like really, really, horrifyingly good. Tight black pants, bright white sneakers, and a black and white striped dress shirt that’s only got a single button through the wrong hole, leaving it elegantly skewed. It leaves absolutely nothing to the imagination, drawing attention to his flat chest and myriad ink. Fuck, he’s hot, and I have to admit, the small amount of eyeliner he’s wearing is doing things for me that I never thought possible.