We spilled out of the room and into the convention hall. There were a few people milling around, in between presentations or events, but it was a hell of a lot quieter and less crowded than the debate room had been.
“He saw me,” Maeve said, her voice shaking. “I’m pretty sure he saw me.”
“Fuck,” Bram said, stalking away before pacing back toward us. “Fuck.”
“I’m sorry,” I told Maeve with a frustrated sigh. “I didn’t see that level of security coming.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Remy said.
“It matters,” Bram snapped. “Who knows when we’ll get another shot at him?”
Remy held up a phone. It took a few seconds for us to realize it wasn’t his phone.
“Wait…” Maeve said. “Is that…?”
Remy nodded. “I got his phone.”
“Holy shit,” I said at the same time Bram said, “How the fuck…?”
I was surprised Remy had managed to stay upright in the crowd, let alone that he’d managed to lift Todd’s phone.
Remy shrugged. “You said improvise. There were so many people, and his jacket pocket was right there. Figured it was worth a shot.”
Maeve’s eyes were wide, her gaze trained on the doors to the debate stage, like she expected Ethan Todd to come roaringthrough them at any second. I put my arm around her shoulders. “Let’s get out of here.”
We headed for the exit.
“How hard is it to break into a phone?” Maeve asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I know someone who does.”
43
MAEVE
Aloha was still tryingto break into the phone a week after Apex. We’d spent the first couple of days pacing the loft, like that would make it all happen sooner, but Aloha had warned us that there was no guarantee he could do it at all, and even if he could it would probably take a while.
So we’d gone back to our lives, Ethan Todd still in the background like a shadow we couldn’t shake.
I was relieved the next weekend when Olivia invited me along for a thrift trip to furnish her new room. She and my mom were going to make a day of it and after the conversation with Olivia about life after June, I was determined to be there when she wanted me around.
Still, I was nervous. I’d been avoiding my parents because I didn’t know how to talk to them about my new roommates, especially since they didn’t realize there was more than one of them.
I also knew I needed to talk to them about it, needed to be honest. I was too close to my family to think I could get away with never introducing them to the three men I was in love with, too close to my family to want to keep them separate.
I wanted the Butchers to be part of my life — my whole life — and that included my parents. I just didn’t know how to tell them the whole story without making them think I’d gone off the deep end.
Luckily Olivia kept up a steady stream of chatter through the first thrift store, and then through lunch. I was more than happy to defer the conversation with my mom in favor of details about Olivia’s life, including her latest extracurricular, Debate Club, and a boy she’d been crushing on for the better part of a year who finally seemed to notice her.
It was nice to set aside thoughts about Ethan Todd, to remember when things were simple and all I’d had to think about was my next exam or my high school boyfriend.
After lunch we headed to another thrift store three towns over. We’d bought a new dresser for Olivia at the last store, plus a bookcase and a full size mirror with a gold frame, all stuff that would have to be delivered. Now Olivia wanted to pick up some smaller things to decorate the bookcase and the floating shelves she was keeping.
She took off as soon as we stepped inside the store, a cavernous warehouse-like space filled to the brim with furniture and metal shelves stacked with glassware, dishes, books, art, clothes, and pretty much anything else a person could hope to find.
My mom laughed. “And she’s off.”
“I bet we could go have a coffee, come back, and she wouldn’t even know we’d been gone,” I said.
