This time I had the decency not to answer. We both knew I had been, so there was no sense denying it.
“Did you need something, Em?”
I shook my head, backing up a step, sliding along the wall to put space between us. “I was … uh … just going to my room.”
“I’ll walk with you.”
“No, you … uh … don’t need to do that.” At that moment, a very juvenile giggle escaped, making my face flame with mortification.
Knox’s eyes remained locked with mine. I was momentarily mesmerized, captivated by the squareness of his jaw and the stubble that darkened it. His eyebrows were thick and dark, one of them quirking slightly as though daring me to argue again. He was so … so… He made me feel like a mouse being stalked by a housecat, trapped and cornered, potentially in grave danger, but not before he was finished playing with me first.
I swallowed, the sound so loud I feared he could hear it. Whether or not he could, the corner of his mouth curled up into a smirk that had my knees going full Jell-O.
“I’m looking forward to dinner,” he said softly.
Was he leaning in? Or was that my imagination?
“Me, too,” I lied. What I had meant to tell him was that I couldn’t have dinner with him tonight. Unfortunately, I hadn’t had enough time to process what Hannah had told me to formulate any sort of rebuttal.
This time Knox leaned in enough I was well aware of the shift. More so when his mouth was hovering over mine. I pressed my back to the wall, attempting to steal all the space necessary to keep our lips from touching, but I had nowhere to go.
“Good.” His lips brushed mine in the gentlest of kisses.
Before I could process what was happening, Knox stepped back and smirked down at me. A second later, he turned and strolled down the hall.
I watched him until he disappeared into the room across from mine.
It was then I realized I was touching my lips, still feeling the tingle he’d left there.
And yes, that was my heart attempting to beat right out of my chest.
In an effort to keep a safe distance from Knox and the strange sensations I felt when I was around him, I spent the next hour in my bedroom, hoping no one would bother me.
I was curled up on my bed, scrolling through my Instagram feed on the iPad that had made its way into my room on my eighteenth birthday. No one had ever copped to giving it to me, but there was no doubt in my mind that it had not come from Kitty, hence the reason I kept it hidden.
And while surfing social media was no doubt a sin in Kitty’s eyes, I got so much pleasure from watching the lives of others pass by. I had always envied those I followed, wishing I had the sort of life that led to pictures of meals I enjoyed, places I visited, friends and family I hung out with. To this day, I’d never shared a meal outside of this house with anyone who was not named Rhett or Kitty Campbell, and even those instances were extremely rare. And I certainly never snapped a photo of my dinner, showing off what I was enjoying.
Of course, paranoid as I was, I never posted any pictures of my own or reached out to others, never messaged anyone for fear that I would screw it up and lose the one glimpse of the outside world that I had.
It was kinda sad, really. Some might even call it pathetic.
In my defense, there was no way for me to meet people. From the day Kitty had moved into this house, she’d become the helicopter stepmom, hovering over me. And when Kitty wasn’t keeping an eagle eye on my activities, she was paying someone else to do it. Aside from the rare instances when she left the premises, the only time I had to myself was at night when I was asleep, and only for exactly the eight hours Kitty allotted for that activity. Even then there were nights when someone—I wasn’t exactly sure who—would come in and check on me. I knew this because when I was twelve and first suspected it, I’d gotten creative, putting a piece of tape on the door and the jamb to see if I could catch them. There were plenty of mornings I would wake up to find the seal had been broken, meaning someone had come in, but I had never caught anyone in the act.
Of course, when I was fifteen, Daniel’d had a security camera installed in my bedroom at Kitty’s insistence. It took some time for me to figure out the blindspot, which happened to be the upper right corner of my room, which I’d managed to utilize sufficiently, but only because I’d successfully pushed my bed closer and closer to the wall over a period of time. Even now, if someone were to monitor me on the camera, they would only see my back and the pillow I strategically placed—just in case—but not the iPad I had discreetly hidden in that blessed blind spot.
As I got older, I had always thought Kitty would back off, give me some room to become my own person, to be an adult. She never had. Even now, Kitty kept me sheltered and secluded, insisting that I would not be sullied by the sinners of the world. She even had a say in what I watched on television. Heaven forbid I might witness something distasteful that would turn me into a whore. Kitty’s words. In my opinion, she did it more to keep me from seeing what life was like outside of these walls. If I was exposed to the real world, there was a greater chance I would leave and never come back and spoil all her fun.
The upside was, my education had never been lacking. From the time I started first grade—schooled by a private tutor right here in the house—I had been exposed to a myriad of subjects. And when Kitty took over my education upon her arrival, the expansion of my knowledge had only increased. Since Kitty had never allowed me to pursue one subject specifically, my knowledge was broad and continuously expanding. I played the piano, the violin, and the flute, though I didn’t care much for any of them. I knew how to sew, knit, and crochet, although those were my least favorite activities. I was good at tennis, decent at gymnastics, and I excelled at dance, which was the only activity I thoroughly enjoyed. Likely why Kitty limited it. I was also fluent in Spanish, Italian, and French and knew enough German to get through a conversation with relative ease.
My education didn’t stop once I’d earned my official diploma though. At that point, Kitty continued to pile on more lessons, insisting I continued to evolve despite the fact she had dashed my dreams of going to a university and getting the social education I was so desperately lacking. Although I’d always wanted to pursue business and management, those were two areas Kitty said I would never need, telling me without words that my hopes of one day owning Delta June’s were little more than a pipe dream.
According to Kitty, it was my sole responsibility to become a woman to be respected. And byrespected, she meant one with a mind filled with knowledge but not the common sense to get by in the real world. Kitty had ensured I would forever be dependent on them by stunting my social growth and keeping me secluded.
Not only was she a total hypocrite as well as evil, I was pretty sure Kitty had a screw or two loose.
So I took some satisfaction by indulging in this voyeuristic lifestyle, utilizing social media to admire the excitement others enjoyed outside the confines of this twenty-three-thousand-square-foot prison cell for the past few years. I didn’t have a phone, then again I didn’t have anyone to call, but I did have my iPad.
The only positive was that everything was going to change tomorrow. According to the rumors circulating through the mansion, my stepmother had stated I would officially be an adult, which I took to mean I could make my own decisions.
