by J. A. Huss
I hear all those words. Every single one of them. But the only thing echoing in my head are, I was telling my friend from school about you…
“Five?” Rory says, leaning over to try to see up into my eyes. “Woohoo. Earth to Five.”
“What?” I say, lifting up my head and looking at her. Her father went to Oxford too…
“I said, what should we do today? Do you want to go swimming? Like old times?”
Like old times. I’d give anything for one careless afternoon filled with old times.
“I’d love that, Rory. Really. Maybe not here,” I say, forcing a smile as I nod my head towards the city pool. “But we could go out to your house for a swim.”
“Perfect,” she says. All her worries fade. I do that to her. It’s me who completes her world. Who keeps her safe. Who makes her happy.
And that’s why I need to tell her the truth.
“But first,” I say, putting my burrito down and turning to take her hand, “I need to show you something.”
“What?” she asks, her smile gone now.
I hate to do it. I really do. But she’s involved. There’s no doubt in my mind that she’s involved. And I respect her too much to throw away all the things she’s capable of just for the sake of ego. So I have to.
“My house.”
She smiles again. “Like… your bedroom?” She waggles her eyebrows at me, like I’m hinting at an afternoon romp in the sack.
“No,” I say, squeezing her hand. “Not that. The secrets we keep in that house.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Come with me.”
She bites her lip all the way across the street, up my driveway, and then looks at me as I stand in front of our garage, my hand on the keypad, punching in the access numbers.
“You have a car in here or something?” She’s hopeful.
And I’d love to give her what she wants. But I can’t. “No, Rory. My dad’s office.”
“Your dad’s office is in the house. You guys built it during the remodel when we were kids.”
“Yeah, that’s one of them. But in here,” I say, turning the handle on the door after the code gives me permission, “in here is his real office.”
She’s been in our garage lots of times. My dad keeps a ’64 GTO and a ’69 Triumph in here. For cover. Not because he likes them or even drives them. They’re just props to explain why we have a state-of-the-art, military-grade security system on our garage.
Rory looks around, sees what everyone sees—cars, tools, things her dad also has in a much larger quantity—then looks back at me with expectation.
“This way,” I say, walking to the back of the garage. There’s a big red toolbox on wheels that slides like it weighs nothing instead of well over a thousand pounds. And underneath the toolbox is a black rubber mat. I pick up the mat to reveal a door. And when I look at Rory, she says, “Oh. Shit.”
Oh, shit is right. Because when I open the door and flip a switch, the light comes on to reveal steep, concrete steps leading down into the ground.
“Please tell me this isn’t what I think it is.”
“I wish I could, Princess. But you gotta know. Want me to go first?”
She swallows hard and nods.
So I lead, and she follows, and the whole way down into the secret dungeon-like hole under our garage that my dad calls an office, I’m thinking…This is a very bad idea Five Aston. Maybe the worst idea you’ve ever had. Spencer Shrike didn’t tell her for a reason. It’s not your secret to reveal. It’s none of your business.
And if that’s all this was—me revealing a secret—then fine. I’d blow it off and never bring her down here. But that’s not all this is.
Something is happening and my princess needs to know the truth before we fuck things up or someone gets hurt.
Ford’s office never really shuts down. He never turns the computers off. So when we get to the bottom step, there are sixteen monitors lit up on the far side of the room casting an eerie glow and making things more mysterious and shadowy than they need to be.
“What the fuck is all this?” Rory asks. Her tone is slightly incredulous. Like this is weird, but it’s Ford’s office, and we all know how weird Ford is, so is it really that weird?
Kinda like that.
But then she glances around, gets a better look at things, and notices the twelve robots lined up along the perimeter of the twenty-by-twenty space. Some of them are downright creepy. I made those ones. For fighting. I had a little robot club for a while when I was a kid. But no one else around here was interested, so my dad, ever the supportive father that he is, helped me turn them into useful little bots for the family business.
The others are special order from the military.
“What the hell is going on down here, Five?”
Now she’s catching on.
“Well, Princess,” I say, scratching the side of my face, absently thinking I probably need a shave. “Our family history isn’t exactly… history. You see, our parents are all still in the business of fucking shit up. And this room right here… is command central.”
She just stares at me. Mouth open. After a few seconds, she closes her mouth, collects herself and says. “And that comment outside? That little slip-up about going to Florida?”
I shrug. “They go to Florida every year for work, Rory. They have a private island out there somewhere. I don’t know where. I don’t know what they do. But it’s…” I throw up my hands, exhausted. Frustrated. Done. “It’s gotta be illegal. You don’t need to be a genius to understand that. They never stopped those people they were running from, Rory. The shit they were involved with all those years ago never went away. They simply learned how to manage it better.”
She looks around again. Sees more this time.
Sees what’s actually on the monitors. Live image of a dock somewhere tropical. Live image of the front stoop outside my house. Her rambling front porch outside her house. Sparrow’s house. Shrike Bikes. FoCo Theatre. A luxury hotel room, empty until…
Like this is all just some kind of predetermined plan to make her see what’s really happening… A green-eyed man walks up to the monitor and smiles. Like he can see us just as clear as we can see him.
He waves.
We both wave back instinctively. Dumbly.
And then he walks away, out of the camera’s spying lens.
I see the disappointment wash over her face. Her perfect life out on that ranch. Her golden brother and sisters. Her superstar biker dad and her bombshell of a mom. And us. My family. My quiet mother who worries about saving the planet. And my no-nonsense dad filming his stupid TV shows all these years. And Sparrow’s family. Her supermodel parents with their perfect good looks and quaint retro house. That theatre they run with annual film festivals.
All of it… is a lie.
Chapter Eleven - Rory
“What. Is. Happening?” I just stare at the screen where my Uncle James just disappeared. And then I turn to Five. “How long have you known about this?”
“Rory, look—”
“Just tell me how long, Five.” I’m not interested in what story he’s about to tell. I just need some facts.
“Let’s go. I think James must have his camera set to alert him when people enter this room and that’s why he showed up when he did. Other people might have that same trigger.”
“Other people?” I ask. “As in…”
“Well, my dad, for one. I don’t need him knowing we’re in here. And your dad. You know how paranoid they are.”
He takes my hand and leads me back to the steep steps. We climb out, he closes the trapdoor, puts the mat back in place, and then rolls the toolbox back over it.
Ta-da. Secret room underneath the Aston garage is gone.
“Do they… Do they still…” I stare at Five, unable to finish.
Five shrugs. “I dunno, Rory. I have no clue what they do. Maybe it’s just putting out fires and nothing more?”
&n
bsp; That could be one explanation. After all, the live shots on those monitors were mostly just our family homes and businesses here in Fort Collins. Who knows where Uncle James was in that hotel room? He and his family live out in the middle of the ocean somewhere on a private island. I’ve never even been there. But I can only assume that live shot of the dock was his place.
“Why did you show me this?” I ask the question, but I already know the answer.
“Because something is wrong, Rory. Our parents might not be involved in anything bad at the moment, but they did a lot of shit when they were our age. And shit like that never really goes away.”
“But there’s more than that, isn’t there?” I ask. “You say you came here for a meeting down in Denver. But that’s not what it was, was it?”
He shakes his head as he takes my hands. “I don’t know.”
“You know more than you’re saying. That’s for sure. And I want to know what you do, Five Aston. Right now.”
He pulls me towards him and hugs me close. “If I had anything to tell, I would. I swear.”
“Why are you doing this?” I ask.
“Me?” Five pulls back to stare me in the eyes. “I’m not doing anything. These people—”
“Who?”
“Look,” he says, exasperated. “Right now, it doesn’t matter who. It’s a guy from school, OK? Just some guy from school and his bizarre invitation to join some exclusive club.”
“Oh, God,” I groan. “Invitations to exclusive clubs are never good.”
Five laughs, breaking the tension. “No shit, Princess. I’ve been trying to stay away from this guy for years and now he shows up here? I don’t get it. And I’m not trying to be a chauvinistic dick about this by being vague, I’m just seriously confused.”
“Maybe we should call our parents?”
“Nah,” Five says. “That’s a shit storm we don’t want to start. If we tell our parents, they’ll come home from Florida and put everyone in lockdown mode.”
“Or cart us off on some yacht to live with Uncle James and Aunt Harper in the middle of the ocean,” I add.
“Or that.” He laughs. But then his smile falters. “Jesus. They might seriously do that. Do not tell anyone, OK, Rory? I mean it, we don’t need to start a panic. This might be nothing. It might just be a few rich assholes trying to broker better business deals and nothing more. We shouldn’t automatically assume everyone is living a secret life just because we are.”
True. He’s got a point there. But then I remember something he said earlier. “Why do our families go to Disneyland every year? If it’s not because my mom is obsessed with princesses?”
“It is. I was kidding. How many times have you been to Disney World?”
“God, I dunno. Every year since I can remember. Even when my sisters were small babies.”
“See?”
But I don’t see. Not really. Because yeah, our families have gone to Florida every summer since I was a kid. But every now and then, when we were down there, my parents would take off for a few days and we’d stay with Sparrow’s family. Or Five’s. Or their parents would take off and they’d stay with us. One summer, the last one I spent with them, all the adults disappeared and Kate, Sparrow, and I watched the younger kids for a few days.
Where did they go?
I always assumed it was the spa. That’s what they told us, and why would they lie? But in light of this new information—that command central secret hideaway Ford has down in the garage basement—I have to wonder.
“Come on,” Five says. “Let’s go out to the farm and swim.” Then he smiles and waggles his eyebrows at me. “Bathing suits optional.”
It’s a thirty-minute drive out to my family’s farm in Bellvue. Five talks the whole time. About London, and his new business. Robots, robots, robots. I appreciate the white noise, but my eyes are glued on the passing landscape out the window and my mind is consumed with all the possible reasons life seems to be going sideways at the moment.
But as soon as we pull onto our private road I smile when I read the street sign.
My dad paid good money to choose his own name for this road. It used to be called Private Road 13 back in the day and then he had it specially named Bombs-A Way. This is a story he told often when I was a kid. Mostly as a way to placate my bombshell of a mother when she was in an explosive mood.
It worked every time.
They cannot be terrible people.
Can they?
My father is the best. I’m such a daddy’s girl. And yes, Five did make the princess name stick, but I was a princess the moment my father laid eyes on me. There’s a picture hanging in his office of him and my mom just minutes after I was born. I see the love in his eyes.
How can that man be a bad guy?
And my mom. She’s raised six kids. She makes breakfast every morning and dinner every night. She carted us all around to gymnastics, and horse shows, and karate lessons.
I just can’t reconcile these two versions of my parents.
“You coming?” Five asks.
I realize he’s parked his car, gotten out, and is holding my door open, offering me his hand.
“Yeah,” I say, shaking off all the questions.
“Just… just don’t think about it yet, Rory.” Five can read my mind, I think. He knows me so well. “We don’t know shit. Hell, I might just be overreacting and in a few weeks, we’ll look back on this and laugh at our paranoid stupidity.”
I smile for him, because that’s what he’s looking for. He wants to comfort me, so I let him. I fold into his embrace and let him walk me out to the pool.
“I can get you a suit,” I say. “I’m sure my dad has—”
“Fuck that.” Five laughs. “I’m not wearing your dad’s swim trunks. Besides,” he says, leaning down to talk in my ear. “I lied earlier. Bathing suits aren’t optional. They’re forbidden.”
“This was your plan all along, wasn’t it, Mr. Aston? Get me naked.”
“You’re on to me, Princess.”
When I look up at him—see his smile—I realize just how much I’ve missed him. God, I’d be an idiot to let this moment be anything other than what it is. Time alone, reunited with the only man I have ever loved or will ever love.
He opens the gate to the fence that surrounds the pool and waves me forward. Our backyard pool is something right out of a five-star resort. It’s massive, and curvy, with real boulders, not man-made ones, and the water looks like it came straight out of a mountain lake. On one end there’s a waterfall and a hidden grotto, and on the other is a hot tub for cold nights.
It’s the perfect place to relax. Especially when you’re alone with the man of your dreams.
“Come here,” Five says, leading me over to the grotto side of the pool.
God. I might’ve fantasized about being alone with Five Aston in that grotto a million times over the years. But this farm is filled with people most of the time. There would never have been an occasion for Five and me to be alone out here.
Until now.
He wraps his arms around me, but just as I reach around him to hug him back, he’s slipping my shirt up over my head.
I look up at him. Wanting this so badly, but unsure at the same time.
“What?” he says. “Are you shy, Princess?”
I suck in a breath and force myself to look him in the eyes. “Nope,” I say, mustering up some confidence.
“Then why are you blushing a bright pink?”
“Oh, God,” I say, my hands flying to my face. Sure enough, they are warm. But whatever. I don’t care. I am blushing. So what. “I’m happy,” I say. “But nervous.”
“We made love last night and you were fine.”
“That was in the dark, Five. It’s not the same.”
“No,” he says, placing his hands over mine. His palms are warm and calming coolness at the same time. He leans in and kisses me softly on the lips, whispers, “It’s not the same at all. It’s better.”
> A moment later he’s unclasping my bra. It falls forward when the tension releases, and slides down my arms.
I stand there, bare from the waist up, and look at him.
We share a smile when I reach for his t-shirt. I’m not tall enough to pull it over his head, but he doesn’t wait for me to ask for help. One swift movement and it’s joined my shirt on the stone pavers surrounding the pool.
And then he’s bare from the waist up too.
“I’m gonna take off your shorts, Princess.”
“Don’t you want me to put on a show, Mr. Aston?”
I get a sideways smirk in response. “I wouldn’t mind one. But no,” he says, reaching for the button of my shorts, unfastening it. “I don’t need a show. I might die if you drag it out to long.”
I look down and watch his fingertips drag the zipper down. Warmth fills my body and it’s not from the sun.
I look up again, his hands busy wiggling my shorts over my hips. “I want you,” I say.
“You’ve got me, Ror. I’ve been yours for as long as I can remember.”
“I love you, Five. And I’ve missed you. And I hate that we’ve spent so many years apart and that we’re only together now because of some stupid misunder—”
“Shhh,” he says, kissing me quiet. “Stop it. None of that matters now. We’re here, we’ve got this day alone together, and we’re gonna make memories we’ll never be able to tell anyone about.”
I laugh. “Well, just each other.”
“Yeah,” he says, bending so he can drag my shorts down my legs. I place my hands on his shoulders and step out of them. They go flying over his shoulder, forming a brand-new pile of discarded clothing. “We’ll be old and cranky one day. I’ll probably drive you nuts somewhere around our thirtieth anniversary, and this time you’ll reach your limit. And I’ll say, ‘Hey, Princess.’ And then you’ll say, ‘You’ve used up all your natural charm, Five.’”
