Emma rolls back beside me. “How are you guys holding up?” she whispers, barely audible over the steady hum of RJ’s music.
“How do you think?”
Her face drops. “Clara said it could be months.”
I nod, not wanting to think about it.
“That sucks.”
“Yup.”
We watch Evie and RJ work, our beers eventually emptying.
And when Evie turns back to Emma, there are unshed tears in her eyes. “He found the guy, my stalker, Emma. Goddamn Richie. You remember me telling you about him? How he wasalways everywhere I was in high school, but never actually spoke to me? About how weird he was? It, it’s been him, this whole time.”
Emma bounds across the room, pulling Evie into her arms. “That’s good, right? We can bring this to the police?”
Evie nods against her chest. “Yeah. RJ says I should say I hired a private investigator.”
And then she crumples, years of terror that have weighed her down, restrictions that were keeping her from having the life on stage she’d dreamed for herself, everything changing in an instant for her.
RJ watches for a moment, but then is back at it, his next project up on his screens. This moment isn’t the one he’s working towards. It was just something hanging over him he needed off his to-do list.
It’s weird that important moments in one person’s life can just be a normal day for someone else. Yesterday was a day that broke the hearts of everyone who lives in this house. But to everybody else? It was a muggy August Thursday. Maybe it was a good day. Maybe it was a bad day. But while my world imploded, the rest of the world kept spinning.
And it makes me so damn angry.
Emma and Evie decide they’re going out for brunch, promising to come back later to check on Jansen, and I show them to the door. Once it shuts behind me, the silence echoes. I go to my room, set up a canvas, and without hesitation, I paint my anger.
Swaths of thick oil, of emotions, not fussy details. Bold and vicious and nothing like my usual technique, the piece comes out of me in silence, no music, no delicate hum between songs marking progress like usual. Nothing tricky. Nothing pointing at someone else’s style.
Only me, my damn bitter heart splattered across the canvas, available for anyone to see.
When it feels done, my anger stays.
It turns out my tears are just as bitter as my heart.
Chapter 55
Trips
It horrifies me how easy it is to fall back into my role as Father’s little stick, while Trevor plays his up-and-coming carrot. The rehearsal dinner and wedding have Clara and me side by side in family photos, and I’ve never wanted to yank the camera away from a photographer like I do when I think about her being linked with the Westerhouse name forever. She’s so much better than our fucked-up family.
Mattie gloms onto us for the weekend, but she mentions nothing about us being locked up at night. I know she knows. She knows she knows. And in true Westerhouse tradition, we say nothing about it.
Instead, I spend half my time stealing drinks from her and the other half avoiding drinking my own. I need to be better, and as tempting as it is to survive this torture in a haze of alcohol, that’s not going to cut it. Not with Clara’s safety on the line.
After the festivities end, Clara and Mattie get taken back to the house, and I’m left with my father and a few of his business associates, Falk always half a step behind me. My father likes to say that trust is earned. He’s not wrong, either in the statement or in keeping Falk on me like a dirty piece of gum on a shoe. There is no trust here. There never should have been.
Before, I was a broken kid, and I thought that his trust in me was something I should take pride in. Not something that would fuck me up beyond repair.
They always talk about how teenagers are dumb, that they don’t get how actions have consequences.
I don’t think they were talking about my situation, but the results were the same. A lifetime of consequences from choices I made as a kid. And my biggest failure was trusting that my father knows best.
Ignoring the conversation, knowing I’m not here for my charm, I try to push away the worry about the next few weeks. Soon we’ll be back on campus. Soon the asshole progenitor will have to give us access to the internet. Maybe even phones. Soon we’ll be able to check in, touch base, make sure things are still moving in the direction they should be.
Two days into this project, and the isolation is already making my skin crawl.
