Half-Truths: New York Times Bestselling Author

by Contreras, Claire

  “You guys are always wearing black though. I can . . . it would take me a second.”

  “You look perfect.”

  “Are you sure? Because I could—” I turned slightly. He grabbed my hand to stop me from walking away. I whipped back, heart pounding.

  “You couldn’t look more perfect if you tried. Leave the jacket.”

  “Oh,” I whispered. “Thank you.”

  He let go of my hand and I locked the door, walking beside him to the elevator.

  “So, that was weird with the bag and the blood and pee and stuff,” I said.

  “It’s necessary.”

  “The card said they wouldn’t clone me.” I felt myself smile as we rode down in the elevator. “And that it’s not a sex club.”

  “Pity.” He glanced over at me.

  “Which part?”

  “Both.”

  I laughed. “The world does not need two Amelia Bastón’s.”

  “I beg to differ.”

  I thought about it some more as we walked through the lobby and decided I would hate having a clone.

  “Do you normally go to football games?”

  “Not really.” He walked to the left. I stopped.

  “Isn’t it that way?”

  “I’m driving.”

  “Oh.”

  “Are you going to follow me or are you expecting me to pull the car up like one of your chauffeurs?”

  “I don’t have chauffeurs.” I blinked and started walking toward him again.

  “You don’t? Wow. Could’ve fooled me.”

  “I use Uber drivers, thank you very much.”

  “Do you always request a black car?”

  “First of all, I feel judged.” I paused, pursing my lips. He bit his lip to keep from laughing and I wondered what I could say to push him over the edge. “Secondly, I am not that much of a diva.”

  “No? What sneakers are you wearing?”

  “I said diva. I didn’t say I don’t buy nice things.” I stuck my tongue out.

  He smiled, pulling out car keys and clicking the button. I stopped walking again, this time right in front of the passenger seat, which he opened for me and helped me as I got inside the cabin. I inhaled a deep breath and exhaled. It smelled like him, like his sheets, like what I’d been craving the last few days but couldn’t have because I mean, what was I supposed to do? Tell him I found him insanely attractive and funny and fun to be around and that I never wanted to leave his bed again? Yeah, it didn’t work like that. He climbed into the driver’s side, shut the door, strapped on his seatbelt and started the truck.

  “I don’t know what I was expecting you to drive, but a Ford truck wasn’t it.”

  “What were you expecting?” he glanced at me. “A Chevy?”

  “Not a truck at all.” I laughed. “Nolan has a Porsche and you guys are like twins, so I figured something like that.”

  “I’m not willing to ask my father for anything, especially not a fucking Porsche.” He winked. “But if that’s the kind of stuff you’re impressed by and you want me to get a Porsche next year, I will.”

  “I’m not impressed by that.” I felt myself blush as I looked away. “Besides, who’s to say you’ll even know me next year?”

  “You don’t think you will?”

  “I’m not sure. You’re already sort of famous. By then, you’ll be off in the NHL getting paid big money. I doubt you’ll want to hang out with me.”

  “Whose bed will you sleep in when you’re tired and can’t get any rest in your own?”

  “I guess I’ll have to find another willing participant.” I focused on the way his hands seemed to tighten on the steering wheel.

  It was impossible that he was jealous, right? I mean, Logan Fitzgerald jealous of a hypothetical scenario in which I shared a bed with another man? Yeah right. Still, from where I was sitting, it looked like he cared. We arrived at the football stadium and walked inside, through the door labeled for media, where a security guard was manning the door. I flashed my badge. Logan flashed his smile. We both got in easily.

  “Do you think they always have security here?” I asked as we headed toward the field.

  “Only when both teams are using the premises to practice. It’s new. We have them too.”

  “It’s so weird that they’d think two-hundred-pound of muscle guys would need protection.”

  “Do you feel like you need protection?” he asked. I made the mistake of whipping my head toward him too quickly before saying no and I could tell he didn’t believe me. He stopped dead in his tracks. I did too because it would’ve been weird not to. “Why do you feel like you need protection?”

  “No reason. I never even said those words.”

  “Your face did.”

  “Well, ignore my face.”

  “Can’t.” His lips twitched. “I’m looking right at it.”

  “Well, stop looking.” I turned around and walked faster toward the field.

  He chuckled as he walked after me. I didn’t know why, but the way he went zero to sixty when he thought I could potentially be in trouble, rattled me. It was the same earlier today. Logan had gotten between us before I could even tell his brother to fuck off. And now this? It was nothing. I shook it off. I took the cap off the camera and walked to the sidelines, snapping pictures of the guys as they ran drills, drank Gatorade, and huddled around the coach. It was a series of snaps that lasted about fifteen minutes, but they’d do. I closed the cap on the camera and shot a text to Max, telling him I was done with this and would send over the pictures in the morning.

  “You don’t want to stay for the entire practice?” Logan asked as I walked back to him.

  “For what? To look for my replacement sleeper for when you’re gone?”

  The amusement left his face. “No.”

  “The quarterback is cute.” I glanced over my shoulder for show, not that I cared or even knew what the QB looked like underneath his helmet. “I guess he’ll do.”

  “He has a girlfriend.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I know him.”

  “Well, maybe this time next year he won’t have a girlfriend.” I shrugged.

  “This time next year you won’t be here. Aren’t you graduating next semester?”

  “Good point.” I laughed. Damn it. Logan didn’t laugh though. I watched him as we walked back to his car. He was so serious half the time and so flirty the other. “I think you’re jealous.”

  “Of what?” he sounded genuinely surprised.

  “Of the thought of me sharing a bed with someone else.”

  “I am not jealous.” He scoffed. “Please.”

  “Okay, you’re not jealous.” I shrugged as I got in his truck.

  He started driving toward campus, making a left at the library. I thought he was going to go into one of the houses that sat nearby, but he passed those as well, and drove down a street that went on and on, until there were no more houses in plain view and all I could see was forest. In the rearview, I could see that we were driving upward and wondered if this was where the first house I’d been to was, on top of the fall. It seemed like we were going in the right direction but I couldn’t know for sure without the map and address. He took another turn, and houses finally came into view. They were far apart from each other though.

  “Nolan told me he had an interesting conversation with you,” he said as he slowed his speed.

  “What conversation?”

  “About you sleeping with him.”

  “Oh.” I laughed. “He called that interesting? He was trying to get me to sleep with him. Or both of you. At the same time, I think.”

  “Are you into that?” His lips turned up on one side.

  “Absolutely not.”

  “You sure? You’re blushing again.” He looked like he was trying not to smile.

  “Positive.” I hated that I was still blushing. I put a hand up to my temple to shield my face from him.

  He chuckled loud
er. “There’s nothing wrong with wanting to have a threesome with the two most popular guys in school.”

  “I don’t want to have a threesome. Jesus Christ.” I groaned, covering my face with both hands now. My words were muffled by my hands. “Maybe I’ll use him for his bed.”

  “Fuck that,” Logan growled. I lowered my hands and looked at him.

  “You were literally just asking me if I wanted to have a threesome with you, but you don’t like the idea of me sleeping beside Nolan?”

  “Those are entirely different things.” He was still scowling as we stopped at the very end of the block. He pushed a button on his rearview that opened up the iron gate we were in front of and we continued driving up an expansive driveway, with beautiful trees canopying on either side. “When we get there, you have to stay by my side at all times. Not behind me. Either in front of me or beside me. No exceptions.”

  “Why?”

  “I can’t help you if you’re behind me.”

  I was too shocked by what I saw once the enormous castle finally came into view. Judging by the cars that were already there, the castle was at a distance from where we needed to park. I wanted to say something about it, but my mouth dropped and I hadn’t been able to recover as I examined it. It looked like they’d gotten a sketch of Cinderella’s castle from Disney World and put a Gothic flare on it. Like a creepy castle that had been dropped in the midst of the modern homes around it. There was nothing beautiful about it, except everything. I continued gaping at it as we got out of the car and walked over to it, our shoes crunching the pebbles beneath us. When we reached the long bridge that led to it, I froze. It was cobblestone and they clearly had covered up a previously existing moat. My head whipped in Logan’s direction.

  “We’re in a castle,” I said.

  Logan chuckled. “Yup.”

  “Who owns this?”

  “We do.”

  “But . . . how is there a castle here? Does anyone know about it?”

  It was covered by a heavily wooded area on either side. Even the drive in here didn’t give it away. When had it been built? What had been the purpose of it? Did someone actually need a castle in upstate New York? My heart pounded faster at all of the possibilities as we stared at the huge oval wooden door.

  “No one knows about it. If they do, it’s because they’ve heard rumors about it and they all think the land is haunted anyway so they probably wouldn’t come near it,” he said. “Besides, the only way to get here is through those gates, or through the backwoods. You’d have to be crazy to try either one.”

  “Wow,” I whispered, looking around.

  “I’ll give you a short tour now and a longer one later,” Logan promised as he took out the skeleton key that opened the front door. Even that was the coolest thing I’d ever seen.

  “Can I see that?”

  “You’ll get your own.” He chuckled as he handed it to me.

  It was heavy. Engraved on it was: LMF and the words The Eight beside it.

  “I guess you can’t lose this key.” I raised an eyebrow.

  “They take the money out of your account when they have to replace it. Let’s just say, most of us wear it around our necks, underneath our shirts.”

  He pushed the door opened and for a moment, I stood in the threshold completely shell-shocked, wondering what the hell I’d gotten myself into.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “The house is, by design and historically known, to be the perfect spook house,” Logan said as we stood right at the entrance. I eyed the staircase at the far corner, that seemed to only lead to a single gold door. There were sconces that held candles. It gave the castle a dim orange glow throughout.

  “That’s random,” I noted, looking at the stairs.

  We continued walking, down a corridor that seemed endless. There were busts and paintings alongside us as we walked. It was just what you’d expect in a castle and it seemed like the people of the society hadn’t changed much of it.

  “Truly, I’ve never seen a castle like this in the US,” I said.

  “And we have two in town.” Logan smiled when he caught my disbelief. “The red cloaks own one too, not too far from here. You can see some of their land from our yard.”

  My eyebrows rose. “Do you guys talk to them? Do you know who they are?”

  He shrugged a shoulder, non-committal. I took it as confirmation. He changed the subject, back to the castle we were in. “The woman who once owned this castle was the granddaughter of a German lord. It’s said that she had her husband build her this castle to be a smaller version of theirs in Germany. Have you heard of the Eltz family?” He waited for me to shake my head.

  “Well, the outside was drawn as inspiration from that. In general, this is a much smaller version. Once it was built, she poisoned her husband and kept his estate. Once she inherited his money, she remarried four more times, killing each husband in peculiar ways. Peculiar, but realistic enough that they never charged her for murder.”

  “So it’s haunted,” I said, looking around.

  “Definitely haunted. If you wander through the house long enough, you’ll find dead ends and weird shit all over,” he said. “Like that lovely staircase that leads to nowhere.”

  “Who owns this place? Like really owns it?” I whispered.

  “We do.” He turned to me with a grin. Even that looked more scary than sexy in this setting.

  “Why’d you say you couldn’t help me if I walked behind you?”

  “They like to snatch people as they walk down these halls.”

  “Snatch them?” I squeaked. “Who?”

  “The members. To be funny.”

  “It doesn’t seem funny at all.” I shuddered. “Is that what happened to Lana? Was she snatched?”

  “No.”

  His answer didn’t help calm my nerves. In an attempt to distract myself from those words, I turned my attention to the doors that lined the hall. There was a door on either side of the hall, one for each step you took. If they were all rooms, over forty of them. It seemed implausible, of course, but the hall we were walking seemed endless. We took a right at the end and were led to another endless hall.

  “You have got to be kidding me. Does this ever end? Is that why it’s called Labyrinth?”

  Logan chuckled. “Yes.”

  “Lab for short.” That came from a voice on the other side of me. I hadn’t heard him approach at all and shrieked, jumping toward Logan. He put a protective arm around me, even though his shoulders were shaking with laughter as we both looked at Nolan.

  “It’s not funny.” I slapped Logan’s arm away from me and stood between the two of them, still looking at Nolan. “Where the hell did you come from?”

  “I was eating.” He grinned. “All of the doors in this particular hallway lead to the same hall. We got food, alcohol, weed, other shit.”

  “All of these doors lead to the same place?”

  I looked at the doors on either side of me. “How?”

  “Two different wings, same hall, it connects at the end.”

  “Is this some kind of frat house?”

  “Definitely not a frat house, otherwise, you wouldn’t be here. We’re all sleeping here tonight though. Yourself included.”

  “What? Why? I didn’t even bring my things.” Not to mention, I didn’t want to stay in an old, creepy manor.

  “Because it’s initiation night and that’s what we do.”

  “But I don’t even have clothes, I didn’t even—”

  “Logan’s got you. He made sure your room was stocked with anything you might need.”

  “How?” I gaped at Logan.

  “I grabbed some things at the store for you. It’s not a big deal.”

  “How do you know my size?”

  “I guesstimated.”

  “Guesstimating a woman’s size is exactly the kind of thing that’ll get you killed.”

  “Well, you’ll have to allow me to be far away from you when you open the
bag.”

  “I can’t—”

  “All right,” Nolan said loudly, cutting into my sentence. “I’ll let you lovebirds get to it. Marcus is waiting for me to spark up a joint. See you soon. Thirty minutes.”

  “So, what now? You’re going to show me to my room that you stocked for me?” I faced Logan again.

  “Yep.”

  “For the record, I don’t think it’s cool that you guesstimated my size and bought things for me.”

  “Noted.” He started walking up the stairs and I followed closely beside him, afraid of being spooked again. We stopped at the head of yet another hallway. Unlike the walls lined with red wallpaper downstairs, this hallway had dark gray walls and a long dark red rug that seemed endless.

  “You’re in here.” Logan walked ahead and opened the second door to our right.

  I followed him inside. It looked like what I pictured a bedroom at Versailles to look like, gold and red wallpaper, portraits of women from hundreds of years ago, and a gold, ornate four-post queen-size bed in the center of the room. Above it, a glass chandelier I was sure my mother would drool over. There was a duffel bag on the floor and a garment bag on the bed. I walked toward it, unzipping the garment bag. I was expecting a dress or something. What I found was a black cloak. I glanced at Logan over my shoulder.

  “I’m supposed to wear this?”

  “Yes.” He glanced at his watch. “You have twenty-five minutes to dress and meet me downstairs. Can you do that?”

  “I mean, I’m basically throwing a shapeless black thing over myself, so yes.”

  “I’m right next door if you need me.” He left the room and closed the door behind him.

  I stared at it for a moment before kicking myself into movement. Unzipping the duffel bag on the floor, I found underwear, the skimpy kind you buy on an anniversary to wear for your significant other. Not the kind you buy to wear under a cloak.

  “Bastard.” I threw the underwear down, kicking myself for not having his number to text him about this.

  It wasn’t like I had anyone I could send a picture of this to for conversation or advice. Celia couldn’t find out about this. Hailey was out of the question. So, I kept it to myself and looked at the rest of the stuff. A pair of leggings, a pair of jeans, two T-shirts and a sundress. All my size. That gave me pause, but I didn’t have much time to dwell on it now. I slipped off my coat and pulled my shirt over my head. Should I put the cloak over my jeans? I frowned for a beat. I couldn’t imagine why that would be a problem. I would’ve gotten away with leaving my shirt on too, I supposed, but I didn’t want to waste more time.