A Harmless Little Game (Harmless #1)

 

Drew recovers quickly, eyes narrowing, as he asks, “What, exactly, do you mean by that?”

 

“What should I mean?” I’m not giving one inch here. I know they all know a lot that I don’t know, and they’re working very hard to hide so many details from me. Why?

 

Drew moves so swiftly it’s like I lost three seconds of my life, because now his hand is on my elbow and he’s leaning so close to me I can smell his soap. It’s lime and clove, with an undertone of musk that makes me shiver.

 

I inhale deeply. I let him keep his hand on my elbow.

 

“I am here for you, Lindsay. I’m not just a hired gun whose company is your security detail. You really don’t understand what you’ve come home to. The truth will unfold over the next few days and weeks. I’m not the one to tell you most of those truths, but I have a feeling I’ll be the one who helps pick up the pieces from the destruction those truths will cause.”

 

His voice is intense and low. He’s not angry, though. Resigned, actually. He sounds like a man who knows something bad is about to happen and has no power to stop it.

 

“What do you mean?” I ask, turning to catch his eye. Our faces are inches apart. I can smell coffee and apple as he breathes. I wonder if his lips are as sweet and tasty as they used to be.

 

Stop it! Stop thinking about him like that! a voice screams inside me.

 

The confetti in my mind whirls up into a cyclone of pain. Panic bubbles up. He’s touching me, and I’m breathing hard, and while some of that is anxiety, way too much of it comes from need.

 

“Like I said—I’m not the one to tell you the truth. That’s not my role.”

 

I snort. “Yeah, I’ve noticed. You back away from doing lots of things.”

 

And with that, I wrench my arm out of his grasp and storm off to the garage, where I should be able to find a driver to take me into town for my coffee date.

 

Unless that’s changed, too.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 15

 

 

 

 

 

The Toast has remodeled its way into the twenty-first century. I have the driver go past it three times before he finally explains this is the only coffee shop in the seaside town where I grew up.

 

“Ms. Bosworth, this is it.” My driver’s name is Silas. Silas Gentian. He’s about my age, maybe a little older, with dark hair and bright blue eyes. They’re the kind of eyes that make you do a double take, so blue they’re almost washed out. He has impossibly long eyelashes and he looks terribly stupid wearing a chauffeur’s hat.

 

In a different time, I’d have found him hot and would flirt. Tease him about the hat.

 

Not now. Probably not ever.

 

Gone are the giant green vines from plants older than me, wrapped around wooden support beams.

 

Gone are the giant, silk tie-dye banners draped all over the sunny, light-filled coffee house.

 

Gone are the posters from Woodstock and The Grateful Dead and other bands from my dad’s era.

 

In its place is sleek stainless steel, mosaic walls, mood lighting in lampshades made from earth tones, and coffee that’s twice as expensive.

 

And, I must admit, as I take a sip of my latte—twice as good.

 

Jane is late. It’s two twenty and I’m starting to get nervous, wondering if I’m being stood up. Every cell of my skin feels like it’s humming, and I’m about as self-conscious as you can be. I have a prescription bottle of tranquilizers I can take if I ever get so anxious I feel like I’ll pass out. They’re in my purse, which I clutch against my hip like it’s a life preserver.

 

As I scan the coffee shop for the thousandth time, searching for Jane, I realize Silas is in a chair in the corner, sipping a coffee.

 

He’s scanning the room, too.

 

Chauffeur? How could I be so naive.

 

He’s my security detail.

 

I’m about to stand up, walk over to him, and ream him out when Jane bursts through the front door, looking frantic and disheveled. She whirls around and catches my eye, her expression morphing into a surprised joy.

 

“Lindsay!” she whispers, rushing to me, grabbing me in a hug that reeks of desperate relief.

 

Tears fill my eyes. Where do they come from? The bridge of my nose stings with the surprise of emotion, and our hug is genuine. My first year on the island, when I wasn’t heavily drugged, I begged to be allowed to talk to Jane. They told me it would be too traumatic for me. I was allowed to write letters, though. Jane wrote back. The letters were always short and perfunctory. Once, a sentence was blacked out.

 

See? Prison.

 

Jane never wrote another letter after that one. And I understood why, after I figured out how to decipher what the staff had hidden from me.

 

I have so, so many questions for Jane.

 

“You look great!” she gushes, her mouth next to my ear.

 

“How do you know? You can’t even see me. I don’t exist.”

 

We laugh wryly and hug each other even harder. I haven’t had anyone treat me like this in four years.

 

You know.