“Just a stupid wedding invitation for my grandmother’s friend,” I say with a dramatic roll of my eyes. On the inside, I’m panicking. I can’t say for certain who sent that letter, but I have a guess. Saffron. That whole ‘miss you and love you fierce’ thing is a Banks family slogan. Also, sending an unmarked letter with no signature on it is a very Saffron-esque thing to do.
But I can’t let Justin know any of that.
“A wedding invitation,” Parrish repeats, blinking his beautiful brown eyes at me. But he gets it quick. Chasm and Maxx, too. “Interesting. Tess will never let you go to it.”
“Never,” I reply breezily, pretending to be focused on my studies so as not to give anything further away. But I’m worried. She’s coming? Here? I couldn’t think of a more dangerous place to be. Saffron is, after all, my kidnapper. If Justin is willing to murder teenagers to get back at the people who drove him out of town, what the fuck will he do to the woman who stole his baby?
The subject slides past as if it truly is nothing, but I definitely owe the guys an explanation later.
Parrish is watching me, that hungry tension between us getting sticky, making me squirm.
“It’s hard to focus with you staring at me like that,” I whisper back, and he smiles. Without warning, he reaches out, wraps his arms around my waist and drags me into his lap, pressing his lips to my hair.
“Fuck, you smell good. What was it that I smelled like? Dewy clovers?” He gives a low, mean chuckle, one that turns my body to mush but that, were I anyone else at Whitehall Prep, would make me wish I’d never been born.
“Dewy clovers?” Chasm snorts with a tired-sounding sigh. “What the hell does that even mean?”
“Ask Dakota,” Parrish teases, and then we both freeze at the sound of footsteps. He pushes me off of his lap with a dark growl, trying and, with gargantuan effort, succeeding at finally suppressing an annoyed scowl.
“Are you sure you’d rather study up here?” Tess asks when she pops in, looking at Chasm on the floor and then up at Parrish as he lounges on my bed. “If you work in the dining room, you can all have your own chairs.”
Seeing as that gives us an excuse to dump the heart pin and all of our tech, I jump at the opportunity.
“That sounds like a plan to me; my back is starting to hurt anyway.” I stand up quickly, even as Parrish throws me a look of sheer betrayal. “Maybe Maxx can make some snacks?”
He glances over his shoulder at me with a smile, but Tess jumps in, nearly desperate for attention from her missing son. It’s quite a different approach to how she dealt with me when I was ‘returned’ to her.
“I’ll order food. Anything you guys want. Parrish?” She looks excitedly in his direction, and he sighs, letting his head fall back and closing his eyes.
“Pizza, please. I’d kill for fucking pepperoni right now.” He swipes a hand over his face and then opens his eyes so that he can stare at Tess. “I’m going to study with them—so that I can go to school next week.”
“Parrish, goddamn it,” Tess snaps, and he blinks at her, frowning prettily and leaning forward to fold his hands in his lap. “Why are you being so stubborn about this? I want you here, with me. There’s no need for you to push yourself like this.”
“I see,” Parrish drawls lazily, yawning as he rises to his feet and lifts his arms over his head in a dramatic fashion. The white hoodie he’s wearing rides up, flashing a horribly tantalizing bit of his flat belly. I’m forced to look away to maintain my composure.
Never in my life have I ever wanted to touch someone like I want to touch him; I’m almost manic about it. Probably will be for a while, until I get used to having him back, until it finally sets in that this is reality, that he didn’t die, that all the horrible things we had to do to get him here were worth it.
“You want me here. It doesn’t matter how I feel or what I want, that I’m the person who was sliced up by a serial killer, who almost died, who was filmed and put on the dark web for violent perverts to drool over.”
Perverts? He hasn’t mentioned exactly what the image on the dark web was, but if I find out that he was sexually exploited in any way, I won’t have to work up to killing Justin; it’ll just happen out of pure, unfiltered rage.
Tess’ face tightens up in frustration, but she closes her eyes and forces herself to take a deep, calming breath.
