She gathers Brooklyn’s things and hurries her out the door, thanking Connor and me again. “You guys are cute together, by the way.”
I glance at Connor. He’s standing at the door, poised to close it. “Bye, Cassidy.”
Her laughter floats through before the door shuts.
Connor turns to me, his eyes dark and carnal. “Since you climbed out of my bed this morning, I have been waiting to get you back into one.” He stalks toward me.
I shriek and run to the hallway. He chases me down, catching me at the foot of the bed.
“Right where I want you.” He pushes aside my hair and kisses my shoulder. He bites the skin, the tiniest bit of pain mixed with so much pleasure.
“Mmmm,” I moan, my voice thick.
Connor drags his lips across my skin, to the hollow of my neck. His tongue darts out, tasting, and his hand slips down to the front of the shorts I changed into before Brooklyn arrived. I groan again, my knees weakening, and cling to his arms to keep me upright.
“Turnabout is fair play.” His voice vibrates over my skin. He pushes me back gently until I’m lying on the bed. In minutes I’m reaching for a pillow to cover my face. The homes on the street are close together, the walls are thin, and Connor makes me loud. We figured that out last night.
Tomorrow, I’ll tell him everything. He deserves to know why I am the way I am. For tonight, I want to pretend to be normal.
14
Connor
“I’m Elizabeth.”
Brynn’s back is to me, and that’s probably a good thing. I don’t know which reaction is on my face right now. I know which one is in my head. It’s a littleWhat the fuckmixed withAt least I know something about you.
“Okay.” The word slides slowly from my lips. I don’t know what to say next. Besides, I think Brynn is the person who needs to keep talking.
“Do you want to know why I’m going by my middle name?”
More relief. At least the name I’ve known her by is in her real name at all. I think Brynn suits her better anyway.
“Why?”
Brynn turns over. Her eyes are frightened, wide and round, but they’re on my face. She lays her head on her pillow and continues talking. “Until I decided to come here, I was Elizabeth Brynn Montgomery. Technically, I still am. It’s not officially changed. Nobody ever really called me Elizabeth, anyway. Liz, mostly. Lizzie, to my closest friends, and then my name was in the media, and they referred to me as Elizabeth. Kind of like your mother calling you by your full name when you’re in trouble. That’s what I was in. A whole lot of trouble.” Her eyes fill with tears. “I’d been reckless for a while, but never anything too terrible. On the morning it all happened, I wasn’t doing anything wrong. I wasn’t speeding, I wasn’t texting, I hadn’t been drinking.”
The puzzle pieces aren’t fitting yet, but they are shifting.
“A new mom jumped in front of my car. With her stroller.” Brynn chokes on the wordstroller. She squeezes her eyes shut.
This is so much worse than what I thought it was. I don’t know what I thought, but it was never this. “Brynn, you don’t have to tell me all this. I see how upsetting it is.”
She takes a deep breath and opens her eyes. Now they are shiny but less frightened. “I do, Connor. Keeping the truth from everybody is a terrible burden. If I can tell at least one person, it makes me feel just a little bit lighter.”
I take her hand and wrap it in my own. “I’m listening.”
“They died instantly. It was a major road, and she just…” Her voice trails off, her head shaking rapidly. “I still feel it sometimes. The awful bumps. You’ve never heard or felt a sound like this, Connor. Never. There’s no way to describe it, but it will never leave me. I can’t un-feel it or un-hear it.”
Tears trickle out of her eyes and run sideways into the pillow, but she doesn’t stop talking.
“The media didn’t care that I was innocent. They didn’t care what the police told them. They cared only that their headlines got clicks. I was turned from a club-promoter to a raging, selfish party girl overnight. They dragged up every person I ever came into contact with, even people I don’t remember having a conversation with. A couple years before I’d been pulled over, and cited for drinking and driving. They used that in their smear campaign, of course.”
Her eyes are haunted, the ghosts of what she’s been through floating through her mind. It wrecks me to see her in so much pain.
“Nobody needed to read the story and see the date. All they needed to make a judgment was the headline.Driver who struck and killed mother and baby cited for DUIsounded a hell of a lot like the DUI went hand-in-hand with the accident. I was a victim of what that woman did, but in the court of public opinion, I was the executioner. I was fired from my job. Nobody wanted my name associated with their business, my so-called friends were history, and I pushed away any real friends I had.”
“So you came here to get away from it?”
