“You know this place?” Preston asks, turning to me. I can’t read his expression behind the mask, but I think he sounds surprised.
I squeeze my eyes closed, trying not to remember the hundred times Royal took me here—the first time, after his race, when he kissed me like I was everything he’d been missing but stopped me when I tried to go further; the second time, when I pushed him off the bridge and he almost drowned; the time he brought me here after we’d hooked up and he’d ignored me all week and then he got the test results back. That was the day I always thought of as the day we really got together. We were both clean, and the agreement to stay that way meant we were going to keep seeing each other.
My chest aches so deep I can’t breathe as Preston’s truck lumbers up onto the bridge. I press my fist to my sternum, as if it might fracture and let my heart free if I don’t hold it back. The flood of memories continues, assaulting me with the beautiful and terrible pictures we made together. There was the time we went under the bridge and a sudden downpour hit, and we huddled in the scant shelter, laughing and fucking and talking until it stopped; the time I ran from him and he threw me down and fucked me in the ass and then forced me to cum for him; the times we dreamed of traveling together and compared stories about our mothers, so similar in constitution yet so different in circumstances. And then there were all the times we didn’t even make it out of the car because we wanted each other more than any of that, so much that nothing else mattered.
I feel the tires leave the wooden planks and land on the asphalt beyond the bridge, but I don’t open my eyes until a minute later, when it sinks in that we’re still driving. I suck in a loud, ugly breath. Preston glances sideways at me but doesn’t speak. We continue another mile before turning onto a narrow, unlined, blacktop driveway. It winds up a gentle slope with white horse fences on either side. At last, we arrive at a tall, wrought iron fence with a fancy gate. Preston puts in a code at an electronic screen, then has to put in a fingerprint and take off his mask to show his face to a camera, which snaps a picture. Finally, the gate swings open.
By now I’ve gotten my wits about me, and I turn to him and arch a brow. “That’s a lot of security,” I say. “Is this your secret superhero lair?”
A tiny smile tugs the corner of his handsome mouth. “You’ve seen my secret lair.”
“Then what’s this?”
“This,” he says, pulling up at the front of a sprawling mansion that makes the ostentatious house we dismantled look homely, “Is the Darling estate.”
twenty-seven
Harper Apple
Preston pulls the Escalade around one side of the sprawling mansion to where a row of six garage doors wait. He hits a button on his visor and maneuvers the vehicle in beside a Ford Raptor.
“What are we doing here?” I ask, climbing down from my side before he can come around to open my door. A light came on above us, but the rest of the garage is dim, and I can’t make out all the cars. I just know there’s a lot—more than any one family needs.
“There aren’t many safe places for Darlings in this town,” Preston says. “We can talk here without risk of being overheard.”
He leads me out of the garage and around the back. Calling the place a house doesn’t do it justice. There are several buildings, and behind them, a maze of manicured landscaping and water. The “pool” isn’t a blue rectangle, but a stone-rimmed, curving thing with a lazy river flowing from one end and a fountain at the other. It leads down to an elevated area with a hot tub that overflows in trickling waterfalls into the pool. We make our way along a raised path beside the water and past it through the gardens to a gazebo. Beyond that is a long, oval pond that’s shallow enough that I can see the bottom. Dragonflies skim over the mirrored surface in the late morning sun, which has just risen over a grove of trees in the expansive lawn beyond the pond. I spot a flag a little way off in the grass.
“Is that… A golf course?” I ask in disbelief. I’ve seen Royal’s Confederate mansion, have been in Preston’s modern three-story mansion with a pool. But this… This is something else entirely.
“Nah,” Preston says. “It’s only nine holes.”
“Only nine holes,” I whisper, shaking my head. My brain refuses to comprehend this level of luxury.
Preston sits down in the gazebo and pats the seat beside him. I sit but leave a healthy amount of space between us because I’m still unnerved by Baron’s words.
For a minute, neither of us speak. I stare out over the green water of the pond, so different from the clear flowing trickles in the pool area.
“What’s this for?” I ask. “Don’t tell me you have cows who come to drink here.”
Preston laughs. “It’s a catfish pond.”
He put the mask back on after the photo op, but he removes it now and sets it on the bench beside him, closing his eyes and letting the sultry breeze ruffle his short blond hair.
“I did okay in the interview,” I say. “If you paid for my scholarship, I’m in, right?”
He opens his eyes. “He had to be lying,” he says. “But if he wasn’t… I mean, in other countries, it’s totally normal. And no one else knows.”
“The Dolces know,” I say quietly. “Right?”
I haven’t asked him outright about the videos, and after last night, I cringe to think of them having that ammunition. I need all the leverage I can get, not for them to know something shameful about me that I don’t want anyone to ever know. It’s one thing to spitefully hope Royal had to suffer the torture of seeing me with another guy, knowing what a jealous asshole he is.
Kinda kills things if he thinks I’m disgusting, not desirable.
I swallow and nod. His lack of an answer is an answer.
“Is there any way… I mean, could it be true?” I ask.
“No,” Preston says firmly.