Chapter 1
Rey
I had never thought that I’d one day fly on a private jet, but here we were. I’d also never imagined that if I’d get to do this, I’d be curled up in fetal position, doing my best to keep breathing while I hid inside one of my friend Lake’s hoodies.
“Not long now,” River murmured, petting my back.
I knew he was nervous too, but that was the normal kind of nervousness for someone who hadn’t flown before. I’d been on regular planes, but flying wasn’t my issue.
Feeling a tremor go through my body, I tried not to think how much I’d once enjoyed the view out of a plane window. Hell, I was trying to ignore the fact that we were on a plane at all.
What felt like hours later, the captain told us we would start the descent, and I forced myself to sit straight. I still couldn’t even glance outside, but Lake’s encouraging grin made me give him a wavery smile.
Lake’s lawyer, Hudson, sat with him. They’d talked business a little, but not much. We were here, because about a month ago, Hudson had come to the apartment we’d shared in New York City, and he’d told Lake his aunt Ruth had passed away.
Lake hadn’t been close to Ruth, only ever meeting her once when he was a kid, but she’d still left her life’s work to him. It consisted of a horse rescue and book rights to her career as a bestselling author.
It felt wild even to me, and I didn’t have a horse in this race. Or rescue. Hah.
Either way, Lake and his best friend River had made it clear that where they went, I’d go too, so here I was. Maybe that means I’m one of the horses in their race.
The thing with the guys was that they were in their mid-twenties, and I was seventeen. They had careers—although both were on hold as they figured out what to do in Illinois—and I was a runaway. I hadn’t told them anything but my name, and I hadn’t been honest about that, either.
I was still running, and I had a year more until I was a legal adult and could start living my life freely again. Once my family, my dad especially, had no control over me legally, I’d be free. I hoped. It wouldn’t be that simple, but right now the guys and Hudson were respecting my wishes and had promised not to try to figure out who I was or why I was running.
It hadn’t been until they’d scooped me up from a frozen sidewalk last November that I’d realized the true meaning of family. Now, in May, I felt completely safe in a way I hadn’t ever before. Except whenever I had to go outside. No, the trip from New York to the rescue in Illinois wasn’t easy. At. All.
* * * *
Everything blurred together once we landed. At least Hudson had gotten hold of the jet from someone he knew, so the fact that I didn’t have an ID didn’t come into question. It would, eventually, but not today.
The big black SUV Hudson drove was kind of funny for a lawyer, but the tinted windows gave me some buffer between the endless sky that made my skin crawl, and I could even occasionally check out the view.
That was right until we got to the part where we’d be living outside Joliet. It was all flat, all big sky over fields that Hudson said would mostly be either corn or green carpets of soybean, and every now and then a house or a farm dotted the vastness with a tree or actual strips of woods here and there.
I was shaking again by the time we got to the rescue. Hudson parked near a low building of some sort.
“That’s the office, and on your right is the house.” He got out of the car.
River had opened the window a bit at some point, just enough that I had a view out now that we had stopped. I could see some cabins across part of the yard.
“Okay, you hang in here and we’ll figure this out,” River patted my thigh and slid out of the car.
As soon as he was out and the door closed, I heard him ask, “Who’s Hottie McEyebrows?”
Hudson let out an amused sound. “Boys, this is Theo Fenton, he’s the foreman.”
Ah, this was the guy who we needed to get along with. Ruth’s will said that if after the three months’ sort of a trial period Lake chose to sell the place, Theo would get most of the money for the sale.
I heard Lake and River introduce themselves in their usual playful way of adding “no relation” to the introductions.
A voice I hadn’t heard before, likely Theo, sounded amused. “Lake and River, huh?”
I leaned to the side to look out, just as he glanced at the car. We made eye contact, and something about that made me panic. I quickly pulled back.
I doubted he was intimidating or dangerous. It was just that I was built different these days.
“That’s our friend Rey. He’s agoraphobic and this has been hard for him,” River told Theo in his big brotherly warning tone I’d grown familiar with.
