“Yes.” He crossed his hands in front of him. “And I’m not sure for how long. He might have been there for a while, we just didn’t notice him.”
Rowan nodded. “He’s not alone, right?”
“Ace’s dad is behind him.” Tanner practically groaned.
How had Rowan known without looking? I shifted in my seat a little, and sure enough, there was his father. Edwin Kennedy owned most of the town, including the trailer park where I lived. He was a businessman of some kind, tall, pale, big-eyed, and scary. Behind him stood Ace’s father, Vincent Monroe. He was some sort of academic, a professor or something. It was amazing how little I knew about these people when it came down to it.
He also had the same pale look as Edwin.
All five guys jumped to their feet practically in unison, grabbing their stuff and moving toward the waiting men. But the two men weren’t looking at my temporary companions. No, they seemed to only have eyes for me. I shivered and dropped my gaze from them. I’d never wanted tonotmake eye contact with people so much in my life.
Caesar met my gaze for one second, a worried look crossing his face before he steeled his expression and followed the rest of them out of the library. They walked in a straight line, backs stiff, with Ace’s father and then Rowan’s father finally exiting after them. My mouth fell open. That had been a strange interaction. What had just happened?
Were they not allowed to be in the library? Or was the problem because they’d been sitting with me? Maybe it had nothing to do with me at all, some sort of internal rich boy issues that I didn’t need to know anything about.
My phone dinged, reminding me that I had to go to work. I silenced it and collected my stuff. It had been the strangest day.
In a good way. Kind of.
* * *
I’d putaway the third box of toilet paper when I collided with Ace. It took me a second to realize he stood there, even as he grabbed my arms to keep me upright.
“Hey.” He smiled. “Had to see for myself how you take those boxes up the ladder without killing yourself.”
I blinked, our earlier conversation coming back to me. I shook my head, pulled out of his hands to grab a box, and did just what he wanted to see, even skipping the bottom rung on my way down just to show him that I could.
He raised a dark eyebrow. “Okay. Point taken.”
I mock curtsied. “See? I can go up and down ladders carrying boxes.”
Ace leaned against the wall, watching me. “Why don’t they let you work as a cashier or stocking the shelves out there on the main floor or, I don’t know, the bakery? You could wear one of those hats!” “Hats?” I had no idea what he was talking about.
He sort of pantomimed over his head. “You know, the white hats.”
It took me a second to follow what he was saying. “Oh, a chef’s hat or something? No, I mean, have you ever seen anyone in the bakery wearing that? It’s more like plastic sanitary things that hold their hair back. Besides, I can’t have those jobs.”
“The chef’s hat would be cool.” Ace walked past me and sat down on the rung of the ladder I’d skipped. “Why can’t you have one of those jobs?”
I sighed. “Because my mother is really bad at keeping jobs and she tends to make things really difficult for me when I need to find one. They don’t mind me working here as long as I stay in the back.”
His laugh surprised me, and then he shook his head. “Like the dirty little secret they keep in the back where no one has to see it? I am actually familiar with that feeling.”
I almost scoffed, but the truth was I had no idea about his life. None. Maybe they did keep him locked in the back of the house or something. “I’m not complaining. It’s a job. I keep the lights on, eat some food, and in a year, I’ll be where you are—waiting to leave here.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” A muscle ticked in his jaw. “I’m sorry about earlier. It was rude of us to just go like that. First, we disrupted your studying, then we ran off. I wanted to say I was sorry about that.”
I opened and closed my mouth. My supervisor might be coming to check on me any second. “That’s okay. It was fun to talk to you. I…I don’t talk to a lot of people, and you could have been mean to me but you weren’t.”
He blinked. “If you knew who I am, who Ireallyam, you wouldn’t want me to be nice to you.”
“Why not?”
Just then, the door opened. My supervisor, Trey, entered the room. He was a nice man, forty-ish, married, and I was pretty sure I’d caught my mother giving him a blow job in the back of our trailer before he’d taken off running too fast for me to be sure it was him. He remained nice to me and had never done anything to make me uncomfortable, but I really hoped he wasn’t expecting that I, in turn, would be down for getting on my knees and servicing him, because I absolutely wasn’t.
“Trey.” I smiled. “Sorry, I…”
Turning around, I didn’t see Ace anywhere. It was like he’d vanished. The window was open, as it sometimes was because it got so warm, but I hadn’t been the one to wrench it open this time. I smiled. That was how he must have gotten in—through the same window he’d used to leave.