I climb out of the car in Chas’ blazer and nothing else before realizing how that might look. But then wondering why … I give a fuck how that looks? I just stare back at Tess and take a sip from my coffee. The slurping sound echoes around the garage as Chasm pauses beside me and hooks a what the actual fuck are you doing? look my way.
I pissed Tess off enough by being gone, I shouldn’t poke the bear. And yet … I’m going to poke the bear.
I let my hair out of its bun long ago, so it’s all mussed up. And my blazer is still wet because I’ve been sitting hunched up and didn’t give it a chance to dry. This must really look like something it isn’t.
I keep staring at my birth mother.
“What the—and excuse my language—fuck were you thinking?” Tess’ eyes water, but she manages to keep her expression what I’d call ‘bitchy neutral’. Like, she’s clearly ticked-off but she isn’t expressing that. Yet. Her eyes flick to Chasm. “I’m disappointed in you, too. How could you drive my daughter around all day and not think to bring her home or answer your phone?”
Parrish appears in the doorway behind Tess, frowning as he drags his gaze from my borrowed wet blazer and up to my face. My eyes catch his and stick there, my palms sweat, my heart begins to race.
Oh. Oh. Ohhhhh. I have a crush on Parrish.
Fuck.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I have a crush on my stepbrother. If I were at the screaming/silence cabin (how is that not a title of one of my bio mom’s books already?), I’d definitely scream right now.
I look back at Tess.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Vanguard,” Chasm says politely, which is as nice as I’ve ever heard him. He must be terrified of Tess to act that nice. I’m under no such curse. She’s done enough to me that I’m numb to it now.
“I’m not.” Shit, did I just say that?
“Excuse me?” Tess asks, blinking at me like she can’t quite believe I just said what I said. Parrish looks apathetic to all of it, as he always does, but I’m hyperaware of his presence in a way I wasn’t before. It just … happened today. Like lightning in a gray and distant sky.
“I’m not sorry because I told you I didn’t want to be interviewed, and you didn’t care. You knew my grandparents were going to be on the show, and you didn’t tell me.” I’m shaking with frustration, but I don’t move. Instead, I just stand there and squeeze my iced coffee like a stress ball. The sound of the cup denting seems so … loud.
“None of that excuses you for running away for an entire day.” Tess steps forward and holds out her hand, palm up. “Phone,” she says, wiggling her fingers. “Give it to me. I know you have it.”
“I really don’t though,” I say with a small cringe, shaking out the pockets on the blazer so she can see there’s nothing in them. I already thought about this and stashed my phone under Chasm’s seat. Like Parrish, he seems fine going along with it.
Tess drops her arm to her side with a dramatic sigh, but where can we really go from here?
“You’re grounded again, Dakota. For a month. How does that sound?”
It sounds like I made the right choice when I threw your envelope away, that and the stupid key you have yet to explain. Doesn’t matter. I’d throw the tennis bracelet away, too, if I didn’t think I could sell it and buy myself a plane ticket back home instead.
“Dakota,” she says, and it’s clear in the way that she chooses to emphasize my name that she’s trying here. It feels ‘too little, too late’ to me. “I understand why you’re upset—”
“Do you?” I ask, wishing I could just open the garage door and start running. Couldn’t I? Would she physically chase me down and drag me back here? Or could I escape? Permanently. The thought crosses my mind and disappears just as quick. Of course I wouldn’t do that. Not to Tess or my grandparents … That moment of selfish introspection at the cabin makes me feel jittery. “If you did, you wouldn’t be trying to punish me right now, would you?”
I move past her and into the house, pausing briefly beside Parrish. We look at each other for a breath, but then Tess is following me, so I’m forced to keep going.
I make it to my room just before her, close it, and then lock it before she can open it. I’m convinced she’s going to pick the lock from the outside and let herself in, but she doesn’t.
I flop down on my bed, leaving the lights off and wondering when my furniture is going to get here. I’m still staring at the ceiling when someone knocks a few hours later, sitting up and heading over to crack it open. Somehow, I think I already know who it is.
“Here,” Parrish says quietly, handing my phone over to me. “Chas gave it to me before he left.” He pauses and his eyes flick to the side for the briefest instant before coming back to me. It feels like he’s looking right past all the bullshit for the first time since I got here.
Opposites attract. Sometimes you start falling for the person you hate. Sometimes, you’re not even sure they are your opposite. Maybe they’re just so much like you that you can’t tell the difference anymore?
I go to take the phone, but Parrish whips it out of my grip for a moment.
“Don’t fall for Chasm,” he tells me, and it takes me nearly a minute to process that he’s just said that.
“Why not?” I ask, but he just shakes his head and pushes my phone against my hand. “Parrish?”
But he turns and disappears into his room without answering me.
Dick.
But I am grateful to have my phone. And I thankful for him distracting Tess all day.
I bite my lip and throw my phone on the charger—but without turning it on. I won’t risk it, not tonight.
That is, until the memory of waking up in the woods, alone and cold and scared, hits me like a freight train. Never mind. I’d rather risk Tess finding—and subsequently stealing—my phone than waking up outside with a needle mark in my neck.
I turn my phone on, doing my best to ignore the barrage of messages flooding through on every channel. Comments, tags, DMs, emails, texts, voice mail. Just thinking about it makes my stomach flip with nausea, so I don’t bother looking. I set the phone up on the tripod and then do my best to disguise it with random junk like a half-empty bottle of lotion and some paperback books.
Only then do I let myself relax, curling into a ball in an unfamiliar room in an unfamiliar state of mind and doing my best to fall asleep.
One sentence keeps repeating itself in my mind, loud and clear—and so do the unspoken implications that followed it.
Don’t fall for Chasm—fall for me instead.
The first thing I do when I get up is check the footage.
Not only am I super curious to get to the bottom of the mystery—like, am I sleepwalking?—but it also gives me something to do that isn’t checking my messages, looking at social media, or leaving this room. I pause with my phone in my hand and then lay my forehead against the edge of the dresser with a groan.
“Why did I say those things yesterday?” I breathe, second-guessing myself as I stand there and sulk. I feel trapped, both physically and online. Where can I go that I won’t be bothered? I end up running myself a bath as I replay last night’s interaction with Tess in my head. “I’m not. I’m not sorry …”