Off-Limits Box Set

by Ella James

  “Let me tell you this,” I say, daring a glance at him. “Your room is awesome.” I force myself to smile, even though he looks like misery personified, and my heart is beating too fast. “It’s got a Star Wars poster and airplanes on the sheets. In your bathroom, there’s a Hogwarts shower curtain.”

  His eyes are skeptical, his lush mouth tense.

  “My little sister and I picked it all out for you, for seven-year-old Landon.” I laugh.

  His eyebrows arch as he crosses his arms over his chest. His lips are pressed together, the corners of his mouth curved upward in a kind of smile but kind of grimace, too.

  “Em, she wore her favorite Minnie Mouse dress to meet you at her elementary school today. You have to love her or you’ll break her heart. She’s expecting a new friend.”

  He doesn’t speak, not with his mouth, so I continue. “I think you’ll find your clothes a little bit too small, but don’t go stealing any shirts. We’ll get you more.”

  His smirk bends into a smile; his eyes crinkle. “It’s not funny,” he says, as if he’s trying to convince himself.

  “It’s sort of funny.”

  He rubs his hand across his face to hide a small smile.

  “You did steal the shirt,” I venture.

  “Why do you say that?”

  My gaze flickers to him. “Because it’s got gray seams. I couldn’t see before, but now that you’re up close… Pax wears name-brand undershirts. How did you get away with it?”

  He does the smirk-smile-grimace thing again, making a dimple bloom in his left cheek. “I’ll deny it if you ever ask again.”

  “I wouldn’t. I’m a little square, but I’m no rat.”

  “I found it in the locker room this morning…” He taps his forehead. “Wrote my initials on the tag.”

  I laugh. “That’s crazy smart.”

  “I’m crazy smart.”

  “That’s what my parents said.” I laugh. “I was wondering! What kind of elementary school kid needs help prepping for college?”

  His eyes shut, and he shakes his head. I want to grab him by the shoulders just to feel their thickness: cotton-covered muscle…

  “That’s a pretty big fuckup,” he says, stretching out his legs.

  “Age is just a number, right?”

  “Is that what the greeting cards say?”

  “You’re a skeptic, aren’t you? I can tell. I bet you like Jack Handey. You’re a reluctantly hopeful agnostic who wishes you didn’t have an optimistic streak, but you do, don’t you? I can feel it.”

  As soon as the words fall off my tongue, I want to clamp my palm over my mouth. I’ve never been so forward with anyone, nor so presumptive.

  To my shock, he laughs. “You’re right. That’s pretty fucking good; I’ve gotta give it to ya.”

  “You should be more optimistic,” I say. “Look at what you pulled off today with the shirt. I think things are going your way, Landon. James Landon?”

  He nods.

  “And what’s your last name? Jones, right?”

  “Like Indiana.” He winks.

  “Oh my gosh, I bet Em looked for you all day. Poor thing.”

  “Your parents…” He shakes his head. “Wouldn’t be surprised if they send me packing after tonight.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “You know why.” His eyes narrow.

  “Because you’re my age?”

  He nods. “Coyote in the hen house.”

  I give a laughing hoot. “I’m the hen?”

  Again, that rakish nod. His eyebrows lift, and those gray eyes study my face. “I didn’t notice much at first, but now I’m talking to you…” He shakes his head again, and runs a hand back through his hair.

  My heart pounds. “Now you’re talking to me…what?” I half-whisper.

  He shrugs. “You’re the kind of good girl bad guys always go for.”

  “Are you a bad guy?” I ask.

  “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know. I think maybe you play one. Like an actor in a movie.”

  “Are you always like this?”

  “Like how?” I ask.

  He looks at me again—a searching look that unlocks things inside me.

  “Blunt and presumptive?” I try.

  “You’re a Gryffindor, aren’t you?”

  This makes me giggle. “I have socks—and possibly a winter scarf—in my Hogwarts house colors.”

  “I figured.” He looks smug. Relaxed now.

  “And what are you?”

  “You need to ask?” Again, the eyebrow lift, the skeptic.

  “No. I really don’t. I know you’re Slytherin.”

  He nods once, taking up most of the space in my car and in my heart.

  “Every Slytherin needs a friend from Gryffindor,” I tell him.

  “If you say so.”

  “C’mon. It’s the truth. You know it.”

  “I don’t need you,” he says.

  “Yes you do. You need someone to call your bullshit.”

  “Is that right?” He smiles reluctantly. That dimple.

  “It’s right. You need a friend who understands that even though you claim to be from Slytherin, you’re not as scary as you seem.”

  “Do I seem scary?” He looks pleased.

  “That part was an exaggeration.”

  His face falls, and I giggle. He’s easy to goad.

  “You’re going to love my house.” We’re on the road that takes us up into the hills now. “There’s a waterfall behind it. And your room? It’s in the basement. Your clothes are about nine sizes too small, but the space down there is pretty sweet. A lot of privacy.”

  He nods, and I can feel his nervousness.

  “Don’t worry. I don’t think my parents will care that you’re my age instead of Em’s. They probably think it’s meant to be.”

  He screws his face up. “Really?”

  “Yes, Mr. Skeptical. They believe in things like serendipity and fate.”

  He frowns. “I don’t.”

  “Well—you will.”

  The pensive, brooding guy from school goes quiet as we walk through the house. I can tell he must be nervous, because he barely says a word as Mom, Emmaline, and I lead him through our foyer/formal dining room, into the kitchen, back into the family area, and then up the gorgeous, mahogany staircase that leads from the foyer to the second floor, where we show him the workout room and my dad’s library.

  Em’s and my bedrooms, on the third floor, aren’t part of his tour. After he sees everything else, we take him to the basement, where he laughs at his room, bespells my sister with a Harry Potter wand, and flops down on one twin bed like he’s been living in our basement forever.

  Dinner with my dad is just as easy. Landon is a little on the quiet side, but polite and shockingly charming.

  My mom confides that very night, when everyone else is asleep, that she thinks he was meant to end up in our house.

  “I would have never signed on for a boy your age, Evie, but now that we have him, I think this could be wonderful.”

  I nod, even as my stomach flips. “I think so too.”

  “So you have homeroom together?”

  I nod, and we talk about getting him some school supplies. My mom’s off work tomorrow afternoon.

  “Maybe we’ll leave school early. Do a little shopping,” she suggests. “The four of us. How does that sound?”

  My mom is awesome. To the core. I don’t know how someone like Landon ended up in foster care when I won the lottery, but I’m forever grateful.

  We do just that, and in days, it feels like he has always been here. He sits endlessly in the family room while Emmaline reads him Holes by Louis Sachar. He helps my mom with dishes, even though she always says he doesn’t need to. In the mornings over breakfast, he reads the paper with my dad.

  With me, he’s not as warm—and not as polished. Sometimes, he gives me looks just like he did the first day that I met him, looks that seem to tel
l me something private, like at dinner one night while my parents and Em are getting seconds, he gives me a tired smile-smirk. When they get back to the table, he’s back “on,” talking and joking.

  I learn that his wit is dry, his politics sincere, his reading taste geeky, and his pop culture repertoire vast. One night shortly after he arrives, I go down to the kitchen after bedtime to get grape juice, and I find him at the kitchen table, hunched over another book by Richard Feynman, the affable physicist/author.

  “That’s not the same book, is it?” I ask, peering at the cover, striped by his long fingers holding it.

  He doesn’t look up. “Nope.”

  “You’re going through those things like comic books.”

  “Easy reading,” he says, still not looking up.

  “For after midnight?”

  He shrugs.

  Every night right after dinner, he goes downstairs, and he doesn’t come back up. “Why’d you leave your room to read?”

  He blinks up at me. “What?”

  “Never mind.”

  He doesn’t ask again, just keeps on reading, so I leave the dimly lit kitchen with just “goodnight.”

  The next morning, our ride to school is the same as the previous few days: Landon playing some game on his new phone, only pausing to rub his palm over the knee of his jeans or cast his eagle eyes up at the road.

  “What? I’m a great driver,” I say, flipping my hair.

  His brows arch up. “You’re not smooth.”

  “I’m adventurous.”

  “You’re making me car sick.”

  “You drive, then.” We’re driving past a strip mall parking lot, so I pull over.

  He blinks at me then casts his gaze back at his phone. “Don’t drive.”

  “Huh?”

  “I don’t drive.”

  “At all?”

  “At all,” he tells me.

  “Can I ask why?”

  “Can you?” Is there an edge to his words? I can’t tell.

  “Why?” I ask him pointedly.

  “Because I never learned.”

  “Do you have a permit?”

  “No.”

  “Wow, really?”

  “Society existed for millennia without motorized vehicles, Evie.”

  “So what? They’re central to society now.” I give him my skeptical face. Landon gives me his.

  “Like…no one taught you?”

  “I didn’t ask to be taught,” he says.

  Okay, that’s definitely an edge there in his voice. I swallow and pull back onto our route. “I’m sure you’d suck at it,” I say a little later.

  He laughs, an unexpected, hoarse burst. “Is that right?” His words are low and rich, his mouth curved upward. He looks radiant with his new haircut, in his nice, new clothes, a Polo shirt stretching across his wide shoulders.

  “Yep. You’ll probably never learn because you know I’d show you up so badly.”

  He laughs, lowering his phone for once.

  “That’s what you think?”

  “It’s what I know.” I give him my best poker face.

  “Pull over.”

  I do.

  “Get out.”

  “You think I’ll just let you drive my Betty?”

  “Betty Ford?” He tilts his head back, laughing.

  “I didn’t name her; Makayla did. I don’t think she knew that Betty Ford had suffered with addiction problems.”

  He gets out, and comes to my side of the car. I open the door and peer up at him.

  “C’mon. Let a man show you how to do it.”

  I gasp, but I stand up.

  Landon’s hand curves over my shoulder. His face tightens. “Are you serious?” he asks—and his tone sounds like he is.

  “What?” I sound defensive.

  “You were going to let me drive?”

  I gape at him. “Are you trying to be a jerk right now?”

  “Are you trying to get us killed?”

  “What are you talking about? You asked to drive.”

  “And it’s your car, Evie. I told you I don’t even have my permit.”

  “But…you…”

  “Irresponsible,” he chides.

  “I think I just might have to slap you, Landon.”

  He lifts his chin slightly.

  “Ugh. Get in the car.”

  I’m annoyed the next few miles. That—and confused. “Why did you do that? I don’t like…” What do I call what he did? “Games. It’s rude,” I add, grappling with my feelings.

  “I don’t like you endangering yourself.”

  “You asked. I trust you, Landon. You seem smart.”

  “So did Ted Bundy.”

  “Ew. Are you Ted Bundy?”

  His gray eyes are more shrewd than I’ve ever seen them. “No, Evie. But I’m not joking about the permit.”

  “How do you not have it? I know you can read and take a test.” He doesn’t know this, but our calculus teacher—who has Landon second period and me fourth—bragged on him the other day, the new guy in second period who had done his homework for the entire year.

  “It’s not free.”

  “It can’t be much.”

  “To you,” he says gruffly.

  “You have to take it, then. I’ll give you money. You can learn in Mom’s car!”

  That night at the dinner table, I mention it to my parents. Landon kicks me under the table, but it’s worth it. Mom and Dad agree that Landon needs an allowance, since he’s doing chores just like Emmaline and me. They also urge him to sign up for something extracurricular.

  “Clubs are good,” my dad puts in, “but colleges like to see variety, so maybe a sport, too. If you have the interest.”

  Landon shoots me an exaggerated glare. I smile innocently.

  “He’ll play soccer,” Emmaline says. “Like Evie.”

  As it happens, the boys’ and girls’ soccer teams practice at the same time, on the same days, due to overlap of assistant coaches who work part-time on both teams. So Landon signs up for soccer.

  We continue riding home from school together, just at six o’clock instead of three, on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. Those nights are the weirdest times I’ve ever had, when Landon’s wearing sweat-drenched exercise shorts, grass-covered cleats, and his very own, damp, sticky undershirt, and I’m in my version of the same.

  We squabble and jest the whole way home; the whole way home, my heart hammers. I think there’s really something to pheromone-based attraction.

  Sometimes when I’m feeling too restless to settle down, I go into the kitchen to get some food or a drink, and I find Landon in his dinner seat, reading a book.

  I’m not sure why, but when I see him late at night, he’s always more cool and short with me, as if he’s mad I intruded on his one-man reading party.

  I don’t get it, but whatever. Most days, I’m so pleased to have him underneath my roof and in my car that it’s enough for me.

  Eventually, even Pax welcomes Landon into the fold. They become friends, all based on Pax’s respect of Landon’s successful shirt theft.

  Two weeks turn to three, to four, and he’s been here a month, eating at our table, light-saber fighting Emmaline, fixing my mother’s printer, talking politics with Dad. One night I let him drive around a parking lot after soccer practice. He’s slow and methodical. I call him an old man, and he gives me a funny smile.

  “Just trying to keep you safe, Evie.”

  When he gets out of the car and we cross paths behind the Focus’s trunk, he nudges my arm with his. “Thanks, friend.”

  I replay his words that night when I’m in my dark bedroom, falling asleep to the fantasy of my hand in his.

  Four

  Evie

  I wake up in the night, sweaty and panicked. What time is it? My attic bedroom has slanted ceilings, striped by three skylights. I see moonglow through one of them, and blink around my bedroom, which is bathed in pale light.

  A quick glance at my
alarm clock reveals it’s 3:18 a.m.

  I wiggle my half-asleep fingers. Rub my eyes. I feel…dread. The reason hits me like a lightning bolt: I have a take-home test! Oh my God—in calculus!

  I throw my covers off, slide off my bed, and make a grab for my backpack, stashed in a chair in one of my room’s corners. How did I forget this test? Do I even have it in my bag?

  A quick peek through my folder reveals yes—I have the test. Thank God it’s only one page long. Mr. Fry is merciful, and really gave this as a bonus opportunity. I look through all my backpack’s pockets, but I can’t find a pen. Probably because they’re all in my purse, which I usually drop into my backpack when I leave home in the mornings, but which right now is downstairs. Ugh.

  The full-length mirror mounted on my lilac wall tells me I look pretty good in my soft red camisole and cotton sleep shorts. The camisole has a built-in bra, which is successfully hiding my nipples. I run a hand over my hair, because—Landon. Then I slip into the hall, past the bathroom that adjoins my room and Em’s, past her bedroom door, and down the carpeted stairs that lead to the hallway of the second floor, where the house’s master suite is.

  Since the attic rooms were an addition my parents made after they bought the home, the attic staircase is different than the flight of stairs that leads from the second floor to the first. I pause at the top of those stairs—the curving stairs that lead into the vast front entry hall—listening for…nothing, I guess.

  The house at night has always seemed more creepy than I’d like, with all its curtainless windows.

  My heart is in my throat as I tip-toe into the kitchen. There’s a small lamp on the counter, casting a dim light. Otherwise, it’s quiet and dark. I don’t see my purse right off, so I walk further back, toward the family living area.

  And shriek.

  All I see at first is a shadow, but when I blink, it congeals into Landon—standing on the opposite side of the island, staring at me with wide eyes, holding a… cup?

  “Oh my God!” I laugh, because adrenaline. “What are you doing?”

  I step closer, and he moves his hand behind his back.

  “What is that?”

  “What is what?” His face is calm.

  “Behind your back.”

  “Nothing,” he says.

  But he steps away from me.