by Huss, JA
“Look, I didn’t say it made sense, OK? None of this makes sense. I’m just trying to make you happy.”
“You mean make you happy?”
“Me too.”
“Mostly you.”
“Lyssa—”
“No, it’s fine,” I say. “I get it. You’re the new me.”
“What?”
“You know, thinking of yourself.”
“Jesus. I don’t know what to think about you, OK? I just know what I told you. I like you.”
I turn in my seat to face him just as he turns the car into the driveway. It’s a really long driveway so I have one more shot at this before we switch gears and go back inside my prison. “Well, if you like me, then… let’s just go somewhere.”
“Where would we go?”
“Let’s go see your mom. Fuck this wedding.”
“You don’t need me to get you out of this wedding.” He stops the car in front of the house, puts in in gear, and shuts it off. “You can get yourself out of this wedding. Just tell your stepfather no.”
“Just tell him no.” I laugh.
“Yeah, you’re a fucking grown-ass woman. You can make your own choices. Why do you let everyone make them for you?”
“I guess…” I think about this for a moment, try to put it into words that won’t make him think I’m just some random psycho, and decide on, “Because I feel trapped.”
“Well, you’re not. Sure, it can feel that way sometimes, but you’re not. If you want to leave then here,” he says, handing me the key fob. “Take it. Take the car and go. I’m not holding you prisoner.”
“Just take it and go?”
“I don’t understand why this is so hard for you. Is it because your stepfather has been so controlling your whole life you actually don’t realize he’s not in control?”
I think about that for a second, trying to make all the pieces of my life fit together in some new way that makes sense.
“Or is it because you’re afraid?”
“What would I be afraid of?” I ask softly. Because I know what I’m afraid of. But I’d like to know what he thinks I’m afraid of.
“I don’t know, Lyssa.” He takes my hand, opens my palm, drops the key fob into it, closes it back up, and then smiles at me. “Make a choice. Right now.”
And then he gets out of the car, grabs the dress, and the bags from the trunk, and goes inside.
I sit there like that, just staring at the seat where he was, and think.
Should I get in that seat and drive away? Go back to my apartment, pack my things and just leave?
But then I look at the house and wonder what I’d be missing out on if I left and never saw Mason again.
Am I falling in love with this guy?
That’s impossible.
But am I?
I get out of the car and go inside the house.
Because I don’t know. I really don’t know.
Everything is confusing. I don’t understand my feelings. Or what I was doing up in my room all week. Or even why I was doing it.
I feel like I’m nobody. I’m a thing. Just a wild thing and nothing more.
But then Mason Macintyre comes along and when he’s close to me… when he’s on my side I feel like I can handle this. I can win.
If he’s with me, maybe I can win?
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - MASON
Lyssa doesn’t take her chances and drive off in the Mercedes. She comes inside, unpacks all her bags, oohing and ahhhing at all her purchases, and smiles the whole time as she puts them away in her room as I watch.
She looks happy and I think maybe she is. Maybe our little talk helped her in some way. She seems… normal. Like herself. Even though I have no idea who the real Lyssa is.
Maybe this is her?
“I’m not going to sleep up in that room tonight,” she says. “Where have you been sleeping?”
“The last room at the end of the east wing. You wanna sleep in there with me?”
She nods her head. “Yes. I do.”
“OK,” I say.
Then she goes silent.
“Well, are you tired now? We could watch some TV. That’s why I picked that room. It has a TV.”
“TV,” she says. Like this is some foreign concept for her. “What would we watch?”
“Who cares,” I say. “We’ll be together. We can channel-surf and make fun of infomercials for all I care.”
I wait for her to come back with some not-so-thinly veiled sexual innuendo, but she doesn’t.
“You OK?” I ask.
She nods. “Yes. I think I am.”
“OK. Grab some night clothes and I’ll meet you in there.”
My bags are in the hallway just outside her room, so I pick them up and take them with me. I bought some sweat pants to sleep in, and even though I’ve been sleeping nude this whole time and now Lyssa is gonna be sleeping next to me, I put them on anyway.
Something still bothers me about this girl. Something is off. But I figure, these rich people, ya know? They’re all weird. They live in a whole other world than the rest of us. So it’s not her fault, not really. She was just brought up in this alternate reality. She really, truly doesn’t know any better.
I turn the TV on, pull the covers back, and get in.
I expect her to show up wearing the nightie she bought today. Or one of the bra and panties sets. Or hell, naked. But she shows up in her Disney-princess night shirt.
I frown at her. “What are you wearing?”
“This is what I always wear.”
“Yeah, but…”
“But what?”
She told me she sleeps naked. And then all week she’s been wearing the Disney princess nightshirts. But I don’t want to bring that stuff up. Not the naked part and not the princess part either. So I say, “You bought all that new stuff, Lyssa. Don’t you want to wear it?”
“Oh,” she says. “Did you want me to wear it?”
Does she really not know how to make a decision? Or hold on. Did she make one? And this is it?
I can’t fucking tell.
“No, it’s fine,” I say. “I was just asking. Come on get in.”
She walks over to the bed, slides in next to me, and I cover her up, wrapping my arms around her and pulling her close.
She’s stiff for some reason. “God, relax,” I say. “I’m not gonna hurt you.”
“Sorry.” She laughs. “I’m just not used to sleeping with people.”
I raise an eyebrow at her.
“You know what I mean. Not sex, just sleeping.” Then she frowns. “Unless you want to have sex?”
“Uh… I mean, we’ve had a lot of it today, so I’m good. But I can go again if you want.”
She relaxes a little and leans up to kiss me. “That was not a yes or a no.”
“How about you decide?” I say.
“Me. Hmmm. OK. Well. Hmmm.” She takes a moment, then says, “No, I’m tired.”
“OK,” I say, flipping the TV off. “Let’s go to sleep then.”
We snuggle down deeper into the bed and each other and she sighs. “This is kinda nice.”
“Yeah, it is.”
“OK. Well. Good night, Mason.”
I smile in the dark. I can’t help it. She’s so… calm and different.
“Good night, Lyssa.”
When I wake up in the morning she’s not in the bed. “Lyssa?” I call, sitting up in the bed. She’s not in the en suite bathroom because the door is open and the light’s not on.
So I get up and start walking down the hall. I check her other bedroom, the one where the wedding dress lives in the closet, but she’s not in there either.
I go downstairs, make my way into the kitchen and find it empty.
“Lyssa?” I call, walking out in the main foyer.
Then I panic and go over to the front door and pull it open. Because I made a point not to lock her in last night.
But the Mercedes is still in front, parked a littl
e ways behind the van.
I check the garage anyway, because there are more cars to choose from, but the other two are there as well.
“Lyssa!” I call, closing the door to the garage and backtracking through the house.
I go upstairs and start pulling open bedroom doors. But they’re all empty.
And then I see the door to the only place I didn’t check.
The princess room.
I find her sleeping in the bean bag chair wearing the… teenager clothes. Tight, sporty pink shorts, tight, white tank top, no bra, peaked nipples pushing into the fabric, and the thigh-high tube socks. She has pigtails again. Messy, crooked pigtails like she did her hair in the dark. There is a half-eaten pink sucker on the little table next to the bean bag chair and a pink landline phone next to the sucker.
What the fuck is going on here?
I look around for a cam, because I am one hundred percent sure that’s got to be one of her other secrets. She’s a cam girl with a teenage fetish specialty. Because that’s what this looks like. It looks staged. Like a set. And who the hell uses a landline these days?
She must have clients and they must call her.
I am so convinced of this scenario, I pick up the handset on the phone and dial *69, but there’s no dial tone. Fucking thing doesn’t even work.
“Lyssa,” I say, placing the hand set back. She doesn’t answer so I shake her. “Lyssa.”
“Hmmm,” she says, turning over in the bean bag chair.
“Wake up.”
She draws in a long, sleepy breath and rubs her eyes. “What?”
“What are you doing in here?”
She looks around then frowns. “I couldn’t sleep last night.”
“So you came up here?” I ask her. “And put on these clothes? And did your hair… in the dark? What the hell is going on? Are you a cam girl?”
She blinks at me. “What?” The sleepiness is gone as she squints her eyes. “A cam girl? Why the fuck would you think that?”
“Uh…” I laugh. “Because that’s what this looks like.” And also you were arrested for prostitution, pimping, and pandering. That’s why.
But I don’t say any of that out loud. Because something is off about her right now.
I’m leaning in her face as all these thoughts run through my head and she pushes me away, then gets to her feet.
“What were you doing on the bean bag?” I ask.
“What the fuck does it look like? I was sleeping.”
“Lyssa,” I say, grabbing her arm and giving her a shake. “There’s a fucking bed right there. You could’ve just slept in the bed.”
“The sheets,” she says. Like this explains everything.
“What?”
“The sheets are dirty. From that first night we were here. No one came to change them.”
I want to pull my hair out. “You’ve been sleeping up here in this bean bag the whole time? What the hell is wrong with you? Don’t you change your own sheets at home?”
“Sometimes,” she says.
“So…” I open my hands in a what-the-fuck gesture.
“I just didn’t think of it.”
I have a million things to say back to this idiotic answer. Mostly mean things. Things like, Are you a moron? Are you so spoiled that you’re helpless? Incapable of formulating the simplest of solutions?
I really want to say all that. And I almost do. Because it makes no sense. This girl, right here, in this room—she is not the girl I met in that club a week ago. She is not the girl in the gold dress. She is not the girl who kneed me in the balls and punched me in the face. Who ran, who fought back, who…
Something is wrong with her.
Or no. Because it hits me.
Something is wrong with this place.
“Pack a bag,” I say. “We’re leaving.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - LYSSA
Mason is angry with me. That much I know. But I’m having trouble understanding why. I don’t know why. So I tick things off on a list.
I left his bed last night and went up to the princess room. I do remember that, but I had a good reason. And I know he’s mad that I’ve been sleeping on the bean bag this whole time, but seriously, I wasn’t gonna sleep in that dirty bed. I don’t think it’s that weird. I also think he has a problem with my clothes. And I don’t love them. But they’re familiar to me so I don’t hate them either.
Cam girl though? That came out of nowhere. Didn’t it? I don’t know. I feel confused and dizzy. Nothing makes sense anymore. And I kinda felt like things did make sense. Before. That first day I was so sure what was happening. But ever since I went up to the princess room that first night everything went weird again.
Weird again.
What do I mean?
“What the fuck are you carrying?” Mason asks me when I get downstairs.
“What?” I look down at my pink and purple unicorn backpack. “I didn’t have any luggage in that room so I grabbed this. What’s the big deal?”
“Forget it. Let’s go.”
He takes my hand and we go outside and get in the Mercedes. He looks over at me as he starts the car and says, “We’re going back to the city.”
“We are?” I say, brightening at the idea.
“Yeah, this place… I don’t really understand what’s going on, but this place isn’t good for you.” He pulls around the van and heads down the driveway.
I look back at the huge country estate and have to agree with him. “I don’t like it either.”
But I feel weird leaving. I feel jittery and nervous like I’m doing something wrong. My stepfather is gonna be pissed off when he finds out. But he won’t be here for a few more days so I try to forget about how we’re disobeying orders and just breathe deep and relax into the soft leather of the seat.
It’s a long drive into the city. Mason and I are mostly quiet until we are well away from the house and the urban skyline welcomes us in the distance. With each mile we put between ourselves and the mansion I feel better. More myself.
There’s a lot of traffic as we start to approach downtown. I don’t even know what day it is. Just that it must be a weekday from the look of the rush-hour traffic.
When he gets off at an unfamiliar exit I realize he’s not taking me back to my apartment. “Where are we going?” I ask, breaking our long silence.
“My place,” he says. “I’m sick of sleeping in unfamiliar beds. I think we both need something a little more normal right now.”
“Well, I’m not complaining,” I say, leaning back as I exhale out a long breath. “I kinda want to see where you live. Is it a tall building?”
“Yeah,” he says. And I think the city relaxes him too. Because he smiles. “It’s on the north central side of the park. I’m sure it’s not up to your standards, princess. But it’s not bad, I promise.”
I turn in my seat so I can look at him as he drives. It’s overcast and raining out, so the city lights reflected on his face kinda shimmer as we pass under them. Reds, and blues, and yellows.
“How are you feeling?” he asks.
“Fine,” I say. “A little hungry.”
“We can get takeout.”
He looks excited at that. After all my stupid comfort foods, I don’t blame him.
And then he talks about our dinner options. Quizzes me on what I like. Fills me in on what he prefers. And then we are pulling into the garage below a very tall building.
He pulls into a parking spot with the number P-9 stenciled on the concrete wall and turns the engine off.
“Penthouse, huh?” I say, motioning to his parking spot number.
“Yeah.” He laughs. “But don’t get too excited. My version of penthouse and your version of penthouse probably aren’t the same thing. I mean, every building has a top floor, right?”
“I’m unreasonably excited about meeting the real Mason Macintyre.”
“Hmm,” he says, looking at me in the semi-darkness of the garage. “Well, I’m looking forw
ard to meeting the real you as well.”
We get out and Mason grabs our bags. He took all his new clothes with him. Stuffed it all into one department-store shopping bag. And he grabs my stupid unicorn backpack too, frowning at it.
“Geez,” I say. “Sorry to spoil your mood with my backpack.”
“It’s just weird, Lyssa.”
“It’s just the first thing I saw.”
“Also weird.”
“Whatever. We can throw it in the trash if it makes you so upset.” I grab it from his hand and walk over to a dumpster near the entrance to the elevators, but he grabs my other hand and pulls me back to him.
“Forget it. It’s fine.”
He’s right about the building. It’s not like the one I live in. There’s no cool decorative architectural features to remind you of its early days, or live person in the elevator to push your floor button for you. And the penthouse he lives in is just one of a dozen small, but bigger than most, units on the top floor.
However…
“Holy shit,” I say, walking towards the twinkling city sky that dominates the entire length of his small, long apartment. “Now that is a penthouse view.”
“Yeah,” Mason says, putting our bags down near the bedroom door. “It’s not your side of the park, that’s for sure. But it’s not bad.”
I turn to him and smile. “I think it’s wonderful.” Then I look around and decided I think all of it is wonderful. It’s not very big. Maybe a thousand square feet. But it’s interesting. The kitchen is elevated a few steps up and it’s modern and beautiful with dark gray cabinets, black countertops, and stainless-steel appliances. I walk up the stairs and turn to look out the window.
The view is even better. And the ceiling is high and arched. No beams. It’s too modern for beams. But it makes the small space feel airy and open.
“What do you do again?” I ask him. Because I don’t think he ever told me.
“I’m a bounty hunter,” he says.
“Princess bounty hunter.” I laugh. “OK, I knew that part. But that’s made up. What do you really do?”
“I bring in criminals who jump bail.”
“Hmm,” I say. “How did my stepfather find you?”
He shakes his head. “You know what? I don’t really know. Looked me up online, I guess? Or maybe he has a friend in bail bonds?”