‘You should sit down.’ He pointed in the general direction of the sofa, his eyes downcast. ‘I’ll get you some water.’
‘I don’t want any water,’ I told him as I reached for the marble kitchen counter and held on tight to the sharp edge, something cold, something real. Something true. ‘I want you to tell me what’s going on right now. You lied to me?’
Outside, the sun shifted and the light found his face, the tight, tense set of his jaw etched with gold and grim disappointment in his eyes. He sank, defeated, onto the end of his bed.
‘I’m not supposed to tell anyone,’ he said, weaving his hands together and tightening his grip until his knuckles turned white. ‘If they find out, we’ll both be in so much trouble.’
‘Find out what? Who’s they?’ I demanded, still clinging to the marble countertop. ‘What could be so bad it’s got you this freaked out?’
The minimalist apartment seemed to grow smaller by the second, suddenly stark and bare. There were no plants anywhere. It was the first time I hadn’t been able to see something green since arriving in Savannah and it felt wrong, like I couldn’t breathe properly. On the bed, Wyn pushed his hair back, away from his face.
‘Cole came to town a couple of months ago,’ he began, his downcast eyes on the floor. ‘He works for my mom, she sent him here on some project, something to do with the rental unit upstairs, I think, I don’t know all the details. A couple of weeks ago, he stopped answering his phone, so Mom sent me down to check up on him. This is his place but when I got here, it was untouched. Like no one had set foot inside since the last tenants left, bed not slept in, no food in the refrigerator, nothing.’
‘Not a great sign,’ I admitted. The solid marble counter creaked ominously in my hand. I loosened my grip before I accidentally snapped it in two. ‘Why did they send you? Why didn’t your parents come looking for him?’
‘Dad doesn’t get around so well, he busted his hip in a car accident a couple of years ago, and Mom …’ He rubbed the palms of his hands down his thighs and exhaled heavily. ‘Mom is not big on answering questions. If she tells you to do something, you do it.’
He looked up at me, clearly upset. His face was red and blotchy, and his voice was strained, like he was having to force out every word.
‘Aside from the school stuff, everything else is true,’ he insisted. ‘Mom didn’t want anyone asking me difficult questions about why I was here so she said it was better to have an easy story to share. I wanted to tell you the truth but I couldn’t.’
‘But you’re telling me now,’ I said. I wanted to trust him. I wanted to believe him, I needed to. But I couldn’t, not just yet.
‘Just couldn’t lie to you anymore. You’re too important to me.’ He shrugged and gave me a thin smile. ‘You’re the only thing that makes sense when nothing else does. This should’ve been a simple errand, drive down here, kick Cole’s ass for not calling our mom then hang out in Savannah for a few days. Cole’s not great at keeping in touch, I figured he’d lost hisphone again or met someone and gotten distracted—’ He paused to shake his head at the irony of that statement. ‘But there’s no trace of him, Em. I’ve been searching for two whole weeks, no one’s seen him, no one remembers him, he’s not on the security cameras. It’s like he was never here in the first place.’
‘Are you sure he was?’ I replied. ‘If he’s that unreliable, maybe he bailed on his job altogether.’
‘Not even Cole would go against our mother.’
His eyes slowly worked their way up my body, lingering on my lips for a second, before finally meeting mine. ‘Something’s wrong. Mom and Dad are freaking out, my grandpa is calling me around the clock, and I don’t know what to do.’
A cloud passed over the sun and the whole apartment fell into shadow, white walls turning grey. So Wyn had a family secret he felt he couldn’t share. That was hardly something I could hold against him.
‘I still don’t understand why you didn’t tell me,’ I said. ‘Don’t you trust me?’
‘I would trust you with my life,’ he answered, standing abruptly. ‘But what if you’d told someone else, your grandmother or Lydia, and they went to the cops?’
‘Because that would be bad?’
‘Very bad. Cole has a record.’ Wyn’s words were flat and devoid of emotion. ‘And a violent temper.’
‘Then why did your mom send him here alone in the first place?’ I asked, my heartbeat quickening in my chest.
‘Because Cole has a record and a violent temper,’ he answered. ‘Whatever she sent him here to do, she thought that might be helpful.’
‘When you said your mom was an artist, are you sure you didn’t mean mob boss?’ I took another look around the apartment, searching for clues to the truth about his family. No horses heads or machine guns lying around but that didn’tmean his parents weren’t into something he knew nothing about. Parents, it turned out, were good at keeping secrets.
‘Em, I’m sorry,’ he said, his voice low and husky. ‘I told you my family was complicated.’
He moved towards me slowly, digging one hand into his dark ash waves, and my toes curled inside my shoes as I watched and waited. ‘I would understand if you didn’t want to see me again. I don’t want to get you into any trouble.’
‘Believe me, I’m entirely capable of getting myself into trouble without your help,’ I replied, shaking. ‘And you know there’s nothing in the world you could say that would make me not want to see you again.’
When the caps of Wyn’s boots touched the tips of my shoes, he stopped and waited for permission to cross the invisible barrier I’d put up between us. I placed my hand on his chest. Permission granted.
‘Every family has its secrets,’ I whispered as he rested his forehead against mine. ‘There are things I haven’t told you yet.’
‘But we’re not our families, right?’ he replied. ‘We shouldn’t have to carry their burdens.’
