We stared at each other.Am I your sex slave?I nearly blurted. But looking into his eyes, I knew I was wrong. There was lust there, for sure. But there wasn’t the edge of cruelty I remembered in Murray’s eyes. I couldn’t believe he’d force me into sex. I dropped my gaze, my face going scarlet. “Nothing.”
A lot of things flooded through me: humiliation, relief...and just a tiny bit of disappointment.
We drove on in silence, my brain working overtime. I’d just remembered something else, from Murray’s parking lot. After the anger, there’d been that other look he gave me, when he got me to promise I wouldn’t go back there. He’d lookedscared.There was only one thing that explained him getting angryandscared.
He was protecting me.
As crazy as that sounded, the guy whose reputation was built on breaking things and scaring people was trying to shield me from the worst of his world. As if he didn’t want me tainted by it. Was that it? I looked across at him but his expression didn’t give anything away.The idea that he felt something for me made my chest go unexpectedly light. Was it possible?Him?
“You keep staring at me, I’ll make you get out and walk,” he muttered.
“Sorry,” I said in a small voice. I faced front.
But I kept stealing glances at him the whole way home.
15
LOUISE
“School work?”asked Kayley in dismay. “You’re kidding, right?”
I shook my head and handed her another pile of worksheets. “You’re missing a lot of school and you’re going to be missing a lot more. I want to make sure that big brain of yours gets a workout.” I smiled and tried not to stare at how pale she looked, how sickly. I knew it was just the side effects, that the chemo was doing her good, long term. But part of me wanted to just rip the needle out of her arm and whisk her home.
Kayley studied a pack of worksheets on the Civil War. “I hate you,” she muttered.
I leaned in and gave her a hug in response. It went on a lot longer than I’d intended: I just couldn’t let go. “Okay,” she said at last, her voice muffled by my hair. “Enough, already.”
I let her go. But right at the last second, as I pulled back, she awkwardly clung to me again.
“You okay?” I asked, keeping my voice carefully neutral. “Like, the food’s okay and everything?”
“Sure. Except they only have lime jello.You know how I feel about lime jello.”
I looked into her eyes and I could see the fear there. But I couldalso see the determination: she really, really didn’t want to break down and cry and she begged me with her eyes to help her.
I nodded, stood up and slung my purse over my shoulder. “Okay. I’ll see what I can do about the lime jello. And do the worksheets. When you get back from Europe, I want you to slot straight back in as a grade-A student, you hear me?”
She made a big show of sighing and rolling her eyes but she looked relieved...just as I’d intended. I wanted to convince her—okay, convince both of us—that this was just temporary, a glitch. That before the end of the year she’d be a normal teen again, heading back to school.
Because the alternative...that didn’t bear thinking about.
The next morning, we went to look round the grow house. Just as Sean had said, the realtor was desperate to rent. In less than an hour, the paperwork was complete, we had handed over the money, and we were standing holding the keys in the middle of the empty house.
“We can fit about eight tables in here,” I said, pacing out the living room. “And another two in the kitchen—I want to keep the sink free so I can hook up water lines. And another four in each bedroom...” I was muttering mostly to myself. “It’s almost a pity there are walls. It’d be easier if it was one big space, like a warehouse.”
Sean nodded. “I was thinking the same thing,” he said. “Should be easy enough.” He knocked experimentally on a wall.
I gaped at him. “I wasn’tserious!We can’t knock the walls down, we’re renting this place! There are rules in the lease! We’re not even meant to redecorate!”
He blinked at me. “I reckon we’re not meant to grow dope, either.”
“But...what happens in six months, when we move out?”
He tilted his head to one side and he gave me a look that told me just how naive I was being. And yet it didn’t feel patronizing at all. It felt as if he thought my innocence was adorable. “You let me worry about that,” he said.
Fine.This was why I’d asked for his help in the first place, after all, because he knew all this stuff. I checked out the windows. “We’ll need to do something to stop the light getting out.”
“A lot of people cover them with newspaper,” said Sean. “Or use blackout blinds. But it looks obvious. Who has their blinds shut all day, every day?”
