And I was being a bitch. I was using him. Iwasteasing him.
I turned onto my back, staring at the underside of his mattress.
I couldn’t stop replaying the way he looked at me tonight, the weight behind his voice when he said he was starting to feel things. Every syllable had carried the truth.
He liked me. Like,reallyliked me.
I rolled onto my side, hugging the thin blanket tighter around my waist. My skin still tingled where his hand rested, his thumb tracing slow patterns over my hip, leaving goosebumps. It hadn’t been casual. It hadn’t been playful.
And I felt it. Deep down, painfully. Thewant.
But that was the problem.
This wasn’t supposed to be real. Max had already ruined the illusion in just a few hours. I was stupid to think we could play at something this intimate without consequences. As soon as I proposed the fake dating scenario, it was as if a doorway had opened, and suddenly, we both realized we liked each other. That we had liked each other for years.
He had looked so good on the lake tonight. And the invisible string between us was tightening, suffocating, drawing me in until it felt like falling for him wasn’t just possible. It was inevitable.
Max saw me for me. Every jagged, broken edge. He read my silences, my moods, and didn’t flinch. He didn’t try to fix me. He just sawme.
I didn’t want to admit to myself how attracted I was to him. It scared me how badly I wanted him.
I paused, making sure his breathing was still slow, and then my hand slid beneath the sheets, down between my thighs. I was desperate and aching. I bit my lip as I imagined my hand was his—his mouth, his weight pressing me down and making me forget everything but him.
I thought about the way his gaze lingered too long, heavy, and hungry, like he wanted to devour me. My hips lifted into my own hand, chasing the release.
We’d been friends forever, two halves of the same messed-up whole. Being with him made sense, perfect sense. And when I finally shattered against my palm, muffling a moan into the pillow, the only name in my head was his.
He meant everything to me. And maybe that was why I couldn’t bear the thought of losing him.
As friends, I was able to keep him at a distance. It was easy to keep things from him when we were talking on the phonemiles apart. But if we dated, that shred of privacy was gone. He would find out because I wouldn’t be able to hide it from him.
And then, what would that even mean—for Mom and me?
We’d been federally protected assets for seven years, but I still wasn’t sure what we were being protected from. My dad? Or something else?
Whenever I asked, Mom said it was “complicated,” and Agent West said it was “classified,” that normal witness protection rules didn’t pertain to us.
Other protected families didn’t have agents; they just resumed their lives in the normal world, but with new names and new identities. I didn’t understand why we were always monitored. Why had everything stayed the same, but different?
But the rules were simple. Don’t talk about Dad. Don’t talk about thepast. Don’t get too close.
I knew my Dad was a bad person. I heard my mom call him “the Butcher” once, her voice low like she didn’t want the walls to hear.
When I asked too many questions, like about the bodies, or why my Dad did what he did, West got quiet in that way that made me feel like I’d broken something, and Mom would change the subject.
But where did dating fit into this world I lived in?
Jackson had been vetted, West said. He was clear. I had been okay to date him. But where did Max fit in? Dating him meant questions. Questions meant details. And Max always had questions.
My phone pinged, jolting me out of my thoughts.
JACKSON KENSWICK
If you fuck him, you die.
A deep feeling of dread rippled through me. A memory of last winter broke through, dragging me back to my bedroom inMarigold. A memory that reminded me that some things aren’t meant to be so simple.
7 MONTHS EARLIER
