by Tessa Bailey
In his periphery, Aaron saw the senator move in the window of his den, phone pressed to his ear as he watched Aaron and Grace, and their obvious impasse in the driveway. He could feel the older man’s speculation like a net thrown over his head, ready to drag him up into the trees. Well-warranted concern. “You’re putting me in a real fucking spot here, hippie.”
She must have taken that as Aaron’s agreement, because she tucked her chin down toward her chest, as if trying to hide a smile, and skipped the remaining distance to the passenger door. There was nothing he could do after seeing that, was there? With a muttered curse, Aaron climbed into the driver’s seat and started the ignition, smirking when Grace already had her seatbelt buckled, hands clasped in her lap. Her lap, which was almost entirely visible through the sheer tights, her sweater not even long enough to reach mid-thigh. How he ached to draw it higher, over the curves of her hips. To drive down the street with nothing but nylon separating her backside from the seat. And he’d be the only one to know. The only one able to look, to reach over and cup her, stroke her. “You’re going to freeze your ass off,” he rasped.
Impatient fingers tugged on the sweater’s hem, but it only slid back up in a whispery scratch of fabric. “Just drive, Grandpa.”
A pained smile threatened, but Aaron banished it and threw the car into gear, feeling pretty desperate to be out from beneath the senator’s eyes while getting hard for the man’s daughter. Because, yeah. When it came to Grace’s body—which he now knew to be responsive as hell—his cock didn’t feel like observing the rules. “I, uh…” He turned onto the main road. “I need to take care of a few things, before we get on the phone. Are you okay for breakfast?”
“Yes, thank you.” She shifted toward him in the seat. “What few things are we taking care of?”
The royal we didn’t escape his notice. “I need to find different lodging for my family.” Aaron thought of Belmont’s marble countenance when he’d left the cabin that morning. At least until Sage came in and perched herself on the corner of the closest bed. As Aaron watched from the doorway, his brother had snatched Sage up like a toy and deposited her onto his lap, all but smothering the poor girl with his arms, face disappearing into her hair. Sage had allowed the treatment without complaint, even appearing gratified by it in some way. Aaron hadn’t been able to escape the cabin fast enough. “My brother doesn’t do well around news cameras. Or people. Not that he would say a damn thing about it to me.”
When they reached a stoplight, Aaron tugged the cell phone from his pocket, preparing to make a call to Peggy on speakerphone, instructing her to get packing. “I know where they can stay,” Grace said. “It’s a twenty-minute drive north of Des Moines…”
The way she’d trailed off had Aaron examining her face. “What’s it called? I can phone them and see if they have openings.”
“There’s no one to call…but it’s open.” Grace pressed a finger to her front teeth, the overlapping ones, before she dropped her hand. “Maybe I should bring you there first? It won’t take long.”
Just like the day they’d arrived, Aaron felt invisible fingers trail down the back of his neck. In the past, intuition had usually arrived in the form of a gut feeling, but since arriving in Iowa, that appeared to have changed. “Grace, tell me where we’re going.”
She nodded, as if she’d expected the question. “An old campground that hasn’t been used in a while. But it’s in the preparation stages of housing young people again. Not only as a summer camp, but a year-round place for orphaned children. From Iowa, specifically. It’s nowhere close to being ready, but we—Imelda, the Irish woman you met last night, and myself—have been working on making it functional again.” Her tone changed, grew softer. “It used to be operated by—”
“YouthAspire?” Aaron realized he held the cell phone too tightly when his palm started to ache, so he threw it down into the cup holder. “I’ll take you there, but I can’t be in the dark anymore. Maybe you don’t think I have the right to ask, but I want to know what happened to you. I’m—”
“I know. You don’t like puzzles.” She wasn’t facing him, but he could see her far-off expression in the window. “When we get there, you can take your turn trying to solve me.”
The light turned green, but the car behind Aaron had to issue a beep to get Aaron moving. There was no denying he was anxious to piece Grace’s past together, but a warning also buzzed at the front of his skull. Danger. Caution. He already felt protective enough of Grace without giving himself more reason. Still, he was unable to stop himself from asking, “Which way?”
Chapter Twelve
Today wasn’t the first time Grace had been back at the YouthAspire campsite. No, she’d been meeting Imelda there on a semiregular basis to clean out the old cabins, salvaging what they could and throwing the rest into rented green Dumpsters, which sat in various locations around the main, overgrown yard. They hadn’t reached a point where landscaping made sense or could be maintained, but they would. They would.
As Aaron drove beneath the peeling YouthAspire sign, once so freshly painted and modern looking, Grace remembered the morning she’d been dropped off, her mother in a rush to make a flight, which would take her to Spain for a vacation with Grace’s father. They’d air kissed on accident, laughed about missing one another’s cheeks, before having a proper hug. But it had been stiff, impersonal. Two months with the same kids who avoided her in school sounded like torture, and she’d made her opinion known, only to be greeted by patented responses and assurances that the leadership camp would look good on her college application.
Ray Solomon had been the first person to greet Grace, directing her toward the cabin that would be her home. His nearly translucent blue eyes had transfixed her, the falling wave of blond hair reminding Grace of California beaches, puka shells, and sand. So glamorous when she’d grown up looking at the same Iowa backdrop her entire life. He hadn’t shown any extra interest in Grace—or any other campers— that first day. Later, though¸ they’d been his whole world.
As soon as Aaron put the Suburban in Park, Grace alighted from the vehicle, her boots landing on brown grass and fallen leaves. Around them, the camp fanned out, a semicircle of cabins on one end, a massive mess hall sitting on the opposite. At one time, there had been upscale trailers serving as classrooms, but after the incident when Grace was sixteen, they had been reclaimed by their rental company.
Grace felt, rather than saw, Aaron walk up beside her, so she set off for the only clean cabin, knowing he would follow. When they reached the familiar entrance, Grace pushed open the door, indicating the huge interior lined with twin beds, only one of them made up. “I come here to sleep sometimes,” Grace explained, feeling absurdly shy about Aaron seeing a bed she often used. “Or if Imelda receives someone new at the shelter and they’re not ready to be around the other kids yet, they come here.” With a sweep of her hand, she indicated the wall of fogged glass windows. “There are linens in the main office, so we could make up beds for your family. If this is okay.”
She turned toward Aaron for the first time since they’d arrived, finding him riveted by the bed, his arms crossed so tightly she feared he’d snap them off. “It’s fine. They’ll be fine here.” His shiny dress shoes made hollow sounds on the floor as he paced the cabin. “You realize, if your father is elected president, you won’t be able to sleep in abandoned cabins without a CIA security detail parked outside.”
Grace sat down on the neatly made bed, rubbing the flannel blanket between her fingertips. “Yes. I also know I’m going to give them hell.”
Aaron’s laughter was unrestrained, just for a second, and it was so wide and deep, Grace couldn’t help trying to suck it into her lungs. But when he moved to stand before her, he was back to being the unreadable man in her father’s den. “Let’s hear it, Grace.”
She tucked her hands beneath her thighs and breathed. “The summer I came here—I was sixteen—my cabin was the farthest one from the entrance. Ma
king friends…it never came easy for me, but I did it. We kind of bonded over being abandoned here and…he picked up on that.”
Aaron became very still. “He.”
Grace tilted her head back to meet Aaron’s stony eyes. “Before I tell you anything else, I—I think you should know nothing sexual happened. Nothing like that.” At her words, he fell back a step, but didn’t respond. Since the beginning, she’d sensed his struggle to avoid touching her. Not for a single second would she give him reason to believe he’d harmed her by giving in. Even if it couldn’t happen again, she didn’t want to tarnish the unique moment they’d captured in the field.
“His name was Ray Solomon and…” Grace trailed off when she saw a flash of recognition in Aaron’s eyes. Not unusual, considering the story had been national news. “All the counselors had a job to perform. Keep the fresh blood coming through the gates. And that meant…influencing us, ensuring we left with a head full of slogans and keys to success. Of course, they only accepted kids who already excelled in school and sports, so they would have the largest impact. Make YouthAspire more desirable, the place the winners chose to spend their summer. But we weren’t winners, in the classic sense. Not my little group. We were outcasts.”
Aaron had propped a shoulder against the wall, stuck back in the shadows, reminding Grace of the night they’d met in the woods. The reminder of Aaron, back before she’d known anything about his job or specialty within the campaign, made her feel comfortable continuing.
“Ray worked slowly, breaking my little group of friends off from the rest of the pack. Earning our trust by telling us these stories…he claimed he’d been like us in high school, not fitting in, not relating to people our age. And then he started in on our parents.” A ball of discomfort formed in Grace’s throat, forcing her to pause and regroup, balling her hands into fists beneath her thighs. “Our parents didn’t call as often as the other campers’ parents. Or we’d been rejected, but our parents had begged for the camp to take us off their hands. These are things he told us, over and over. And we were already there, which is something he must have seen. Something that…assembled us in the first place. We were ready to hate our parents and follow him anywhere. And we did. We were just…teenagers.”
Grace closed her eyes and thought about their unauthorized meetings in the field in the middle of the night, the five of them sitting in a tight circle, holding flashlights. The way they’d been so dazzled, so inspired by this worldly man who’d been just like them. If he could emerge on the other side of adolescence intact, maybe they could, too.
“The week camp was set to end, Ray started acting differently. He didn’t stop interacting with us, but he would snap. He’d get angry at an innocent comment, or if one of us was late to hang out. Away from the rest of camp.” Grace opened her eyes to find Aaron had moved closer, his face now visible under the dull cabin light. The rich, golden brown of his eyes was muted, his jaw tight. “Even though there were warning signs—I ignored them, ignored the doubts when they started appearing—we were all in. We didn’t want to leave him and go back to the parents who hated us. He’d made sure of that. At least he cared enough to get upset, right?” She forced the tension in her shoulders to ebb. “We snuck out, the night before pickup. We hiked—it seemed like hours—in the dark, until we reached this house. It sounds so stupid now, that we thought we’d live there, playing house, and no one would find us. But they did. The FBI found us the next morning.” A humorless smile lifted her lips. “We weren’t just campers anymore. We were a senator’s daughter, the governor’s nieces, and a prominent local businessman’s son. And we were being held hostage by a man who’d become unstable after a bad divorce. Lost his year-round job and custody of his children. All in the space of six months.” Ray’s desperate face flashed in her mind. “He fudged his counselor application and the administrators failed to do the proper background check, which is a major reason the camp is no longer functioning.” She paused. “His ex-wife wouldn’t communicate with him about reconsidering visitation and had moved without telling him where she was going. I don’t think taking us to the house started as a way to get her attention, but that’s what it became as camp went on.”
Grace gathered the flannel blanket around her shoulders, sighing over the warmth. Someday, just maybe, she could talk about the tragedy without feeling cold, but today wasn’t that day.
“We actually laughed when we heard them calling us hostages on the radio. We laughed right up until he showed us the guns, until he pointed them at our heads and ordered us to get down on the kitchen floor.” A flash of silver shook across her conscious. “He’d been preparing the house for weeks. To take us there.”
“I remember now.” Aaron’s voice slashed through the darkness, reminding her of metal being cut. “I remember what happened now. You can stop.”
“No, I…” She pulled the blanket higher, up to her chin. “I have to complete the story every time I tell it or I’m avoiding.”
The muscles in Aaron’s throat flexed. “How many times have you told it?”
“A lot.” Needing to push through, knowing she wouldn’t find relief exactly, but a sense of non-failure to bring the story full circle once she finished, Grace continued. “The hostage negotiator agreed to grant each of his demands for every hostage Ray sent out. A phone call with his ex-wife, an overnight visit with his kids.” A lump formed in her throat. “They requested me first, because I was—I am—a senator’s daughter.” She slid a look up at Aaron. “That part wasn’t in the news. Neither was the fact that I didn’t want to be released. The officers waiting at the door had to drag me out. After I was released from the house, Ray changed his mind. All that law enforcement…he knew they were only biding their time and he’d never get his demands met. And even if he did, they would never remain permanent. So he—”
Aaron sat down on the bed beside Grace, the thin, cheap mattress dipping beneath his weight. He didn’t look at her, but their knees touched. Just the barest of grazes, but it gave her a shot of desperately needed warmth.
“He barricaded the doors and set the place on fire,” Grace whispered. “Everyone moved at once, trying to get the other campers out, but there was gunfire inside…and nothing could have helped them.”
She was grateful for Aaron’s silence, grateful that the rehashed events would have time to settle down, like cinders drifting down from a chimney and turning to ash. The stillness of the cabin was something she’d grown used to, having slept there so many nights without the benefit of company, but somehow it felt heavier, more substantial, having someone to share it with.
“I wear the four ribbons in my hair for them.” She pressed her knee closer to Aaron’s, hungry for human contact. “And I shouldn’t have taken them out last night, just because you’re the one who put them there.”
Aaron’s hands met between his bent legs, clasping until his knuckles turned pale. “Don’t worry about it.”
Grace didn’t know if that was possible, knowing she’d negated a kindness because she’d been in a state of shock after finding out what Aaron did for a living. In her haste to distance herself, she’d been callous, and in truth, she’d lain awake for hours during the night, wishing more than anything that she’d just kept the ribbons in her hair. She needed to find a way to make her cold treatment of him right, but now wasn’t the time. Not with ghosts of the past sharing the cabin with them. “I didn’t deserve to be released first. We were equally important. So I have to build this place better for them. I have to do good for all five of us. To give kids without the advantages we had…a place to succeed where my friends will never get the chance.” She blew out a breath and looked at Aaron. “Declaring this place damaged and moving on feels like I’m doing the same to myself. It should be made whole again. It can be revived. Will you let me do that?”
Chapter Thirteen
Don’t let her see your hands shaking.
Holy shit. How could he be…scared? Over something that happened seven y
ears earlier? He didn’t do scared. Except one vision of Grace on the kitchen floor of some death trap with a gun in her face, and he had to be fucking hallucinating. Because the cabin floor seemed to rise, the walls looming close. He couldn’t swallow, couldn’t seem to move his legs. They were just sitting there, resembling the appendages he’d been born with, but lacking all function. If this wasn’t fear, what was? Nothing could be worse than the sick helplessness he’d felt throughout Grace’s entire story, watching as she bolstered herself over and over, while he stood by, knowing she would reject any paltry attempt he made at comfort.
Christ. What had she asked him?
Can you let me do that?
As in, making the camp a better place, in memory of her friends. He almost laughed, but held back the reaction because it would have been totally devoid of humor. Aaron Clarkson doing something noble. Helping this girl slay her demons. Had he fallen down a goddamn rabbit hole? He wasn’t supposed to give a shit about bleeding heart causes and the survivor’s guilt of another person. He didn’t.
He was just ready to rip the walls down if Grace felt guilty for another second about being rescued. Made sense, right?
No, it didn’t. Nothing made sense at that juncture, so he would break it down. Put it into neat categories until sense was made. He had a job to do, a career to rekindle. And a relentless urge to banish Grace’s pain. Was there a way to accomplish both and keep himself from slipping farther into the confusion Grace inspired? Yes, he could do that. He could get the need for Grace’s closure out of his system and send the girl on her merry do-gooder way.
Why did that strategy bring the fear screaming back?