AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Mattie gave me a distrustful brow furrow, but then she turned to lay on her side with her back toward me. She still wore the same sweatshirt and leggings I’d given her in Oregon, and I pushed the hood and collar down, exposing her neck. Mattie tensed. “What are you doing?”
“Helping you.” I placed my hand between her shoulder blades. “When I was in daycare, I never could nap with the other kids. My house wasn’t the calmest environment, and sleeping was, well, there’s a kind of vulnerability to it.”
“Hm,” Mattie agreed with a sigh. “I know it.”
“I got in a lot of trouble for it,” I continued, speaking soft and low. “They wanted us to be calm during naptime, but I hated it. Too many things I wanted to do. Then there was this teacher who started halfway through the year. I was pretty young, so the details are hazy. But I know she used to put her hand on my back—she didn’t move it or pat me or anything. She just kept it there, like this.” I increased the pressure on her back a fraction. “It helped me fall asleep, and later on, I learned that human touch can be soothing, even if we’re a little prickly on the outside.”
“I’m not prickly,” Mattie mumbled, but already her shoulders were slumping, and her chin fell forward.
I begged to differ. She was prickly like a bur, and just as likely to get caught up in my thoughts and tangled in my feelings. Just as irritating, too. “Focus on my hand,” I whispered softly. She melted into the mattress, humming in a contented way.
When the rest of her had unwound, and her breathing deepened, I smoothed my hand up her back to her neck. With both thumbs I massaged the pressure points at the base of her skull, just below the mastoid bones. It only took a few seconds, and her deep breathing grew long and slow. I eased off the pressure, placing my hand on her back again. Soon, I could tell she had drifted off, and the warmth of her body curled up in my blankets and the sound of her relaxed sleep tugged my own eyelids down.
It was tempting to lie down beside her. But there were some boundaries even I couldn’t break, and sleeping next to the woman I was responsible for and actively working with—it would cross all the safety nets I had constructed over the years. I didn’t mix business and pleasure. That led to mistakes and clouded judgments, and something told me that out of all my assignments, I couldn’t mess this one up. I couldn’t afford to endanger Matilda Thorne by giving into weakness.
So, I stood slowly and crept out of the bedroom, leaving a sliver of regret behind.
Getting sick had always irritated me. In med school, it had forced me to miss classes and practical demonstrations, and on the run, it had made me an easy target. But for the first time since I could remember, it had kind of worked out in my favor. Apparently, Kael had a soft spot for defenseless, sick women, which meant that he was slightly less of a dickwad. Even when I teased him or prodded at his stoic, Ghost-y pride, he stayed relatively patient with me. It was endearing.
It had also given me a chance to get to know Tabitha, who I found to be positively delightful. She was the perfect mix of cutthroat and girly. She liked the same reality shows I did, and she was all too happy to camp out with me on the couch and watch them while we went through bags of junk food and made fun of the celebrities’ spray tans. I spent the majority of that second day in Kael’s headquarters with Tabitha, lying on the couch and going through ghastly numbers of tissues.
I also expended a significant amount of energy ignoring how irritatingly attracted to Kael I was. I knew he wasn’t interested in me in a romantic way, but he had literally soothed me to sleep. What kind of girl was built to ignore something like that? It wasn’t just that I found him attractive. He was certainly that. But the minute Kael had flipped from my enemy to my ally, I had realized just how comforting it was to have all that cunning and resourcefulness standing behind me like a metaphorical—and in this case, literal—bodyguard. I hadn’t had someone on my side, and mostly aware of my situation, since I’d escaped my parents. There had been a few people I’d stupidly trusted in the beginning, but they’d turned me in as soon as they’d realized there might be money in it for them. It hadn’t been a smart move on my part with billionaire parents offering rewards for my return.
Feeling safe with Kael was a shot of adulterated dopamine to a love-deprived, runaway like me. I’d gotten a hit, and now I wasn’t sure I could avoid wanting more. Still, I had to try, because I understood and respected why Kael would want to keep boundaries between us. It wouldn’t do either of us any good if I got all moon-eyed around him.
So, I didn’t. I ignored him, and I joined in teasing him with Tabitha if it came up, but otherwise, I did my best to focus on my own health and the looming fear of what we were planning to do. It was my plan, but I had plenty of reservations about it. There was no telling how my parents would actually react to having me in their prison again, and there was no guarantee Kael would be allowed to stay. But if I had any chance of truly freeing myself, then I had to try.
It was on the third day that Kael and Tabitha got serious about the plan, and I sat at the kitchen island as I listened to them go back and forth about exit strategies. They had the blueprint of my parents’ penthouse pulled up on a laptop, and Tabitha frowned at the screen while Kael cooked a pan of frozen shrimp scampi on the enormous range of their industrial-sized oven. He stirred the sizzling, still-frozen noodles, glancing over his shoulder while Tabitha talked. I cocked my head as I watched him, thinking that really, the only thing Kael was missing was a cute, frilly apron. He looked positively domesticated in his blue graphic tee and worn jeans. Well, except for all the tattoos. And muscles. And the scowl.
“The terrace encompasses three walls, but there is a fire escape here,” Tabitha said, pointing to something on her screen. She was seated on the other side of the island, so I couldn’t see what they were looking at. “But Gunther’s drone surveillance seems to indicate that it’s under a trap door with a padlock.”
“That would slow us down,” Kael admitted. The noodles spat and hissed, and he pulled his arm away when a speck landed on his arm. “But if we’re all the way down to plan Echo, then I’ll be thinking on my feet anyway.”
“Your noodles are distracting you. This is Foxtrot,” Tabitha droned, her eyes still squinting at the screen.
“Either way,” Kael grunted.
She finally turned on her stool to face him. “I realize this is low stakes, but at least have a semblance of a plan.”
Low stakes? I thought indignantly. Pretty sure it doesn’t get any higher stakes than my entire future. Then again, they didn’t know the entirety of it. And I wasn’t about to enlighten them, either. Even if I did trust these two—and I didn’t—I had a feeling they wouldn’t go along with my plan if they knew about the real threat lurking in my parents’ shadows.
“Get Mattie from point A to point B,” Kael said dismissively. He shimmied the pan over the gas burner, and the shrimp and pasta sizzled louder. The aroma of savory, Mediterranean spices and seafood filled the kitchen, and I leaned my cheek against my palm as I watched them. “I know we’re discussing dastardly possibilities, but this is really rather cozy.”
Kael and Tabitha rotated twin looks of quiet surprise to me, like they’d forgotten I was here. Kael hovered his wooden spoon over the pan, pausing. “What about me screams ‘cozy’ to you, exactly?”
I drew a circle in the air around him. “The domestication.”
He looked down, like it might have been painted on his shirt. When he looked up again, his brows were quirked in confusion. “You are the weirdest person.”
I flashed a toothy grin. “Thanks.”
“Speaking of you,” Kael said, glancing down at the food before flicking a thoughtful look my way. “This might be a good time to practice your act.”
I straightened, bringing my cheek off my palm. “What act?”
“Oh boy,” Tabitha muttered. She closed her laptop and looked between us warily. She had her hair in braids still, and they gleamed, glossy black and tight, under the pendant lights that hung above the granite island. “I’ll go get us some… sodas. Or something.”
I watched her with mounting concern, my eyebrows pulling together. “Why are you leaving?” I swung a look to Kael. “What’s going on?”
