She owes me answers to such simple questions, surely. Instead of offering them up, Saffron snaps at me.
“Has she told you? If she hasn’t, she should—before he finds you.” Her eyes dart to the side, as if she’s looking for someone.
“Saffron!” Carmen reprimands, but her daughter ignores her, moving into the house and locking the door before either of my grandparents can stop her. I’m torn between putting her words down as a psychotic rant … and being deathly curious about them.
“Well?” she repeats as I stand there reeling in the rain, my tears replaced with water as confusion swaps places with sadness. “Tess Vanguard doesn’t care about you, Dakota. Only I do. I’m your real mother.” Saffron points at herself, dark circles under her eyes and wrinkles in her forehead that Tess doesn’t have. They’re nearly the same age, but they look so different; they’ve lived such different lives.
“Is that so?” a cold voice asks from my left.
An icy terror filters through me as I turn to the side to see Tess, poised on the other side of the metal railing that separates the patio from the sidewalk. She holds out her hand, the other wrapped so tightly around her coffee cup that her fingers are leaving indents.
Her expression is one of the scariest things I’ve ever seen in my life.
No. No, no, no. What the fuck have I done?! I wasn’t careful enough.
“Give me the phone. Now.”
I’m left with little choice but to comply. The situation is already bad enough.
I had my sister’s phone over to Tess and watch as the women in my life who could claim the title of mother—for very different reasons—stare at each other.
“Haven’t you done enough?” Tess breathes, her shoulders stiff, and her expression murderous. “I took pity on you because you’re obviously a very sick woman, but if I find out you’ve contacted my daughter again, I will destroy you. Don’t believe me? I have the resources to bury you.”
Bury you. I see where Parrish gets his attitude from. Nurture won out over nature in that case.
“Dakota deserves the truth,” Saffron replies, her voice like a whisper in comparison to Tess’ steely tones. “She has a right to know. I protected her. Me, and only me. I was the only one that cared.”
“Contact my daughter again, and you’ll be spending the next two decades in federal prison.”
Tess hangs up the phone and then studies it in her palm.
“Whose phone is this?” she asks me, just before Maxine pops out the back door of the café with an oblivious smile.
“Did you get a chance to talk—” Maxie starts, and then she goes completely still, the color draining from her face as Tess looks up and their eyes meet. Uh-oh.
“What the fuck are you two doing out here?” Parrish demands, slipping out the door behind my sister. It takes him about half a second to notice Tess standing on the other side of the railing. “Shit.”
“Shit is right,” Tess says, stepping a bit closer to the railing and holding Maxine’s phone out to her. “I want the two of you out front—now.”
My knuckles rap against the doorjamb outside of Parrish’s room. Neither of us has a door anymore: Tess and Paul removed them both and left the two of us without a shred of privacy.
“Hey.” The sound is soft, almost inaudible. “Can I come in for a second?”
Parrish ignores me, shoving clothes into a duffel bag to prepare for the trip tomorrow. We’re driving six hours south to stay at Paul’s mother’s vacation home. Should be a fun drive, considering Tess wants to murder us both. I could barely sleep last night. One, because not having a door is an oddly traumatizing experience. Two, because every time I closed my eyes, I could see Tess’ dark expression in my mind.
“Might as well. You’re my only companion for the next few weeks.” He yanks the zipper on his bag before turning a surprisingly mild expression my way. I’ve been avoiding him since yesterday’s incident. The risks were mine to take, but I feel bad for dragging Parrish into it. Even Chasm is banned from the house for two weeks.
Grounded. Again. I can barely go a day before receiving another sentence.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, choking back the pain. I have no idea what’s going to happen to Maxine or Saffron or my grandparents. Tess really does have the power to make all of their lives miserable. She’s taken all of Parrish’s electronics, too. The only thing she doesn’t know about is my second phone, but I haven’t even turned it on since yesterday; I’m afraid to see what might happen if she finds out that I have it. “For dragging you into this, I mean. You were trying to save my ass and instead, I insulted you at the café …”
Parrish pauses for a moment, hands on his duffel bag, and turns to look at me. He’s much less angry than I expected, and I’m not sure what to make of that. Also, his hair is delightfully mussy and falling across his forehead in a glorious fop. I want to tousle it, and then kiss him, and then … shit, I don’t know.
“Don’t apologize for other peoples’ decisions,” he snaps, and then closes his eyes in frustration. “I’m not here to tell you how to live, Dakota, but I will say this: it gets exhausting after a while.”
“Is that why you don’t apologize for anything?” I try to make it a joke, but when Parrish opens those honey-almond eyes of his to look at me, I get chills. He’s so beautiful, so fucking beautiful. And not just on the outside. There’s a thread of kindness in him that he tries to pretend isn’t there. By all appearances, he’s just a rich dickhead. Underneath it, he’s actually nice. Even though I just think the word, it chokes me a bit because I hate to admit it.
He helped me escape the TV studio; he held me when I cried; he tried to save my ass at the café.
“What do you think Tess is going to do?” I ask when it becomes clear he has no intention of answering me. I move into Parrish’s room, pausing beside his desk and picking up the fake hand he uses to practice his art on. It’s been inked with an incredibly complex design made up of stars and moons; every square inch is filled with color. It’s absolutely stunning, but I can’t seem to make myself say it aloud.
“Do?” he queries back, his shadow falling across the desk. He’s standing right behind me; I can feel his breath stirring my hair. Shit. Shit, shit, shit. I turn around suddenly, almost too quickly, and find myself face to face with him. Something is different between us, something that changed that day when he followed me upstairs and pulled me into his arms. “She’s already done it: do you not see the missing doors?”
Parrish plucks the hand from my grip and cradles it close to his chest, like I’ve somehow marred his precious artwork.
“Is this the tattoo you want to give me?” I ask him as he opens one of his nightstand drawers and I see a bunch of fake body parts—mostly hands and feet—stuffed into it. All of them are covered with ink. “Holy crap. When I snooped in your room before, I’ll admit: I avoided that drawer in case you had crispy socks or something in it.” A laugh escapes me as Parrish raises a single brow in surprise. “Honestly, I’m glad I didn’t look. I know those are just silicone, and that you need them for practice, but it sort of also makes you look like a serial killer.”