“Geri went, too, I take it.” I think of her open door, and the mess in her room.
“She didn’t even have a chance to do her makeup. You know how well that went over.”
I shiver. I know from personal experience not to get in the way when Geri wants something. Over the summer, when she was upset I’d taken over with Grayson, she planted enough narcotics on me to send me to jail for drug trafficking. Of course, that was on Dr. O’s orders, but I doubt he twisted her arm much.
“I guess the director wants the house quiet while our new guest settles in,” I mutter.
Charlotte’s bitterness warps into worry. “We’re on DEFCON 5. Dr. O told us we’re all steering clear of Gray-brynn, and operating on happy student mode until otherwise notified.”
“He said all that, huh?”
“I’m paraphrasing.”
My head falls into my hands. “This shouldn’t be weird at all.”
“Especially for me. It’s going to ruin my birthday, I hope you know that.”
Charlotte’s planning a big party for her eighteenth in a few weeks—I made her a puff-paint T-shirt that says Ginger Princess. It’s not exactly designer, but she’ll love it.
Everyone playing pretend for Grayson’s sake will definitely put a damper on things.
She sits beside me, one arm linking through mine. “So what did the son of Sterling say?”
“That he missed me.”
She raises a brow. “Hello. This just got interesting.”
With a shake of my head, I tell her the things he said outside, feeling lighter as she absorbs my words.
“So you’re playing BFF with your old mark. That’s not terrible.” She’s trying to sound hopeful, but all I can think about is my new job at The Loft, and Jimmy Balder, and if Matthew Sterling has covered up an intern’s disappearance.
And what he’ll do to me if he knows I’m onto him.
“That’s not all,” I say.
“Do tell.”
Charlotte’s twirling the ends of her orange curls around one finger. I can’t tell her about my new assignment, even if I want to. If I do, I could be done here, and having her around knowing half the truth is better than not having her around at all.
“Caleb and I are off until Grayson leaves.”
She cranks her head my direction. “You’re not seriously breaking up!”
“We aren’t officially together,” I say, but the look on Caleb’s face when I said I knew Grayson better returns to my mind and pinches something inside me. What we have is real, with or without the title.
“Of course you are,” she says, the pink pout of her lips contrasting the paleness of her cheeks. “Everyone else knows it even if you don’t.”
“What happened to watch out for Caleb?” When I started at Vale Hall, she’d warned me to be careful around him—that he’d gotten his last girlfriend, Margot, kicked out because he was jealous.
In reality, Margot had gotten herself kicked out by falling for her assignment and telling him all about the program. Caleb had tried to talk sense into her, but it was too late.
“Like you could even hear me through all the hormones.” She presses a hand on her throat, and I wonder if that sickness was feigned for my benefit. “Good luck hiding that from Grayson. Any cat in a twenty-mile radius spontaneously goes into heat whenever you two enter the same room.”
“Gross,” I say. But my cheeks are warm.
Chemistry is not a problem with Caleb.
Charlotte shrugs. “He left you a note.”
I throw my hands up. “Seriously. You couldn’t lead with that?”
“I was saving it in case I had to torture the truth out of you.” She pulls a folded piece of paper out of her fuzzy pocket and passes it my way. I practically snatch it out of her hand, hiding it against my body as I unfold the creased paper.
There are only two words, etched in his perfect penmanship.
Midnight. Roof.
“Trysts are so romantic,” Charlotte stage whispers in my ear.
I shove her off. “How am I supposed to get on the roof?”
“Go through the attic. Duh.”
I blink at her. “I’m sorry. Where’s the attic?”
She smirks. “It delights me that I can be the one to corrupt you. Henry will be so jealous.”
* * *
AT 11:55, I close the door to the supply closet behind me, guided only by the light on my cell phone. To reach the pull-down cord in the center of the ceiling, I have to climb on the bottom shelf, nudging aside the boxes of tampons with the toe of my shoe.
The higher I go, the more my nose crinkles at the smell of moth balls, but finally, after two attempts, my grip closes around the brass ring hanging from the cord. With a victorious smile, I give it a small tug, but the squeal of the falling attic ladder catches me by surprise, and I slip off the shelf. My feet hit the floor with a thump.
“Shut up,” I hiss at the slowly unfolding rungs, groaning loud enough to wake the dead. Finally, the ladder stops, and I hold my breath, listening for anyone who might be coming to check out the disturbance.
The hall outside the door is quiet. I snatch my phone off the floor from where I dropped it, and make my ascent, wincing at each creak the dowels make beneath my weight.
The attic air is frigid; passing into it feels like I’ve crossed an invisible barrier, and I instantly wish I’d brought a coat to go over my sweatshirt. There’s no turning back, though, and I feel a grin tugging on the corners of my lips as I pull myself onto the dusty beams and bring the ladder back up like Charlotte told me.
By phone light, I creep beneath the underside of the circular spire, passing boxes marked Christmas, and Halloween, and Fourth of July. The ceiling is draped with cobwebs, and I duck lower to keep them out of my hair.
“Caleb?” I whisper, but there’s no response.
After a few more steps, I find the wooden scaffolding wall Charlotte told me about, and the insulation that’s been moved aside to create a hole large enough for a person to get through. Pulling my hood over my ponytail, I climb through and shine my light ahead into the darkness.
A rectangular window is ten feet before me, propped open by an old shoebox. Relief trickles through my veins as I rush toward it, stopping when I see a note card taped to the dirty glass.
My favorite color is green.
The writing is definitely Caleb’s; each letter is absurdly straight and symmetrical, but I’m not sure what this means. If this is a code, or a game of some kind, no one told me the rules.
Taking the card, I squeeze through the low window, placing the shoebox back against the frame.
The night air is bitter, the sky black and painted with stars. A fingernail moon hangs over the spire I crept under, and directly in front of me, taped to the slanted shingles, is another note card.
Doughnuts > Pancakes.
I smirk, taking this card as well and pressing it into the palm of my hand with the other. A few feet to the right is a metal air vent, and hanging from the side is a third note.
Birthday: May 17.
I didn’t know his birthday, and as I place this card on the others, I’m confronted by a greedy kind of guilt. This is a basic cornerstone of knowing someone. How have I gotten this far without asking?
The notes keep coming, creating a path along the narrow cement walkway between the sloping arches of the roof.
Greatest achievement: Lego Death Star (4,000 pieces).
Nose broken, 2 times.
First pet: bat in attic. Name: Battic. Length of ownership: 12 hours.
Before I know it, I’m hurrying on to the next note card, starved for his writing and any hint of the boy he was before I met him.
Girlfriends: 3 (4?).
Vocational Goal, age 7: professional wrestler.
First crush: cartoon lioness (confusing).
Greatest Fear: failing.
I stare at the words, feeling them resonate through me. I am afraid of Grayson and letting Gr
ayson down. I’m afraid of his father and this internship in his office. But I do whatever I have to, because I’m most afraid of throwing away this chance.
I know what happens if I fail here. I go home to Devon Park. I reenroll at a high school that spends more time busting kids for drugs and fighting than prepping them for college. I try for night school, but in the end, it’s too expensive, so I work a job like my mom, at a bar, and pray the tips are enough to pay the power bill.
I want more.
There’s another note ahead, and when I see the words, I wilt in the bitter night air.
I have a new assignment.
CHAPTER 5
I bundle this note with the others, tucking them into the front pocket of my sweatshirt as the cold air bites my nose and cheeks. From my right comes a scuff, shoe soles against concrete. I turn and find Caleb, sitting on a ledge in front of another sharp spire. He’s half-silhouetted by the lights on the front of the house and the fountain, his black leather jacket and dark jeans blending with the night.
My stomach does a slow flip-flop, and my breath comes in a staggered, hot puff of mist against my lips.
He’s holding another card, and when I shine my light toward him, I read the single word.
Trust.
He passes it to me as I approach, and though it’s the same as the other cards, this one feels heavier. More important.
He’s giving me his trust.
“Hi,” I whisper.
“Hi.”
There’s a space on the ledge next to him, and a folded blanket. When he tilts his head toward it, I sit beside him, and he wraps the wool around my shoulders.
For a few minutes we say nothing. We look at the stars and listen to the breeze rattling the dry leaves below. The knots slowly untie from my muscles, and my shivering ceases beneath the blanket.
“I like green, too,” I say after a while. “Bright green. Like the trees that grow near the fountain in Millennium Park.”
He smiles.
“Pancakes are greater than doughnuts,” I continue. “But I’ll settle for greater than or equal to.”
I shift closer, and he does, too. Our thighs are aligned, the outside of our knees separated by two layers of denim.
“I fell down the steps in the fourth grade and broke my tibia. No one signed my cast.” It was after my dad was killed, and the kids in my class wanted nothing to do with me. Like getting shot in a mini mart is somehow contagious. “How’d you break your nose?”
“I got punched,” he says. “First time by Skylar Galotti when he stole my skateboard. Second time by Skylar Galotti when I stole his girlfriend.”
The smirk severs my old grief. “Is this girlfriend four, question mark?”
He’s leaning forward over his knees and looks back at me, a faint smile dimpling his cheek. “No. That’s you.”
My smirk fades.
“Sophie Gomez was girlfriend two,” he goes on, as if my heart didn’t just trip over itself. “We were in the seventh grade. She asked me to the Winter Ball, and then broke up with me when I didn’t dance with her.”
I’m still stuck twenty seconds ago, on the whole that’s you comment.
“Why didn’t you dance with her?” I manage.
“Are you kidding? Girls are terrifying.”
So, apparently, are boys.
We haven’t talked about labels, and even if I’ve wondered what it would be like to call him my boyfriend, we can’t now. Dr. O made it clear that my assignment comes first.
Caleb has an assignment, too, now. As much as I want to know what it is, I can’t bring myself to ask.
“Bella Cho and I dated in the sixth grade for three days,” he continues. “We spent the majority of that time pretending to ignore each other.”
“And after Sophie, your next girlfriend was Margot.”
He nods slowly. “The years between were not so great.”
That’s when his dad got hurt, and when the spinal surgeries started, and when they had to move from Uptown to White Bank.
“You know me better than anyone.” There’s a strain to his voice. Now that Grayson’s come to Vale Hall, we only get one role to play. Home and work have become the same, and if these stolen moments are all we have, I don’t want to waste them.
I want him to know me, too.
“I’ve only had one other boyfriend,” I say, picturing Marcus the way I always do now, grinning like a fool, pointing to a road sign that says Baltimore. “Technically. I did kiss Steve Jamison in the seventh grade, but only to get him to stop throwing paper airplanes at me in woodshop.”
He doesn’t look back at me, but the lines of his neck move, like he’s working to swallow.
I imagine him as a kid, building Legos and skateboarding. Blushing when a girl takes the desk across the room. I know the real him, and he knows the real me, and maybe that—remembering we’re more than Dr. O’s assignments—is more important than the work we do.
“I can’t believe Grayson’s here,” I say.
Caleb nods.
“I think about him all the time,” I go on, and even though Caleb stiffens, I don’t stop. “I have dreams that he’s dead and it’s my fault.”
After a long beat, he says, “I have dreams like that about Camille.”
His mark, the mayor’s daughter. She sent the Wolves of Hellsgate motorcycle club after Caleb when she learned that he was behind her mother’s fall from political grace, but he doesn’t mention that, just like I don’t mention Grayson’s part in Susan’s death.
The guilt doesn’t make sense. Maybe we’re just messed up.
“Dr. O wants me to work him while he’s here. He seems to think Grayson likes me.”
Caleb’s hands clasp together, squeezing tightly. His head hangs forward.
“It’s a job,” I tell him. “That’s all.”
But it was more than that when I held Grayson’s hand earlier. That was real, too, as much as I tell myself it was part of the con.
I huddle tighter into the blanket.
“That sounds familiar,” he says.
My teeth clench together. “I’m not Margot.”
His ex-girlfriend got close with her mark, too, only she forgot that it was pretend, and when it came time to choose, she picked him, not Caleb.
“I know,” he says, though a muscle tics in his neck. He doesn’t need to say it out loud; I’ve been through enough with him to know when he’s worried.
He looks at our hands when I intertwine my fingers with his. The air is cold outside the blanket, so I pull his arm underneath, resting his wrist on my thigh.
“What if there was no question mark after four?” I say.
Slowly, his thumb arcs around the heel of my hand, sending warm tingles up my arm.
“Dr. O won’t be happy.”
Apparently the director told Caleb to back off on our relationship, too.
“He doesn’t have to know. And neither does Grayson. Anyway, we only have to hide it until he’s gone.”
I’m afraid Caleb will say no. That he doesn’t want to be hidden, and I don’t blame him—I don’t, either. But he squeezes my hand.
“We’ll have to be careful,” he says.
A giddy relief floods through me. “I can do careful.”
I know what’s at stake. If I alienate Grayson and he runs, or refuses to testify against his father like he said Dr. O mentioned, Caleb and I are both in trouble. If I don’t convince Grayson he’s safe here, that he can trust me, he’ll be out on his own, facing the wrath of a man Dr. O believes killed an intern.
We all have to play this safe.
“Of course,” I say, sliding my knee over Caleb’s. Beneath, I can feel the muscles of his thigh tense in response. “If you blow me off at the Winter Ball, we’re done.”
“Noted.”
His hands find my waist, and mine, his chest. I unzip his coat until there’s enough room to slide my fingers beneath, over the waffled fabric of his thermal shirt.
His eye
s, lit only by my upturned cell light, grow dark. It stirs a wanting deep in my belly.
“So if you’re my secret girlfriend,” he says, the word tingling over my skin, “I think that means you get to kiss me as much as you want.”
His fingers fan over my back, easing me closer.
“Lucky me.”
He cranes his head from left to right, then he smiles, and I smile, and I know without a doubt he’s the best secret I’ve ever kept.
It doesn’t matter if I’ve done this before. There’s a burst of nerves beneath my breastbone just before we touch, a flare of heat that streaks out to my fingertips. I lean in and he meets me, his lips cool and feather soft as they brush from side to side. Tilting my head the slightest bit, I press closer, my eyes drifting closed as I revel in the firm feel of his lower lip between mine.
I deepen the kiss, gasping at the warmth of his mouth and the cold of his nose and cheeks. His hands fist in the back of my shirt and drive me closer still, sensation rioting through me at the feel of his tongue and his teeth. My muscles feel like pulled taffy, stretching and reforming and drawing even tighter, until both my legs are over his and I’m sitting on his lap, locked in the circle of his arms.
Pulling back just a little, I press my lips to the corner of his mouth, and his jaw, and just beneath his ear. He tenses, and his breaths grow uneven.
I feel like flying.
He can turn me upside down with the whisper of his fingertips on my back, but I can do the same to him. There’s power in that, and safety in knowing I’m free to try. To experiment. That there’s no judgment or doing this wrong.
I find the zipper of his coat and pull it down, pushing open the sides so I can spread my hands over the flat plains of his stomach. The blanket has fallen, pooling around our waists, and I slide deeper into his coat, seeking warmth, seeking him. He drags me into another searing kiss, and my fingers curl around the bottom of the back of his shirt, skimming over the smooth skin above the waistband of his jeans.
He breaks away with a jerk.
“Cold!” he howls. “Cold, cold, cold, cold!”
I erupt in giggles and take the only logical course of action, which is to spread my freezing hands over his bare stomach.
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