“Made you what?”
“Stunted.” I realized it was true. “I feel like some kind of medieval princess, except my ivory tower is a coffee shop and my big brother is my warden.”
“Then tell him, Cass.” Daisy said it softly, like she half expected Bram to appear, to be angry we were talking about him this way.
“Easy for you to say.”
She made it sound so simple, but staring down the barrel of Bram’s return, knowing I was going to have to tell him about the Hunt and the Hawks, the last thing I wanted to do was add another touchy subject to the list.
She laughed. “I won’t deny it. I can barely speak to Bram without shaking in my shoes. But at some point you’re going to have to be honest with him about the way you feel.”
“Maybe.” I wasn’t ready to think about what total honesty with Bram would look like.
“Why do you want to know?” Cassie asked. “About the sex trafficking thing?”
“I found some of the flyers of missing girls on the bulletin board in the shop,” I said. “I looked them up but all I could find was a couple statements from the police about an ongoing investigation.”
“I always thought it had something to do with what happened at Aventine.”
I remembered that story too: a bunch of Aventine Alumni who’d been trafficking local girls. “It’s possible.”
Daisy looked at her phone, then stood to take her plate to the kitchen. “It’s weird right?”
“Which part?”
“All of it,” she said. “But specifically the sex trafficking thing and all the people who seem to be involved in it. It makes me wonder about all the other things we might not know about Blackwell Falls.”
“That’s a scary thought.”
Daisy pulled on her cardigan. “When does Bram come home?”
She knew he was in Bali with Maeve and the guys, knew Bailey, Maeve’s best friend was housesitting at the loft, taking care of Ray, Maeve’s rescue dog, and Lucifer, the cat who hated Bram.
“A couple of days, I think.”
She laughed when she heard how miserable I sounded. “Don’t sound so excited.”
“Can you blame me?”
I wasnotlooking forward to my confrontation with Bram. He was going to be apoplectic about what I’d gotten myself into with the Hunt. Add in the Hawks, who were more than a little unhinged, and the situation had all the makings of a certified shit show.
32
CASSIE
I foundthe Hawks outside in the hot tub when I got home later that night. The sun was just starting to set, the light turning violet, steam rising from the water. The outdoor lights had come on, illuminating an assortment of plants and bushes that were planted around the walkways.
But it wasn’t the landscaping that got my attention. It was them, hair wet, their muscular chests rising up out of the hot tub, their tattoos an extension of the murky water bubbling around them.
Vigo grinned when he saw me. “Just in time. Come get naked.”
“I have to put my stuff down.” It was an excuse. After the mind-blowing sex (was it called sex if someone didn’t actually fuck you?) with Jagger a couple nights earlier, I wasn’t sure I was ready for all three of them.
“So put it down.” Hawk’s eyes were like chips of amber ice. “Then come get naked like Vigo told you to do.”
“Unless you really want to say no.” There was a knowing light in Jagger’s blue eyes.
“You can always say no.” Vigo grinned. “But you have to mean it.”
