R A N S O M
“Don’t panic,” Taylor said from beside me.
I’d been leaning back in the uncomfortable airport chair, waiting to board our flight—which was still about an hour away—but at her words, I sat upright. “I honestly can’t think of a worse sentence starter right now.”
She smiled. “Sorry. It just occurred to me that we don’t have anything to wear to Brad’s viewing.”
“We’re going there to confess to”—I cast a surreptitious look around—“you know. I don’t think our clothing is going to matter much.”
She pulled a skeptical face. “I don’t want to stand out more than we already will.”
“More than when we’re being escorted out, handcuffed by police, you mean?”
She sat back with a huff. “I know you think you’re funny, but you’re really missing the mark.”
I actually didn’t think I was being funny. A police raid on the church during Brad’s service like we were some kind of notorious outlaws was exactly how I envisioned tomorrow going. But getting Taylor more stressed than she already was wouldn’t help either of us, so I decided to tone it down.
“I think we passed a clothing store on the way to our gate.”
“It’s fine,” she said. “We’ll just wear jeans and sweatshirts.”
I had to suppress a grin at her snarky tone. Bumping her shoulder with mine, I waited until she looked over at me before I started speaking. She flicked her eyes toward me in annoyance, which I figured was the best I was going to get.
“Come on. I’ll buy you the best airport black dress we can find.”
Normally I’d be worried about making such a promise, but this was a small airport, so I wasn’t worried there’d be a lot of high-end shops. I hadn’t noticed any as we’d walked to our gate.
She snorted. “You really know how to spoil a girl.”
“Oh, baby, just you wait. I have years of spoiling in me. Convenience store coffee, street vendor hot dogs, vending machine jewelry. The sky’s the limit.”
She rolled her eyes, but the laughter in them was clear. “How could I ever say no to all of that?”
“You can’t. I’m quite a catch.”
“Totally,” she said without much enthusiasm behind it, but the warmth in her eyes told me how she truly felt.
I stood and gathered my bag before extending my hand to hers. “Your couture appointment awaits.”
“I’m impressed you know that word,” she said as she stood and twined her fingers with mine.
“Awaits? Yeah, it is a tough one.”
She huffed out a small laugh. “You’re such a dork.”
We wandered down the terminal toward where I’d seen the store. When we arrived, I was relieved to see they sold men’s and women’s clothes, and most of it seemed to be business casual. A quick look at a price tag on a sweater made me almost break out in hives, but it was doable.
Taylor and I split up in hopes of making this venture end quicker. It didn’t take me long to scoop up a pair of black slacks and a forest-green sweater, since the one I’d brought was looking a little rough after I’d worn it to the reunion. I had a fresh white button-down that I thought would work underneath to make me look appropriately dressed, since buying a suit from an overpriced boutique in an airport wasn’t something I was willing to do.
Content with my selection, I looked around for Taylor. I furrowed my brow when I saw her sandwiched between two elderly women who seemed to be talking a mile a minute.
“Hi,” I said when I reached them. “Find what you needed?” I asked her after giving a polite smile to the other two women.
Taylor looked relieved to see me. “Yes,” she practically shouted. “Thank you so much for your help, ladies. We have a plane to catch, so…” Taylor didn’t finish her sentence, instead just gesturing toward the cashier.
“Oh, that’s okay. We’re all done in here too. We’ll come with you to pay,” one of the women, a tiny thing with white hair puffed up high on her head, said.
I shot Taylor a look. What the hell was going on? I’d left her alone for five minutes, and she’d somehow attracted a fan club?
Taylor looked crestfallen at their pronouncement.
I was in the process of having a conversation with Taylor using only our eyes when I felt a thin arm snake through mine, causing me to startle. When I looked down, I saw the other woman, a little more filled out than her friend and with bright-red hair that had to be dyed.
“And what’s your name?” she said in a raspy voice that I was worried was meant to be seductive.
“Oh, uh, Ransom, ma’am.”
She fanned herself. “So polite. And Ransom. Such a…virile name. It’s so nice that you came shopping with your sister.”
My sister? Had Taylor told them that for some reason? I didn’t want to blow her cover, which made me flustered in trying to respond.
Taylor, sounding vaguely annoyed, saved me. “He’s my boyfriend, actually.”
“Oh, really?” the woman said with such a fake tone of surprise it was clear she’d known that all along. “I’m sorry, he just looks so…mature and dominant. But that’s okay. Some girls are into that I hear. Daddies, I think they call them.”
Oh God.
Taylor’s face took on a mischievous gleam, which worried me about what she would say next. “He’s actually only three years older than me,” she said. “So I’m not sure he qualifies as a Daddy quite yet.”
“Oh, age has nothing to do with it. Being a Daddy is a mind-set,” the white-haired woman said. “At least that’s what my romance novels say.” As she finished speaking, she reached into her bag and pulled out a paperback with a shirtless man on the front.
I nodded along dumbly because what was a guy supposed to say when a septuagenarian talked about the Daddy fetish she’d picked up from reading an X-rated novel she was waving around? Nothing in my previous twenty-five years of life had prepared me for a conversation like this.
“Doris, Fay, who do we have here?”
My eyes flew toward the voice. Oh fuck. There are more of them. Three more elderly women walked toward us, one of them eyeing me from top to bottom in a way that could only be described as lecherous.
“This is Ransom and…I’m sorry, dear. I don’t think we got your name.”
“Taylor,” she grumbled.
“Ha, Taylor. Like a tailor. Which is funny because we’re in a store that sells suits. Maybe you should work here,” Doris or Fay said, making all their friends cackle.
“Ha-ha, yeah, funny. Anyway, we’re going to…go…over there. Have a great flight, ladies,” Taylor said, trying to steer me away from the granny gang that had surrounded us.
“We’ll wait for you. We just love getting to know young people,” the woman who still had her arm linked with mine said, shooting me an adoring smile. “Helps us keep a pulse on what’s hip these days. Maybe we can all get a snack and chat.”
Taylor shot me a look that let me know it was my turn to attempt an extraction.
“Oh, uh…” I was floundering again. “We don’t, um, eat snacks.”
This earned a confused look from the women, but I soldiered on. “It’s…against our religion. Yeah, we’re devout…antisnackers.”
Taylor’s eyes widened like she’d expected me to take the explanation in any direction but the one I’d chosen.
The women looked to be split between intrigue and outrage. “I’ve never heard of such a thing,” one of them said. “What religion is that?”
“The name? Oh, yeah, right. The name. It’s called the Believers of Divine…Macros.”
“Huh, never heard of that,” one of them said.
“Yeah, it’s pretty new.”
“Sounds like a cult,” another one groused.
“Leave them be,” Doris or Fay defended. “We all believed in stupid stuff when we were young.”
Okay, so maybe less of a defense than I’d initially thought.
“Well, it’s almost l
unchtime. Are you allowed to have meals?” one asked.
“Yes, but we’re still full from breakfast,” Taylor said. “But thanks so much for the offer. We really must be going so we don’t miss our flight.”
The women looked sad to let us go but didn’t follow us as Taylor dragged me away.
“Believers in Divine Macros?” she whispered.
“I panicked.”
“Clearly.”
“You’re the one who attracted them in the first place,” I accused. “They’re probably part of some ancient coven that feeds on the souls of the young. We could’ve been killed because of you.”
“I wish all people who accuse women of being the more dramatic gender could hear this conversation.”
“It’s probably easy to make jokes when you weren’t the one being felt up by someone’s great-grandmother.”
Taylor rolled her eyes as we moved up to the register and put our clothes down so the woman could scan them. When the woman read the obscene total, Taylor looked at me expectantly.
“You said you’d buy me a black dress.”
“I know. But you got black pants and a shirt, nullifying our deal. You also almost got us lured to some old lady’s gingerbread house.”
She stared flatly at me until I pulled out my wallet.
I returned her stare as I pulled out my credit card and handed it over. “Just so you know, making me pay makes me feel like maybe you do want a Daddy.”
“Maybe I do. Any idea where I could find one?”
“You’re a pain in the ass,” I muttered, causing her to burst out laughing.
She huddled closer to me, wrapping herself around my arm like a vine. “Yeah, but I’m your pain in the ass.”
As much as I wanted to on principle, there was no way I was ever going to argue with that.
T A Y L O R
We’d wandered around for a bit after buying the clothes, so when we’d gotten back to our gate, they’d already begun boarding. We stood in line to show the attendant our boarding passes and then made our way onto the plane.
Since we’d made the reservations last minute, we hadn’t been able to get seats next to one another, but we were close. My seat was across the aisle and one row up from where Ransom was seated. We’d decided that if the people next to us seemed friendly, we’d ask if any of them would mind switching.
As we scuttled down the aisle toward our seats, I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket. Suddenly, Ransom stopped short, causing me to bang into him from behind.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“It can’t be,” I heard him mutter.
I looked around him to see what the issue was. I couldn’t help the snort that escaped when I saw that the older women from the clothing store were sitting in Ransom’s row of seats and in the row across the aisle. Thankfully they weren’t in my row.
“Switch with me,” he said.
“I love you desperately,” I replied. “But there is no way in hell I’m doing that.”
“Ransom?” one of the women I’d initially been speaking to said, her eyes lighting up as the circumstances dawned on her. “Are you sitting with us?” She gestured toward the open window seat.
Ransom whimpered, but it was low enough that only I heard him.
“Get in there, big guy,” I said, giving him a nudge.
“Doris, move over,” the woman across the aisle said. “That way Ransom can sit in the middle of all of us and we can find out more about him on the flight.”
“Don’t go to any trouble. I like the window,” he tried to argue.
“Don’t be silly. You’re much too…big for that.” As the woman said the words, her eyes dipped to his crotch, and I almost wavered in my resolve to not switch seats. Almost. A martyr I was not.
The women shuffled around, allowing Ransom to sit miserably in the aisle seat. My seat was the middle one, but thankfully it was between a middle-aged man who was already asleep and a woman who looked a few years older than me, typing away on her laptop. My seatmates were definitely preferable to Ransom’s, who were already asking about his hobbies and favorite foods. I chuckled as I heard one ask for his address so she could mail him baked goods.
I’d gotten so wrapped up in eavesdropping, it took me a while to fish out my phone and check the missed call. It was from Xander.
But the flight attendant had come on to go over her spiel, and her volume was deafening, so I waited until she was done before checking voicemail. As I put the phone to my ear, I heard Xander’s voice saying, “Seriously? Your phone is practically surgically attached to your hand and the one time I call, the only time I’ll probably ever call anyone, because who even does that anymore? Everything can be a text message. Anyway, the one time I call, you don’t pick up. For fuck’s sake.”
As I listened to his diatribe, I felt a hand tap me on the shoulder. I lowered the phone so I could look back at who’d touched me. It was part of the old lady brigade hovering over my seat.
“Yes?”
“You’re not supposed to be on your phone.”
“Oh, I have it on airplane mode. I’m just listening to a voicemail.”
Her gaze was unwavering. “You’re not supposed to be on your phone.”
My eyes narrowed. “I can, actually. I just can’t be on the internet.”
“I had a dream last night.”
I furrowed my brow at the strange non sequitur.
“We all died a fiery death due to our plane crashing. Because some young girl wouldn’t get off her phone. Is that what you want? To kill us all?” Her voice had grown louder as she spoke, attracting the attention of those seated around us.
At their worried and annoyed stares, I decided my best recourse was to capitulate to her demands.
“No problem,” I said, smiling the fakest smile I’d ever allowed to cross my face. “I’ll listen later.”
She nodded sharply before sitting back in her chair.
Sighing loudly, I let my phone drop into my lap. I was sure whatever Xander had to say could wait.
Chapter Twenty
R A N S O M
“This was a bad idea,” Taylor muttered.
Like mine, Taylor’s attention was focused on the line that wrapped so far around the church we couldn’t see its end.
“This was your idea.”
“I know it was my idea, but unfortunately it might not have been one of my best.”
The black heels Taylor wore clicked on the pavement as we approached the building. It wasn’t too late to leave, but now that we were here and I’d accepted that we’d come to a funeral to tell the deceased’s parents that I’d accidentally killed their son, it felt like a pussy move to back out.
“It’ll be okay,” I told her. “We’re giving them closure, remember?” And Taylor was right. No matter how big of a shithead Brad was, no one deserved to mourn their child’s death without knowing the circumstances surrounding it.
I wondered if my generic assurance had been at all convincing. Taylor was still walking, so maybe it had been. Or maybe she just didn’t want to feel like a pussy either.
By the time we got to the back of the line, Taylor was practically shaking. I’d told her to wear a warmer coat, but she’d insisted she didn’t have one with her that would look okay with her outfit, so she’d worn a thin sweater that was open in the front, and I could tell she regretted it. I pulled my own jacket off and put it around her shoulders, knowing that it would probably only help so much because at least some of her shaking was probably from the situation more than the cold.
“Thanks,” she said.
Then both of us were quiet as we waited. Taylor barely looked up, and I wondered if she was worried about seeing someone she knew from school. We hadn’t exactly talked about the specifics of how we’d reveal our role in Brad’s death to his parents, and now that we were here, it became clearer that we should’ve taken some time to discuss it. We couldn’t exactly plan our confession strategy while surrounded by mourners.
<
br /> Were we just going to casually mention to Brad’s parents on the way to the casket that “Oh, hey, you don’t know me, but your son was stalking my girlfriend, so I had to kill him”? No parent would allow someone to leave after revealing something like that. The outlaws-in-handcuffs scenario was manifesting itself into a probable reality quicker than I cared to accept. Though that was preferable to Brad’s family becoming an angry mob set on avenging their loved one’s death.
Taylor was right. This was a bad idea. And the closer we got to the entrance, the clearer that fact became. Taylor already looked emotional, but I couldn’t actually put my finger on what emotion had taken hold of her. Fear? Sadness? Embarrassment? A toxic mix of all of them?
I was sure she could hear, as I could, the quiet conversations of those around us discussing how young Brad was. How bright and full of life he was. Then there were the more intimate memories—the stories that only close friends and family would know.
I heard Taylor draw a shaky breath from deep inside her. I knew her well enough to recognize when she was about to lose it, and as we got closer to the casket, I worried about what her reaction would be when she actually had to look in it.
“I’m guessing those are Brad’s parents?” I said, nodding toward the sharply dressed man and woman in their late forties in the receiving line. They cried softly and spoke to everyone, even if it was just to say a few polite words to friends of Brad’s who they probably didn’t know.
Taylor had mentioned that his parents were divorced, but Brad’s dad was kind enough to hold his ex-wife as she cried softly. Somehow she managed to wipe her tears in a way that prevented her eye makeup from smearing.
“I’d assume so. I never met them, but that’s gotta be.”
In the receiving line were some other relatives, who I guessed were Brad’s siblings or cousins and grandparents.
The people at the casket now had been up there for some time, providing a lull in the procession of people making their way to his family and then to the exit. “Maybe we should ask if we could talk to them afterward. Like just give them a heads-up so we don’t bombard them with all of it unexpectedly.”
Let's Not & Say We Did (The Love Game Book 5) Page 19