Jackson follows close behind me and waits outside the dorm while I go in to get Lacey and tell her everything that has happened, including the story behind my torn clothing. It doesn’t take long to convince her she’s better off coming with us, and within a few minutes we both have hastily packed suitcases and are jogging back to Jackson’s car. I took a minute to change out of my torn clothes and into something comfortable.

I still can’t quite wrap my head around everything. I really don’t even know if I want to try. Lacy climbs in the back of the car and I sit up front. Thankfully, none of us seem to be in a talkative mood because my mind is anywhere but the present. I try to figure out how long ago it was that I met Jackson. If I trusted my gut, I could believe it was months ago. When I count down the days though… I met him in the restaurant just over two weeks ago. Two weeks.

No high school guy or college guy would have taken my virginity as perfectly as Jackson. It would have been a one to two minute ordeal of getting humped by some horny guy who would probably roll off me as soon as he was finished. With Jackson… My virginity felt like something precious. He treasured it and built up to taking it like it was a sacred ceremony, and I know I’ll always have the memory of that night for as long as I live. It will be a little piece of him I take with me forever, no matter what happens.

I just wish I didn’t have to learn he had been keeping things from me. In particular, things that call everything I know about him into question. I bite my fingernail and look out the window as we pull up to his house. I know one thing, Lacey is going to get an earful tonight. I’ll find some excuse to sleep separately from Jackson and get Lacey’s opinion on all of this. I have to, or I’m going to burst from holding it in.

Jackson lets us all into the house just before the rain starts outside. The storm comes suddenly and without warning. The sound of rain hammering the rooftop of Jackson’s huge house is almost comforting to me, though. I guess growing up reading books made me have a special affection for the rain. Other kids saw the rain as an inconvenience that stopped them from being able to go outside and play like they wanted. For me, it was a promise that no one would stop me from reading that day. I could curl up in the nook beside the window of my room and dive into a book, reading until I had to turn on the lamp to see and until my eyes were so heavy I thought I could blink and wake up the next morning.

“Either of you drink coffee?” asks Jackson.

“Sure,” I say, realizing distantly that we don’t even know each other well enough to know our preferred drinks, yet I let this man take something I guarded for years. I try to ignore that thought. It’s just the same kind of destructive thinking that led me to push away every guy before Jackson. He’s a good guy. Who cares if he doesn’t know my favorite color? There will be time for that. Maybe. If these people he’s mixed up with don’t come and kill us all in our sleep, that is.

The thought sends a cold chill through me.

“Coffee would be great,” says Lacey.

We plop down on Jackson’s couch. I sigh and look to Lacey, who is narrowing her eyes at me.

“So we’re just going with this?” she asks.

“What do you mean?” I can distantly hear Jackson banging cabinets around in the kitchen and feel relatively sure he can’t hear us.

“I mean, I mostly came because I don’t want to let you get sucked into some shady crap by yourself. Like, Jackson really hasn’t told you what this is about?”

“No,” I say slowly. “But I haven’t exactly been completely open and honest with him, either.”

Lacey makes a face at me in disbelief. “What do you have to hide?”

“Oh I don’t know, the fact that you set this whole thing up pretty much so I could sleep with him and cure my writer’s block.”

About halfway through my sentence, Lacey starts making chopping motions at her neck and moving her eyes past me, but it only registers after I’ve finished.

I turn slightly to see Jackson standing at the doorway with two cups of coffee.

“That was… fast,” I say, clearing my throat.

He steps forward and sets the cups down. A little roughly. “Can you excuse us?” he asks Lacey.

“I think I’ll stay right--”

“Out,” he commands.

She pops up from the couch as if pulled by strings. “I did have to use the bathroom, now that you mention it,” she mutters, before scurrying off with no idea where the bathroom is.

“Is that true?” he asks.

“I was going to tell you,” I say. “That’s what I was trying to say in the car tonight, before we went to the convention center. Remember?”

Jackson’s jaw flexes. He paces in front of me, eyebrows drawn down. “And you didn’t think this was something I might want to know before I agreed to the contract with you?” he asks.

“How could I tell you?” I ask. “Yes, maybe that’s how this started, but that’s all it is. It was a start. I feel different now. I care about you. I’m glad this all happened and I didn’t want to let that dishonesty hang between us.”

He shakes his head, walking away from me and raking a hand through his hair. “You lied to me.”

I set my jaw, standing and stepping toward him. “You lied too. Or did you already forget? I wasn’t exactly agreeing to be hunted by mobsters. But I guess it’s okay for you to hold things back and not for me?”

“I was protecting you,” he growls.

“You said this was about trust. How can I trust you if you can hold something like that from me? How can I trust you if you still won’t even tell me why these people want to hurt you? I mean, how do I know you’re not some mobster, too?”

He pinches the bridge of his nose and looks down, closing his eyes. “I gave them bad financial advice a few months back. Apparently they took my advice and lost millions of dollars, and now they want to show the world what happens to people who piss them off. Okay? It’s a stupid fucking misunderstanding and I’m trying to fix it.”

I can see the frustration and regret in his face. It cools my anger a little bit, but not completely. “So,” I say a little more calmly. “How are you going to get them to stop?”

He shakes his head. “I’m going to make a… financial offer tonight. I expect the offer will be tempting enough to convince them to back off. Otherwise, I’ll find another way.”

“Like what?” I ask, mind flashing back to the scene in the parking garage.

“Another way,” he repeats.

“Was I supposed to stay gone?” asks Lacey, who comes tiptoeing back into the living room. “Or…”

Jackson glares at her and stalks off to another room, leaving us.

“That seemed like it went poorly,” says Lacey.

I purse my lips, nodding. “Yeah. pretty much. We both agreed we’re assholes for lying to each other. I think that was the short version.”

“Right,” she says. “His lie seems a little worse though.”

I let out a long breath. “You’re just taking my side because you have to.”

“Girl. The only thing I have to do is struggle to keep my eyes off of him. I can’t believe you’re tapping that.”

“Oh my God,” I say, covering my face. “Can you please not describe my sex life like a horny middle schooler would?”

“Listen to Miss Sophisticated over here with the sex life now,” teases Lacey.

I glare at her.

“He’s already rubbing off on you. I could’ve sworn I just got that exact same glare from him a minute ago.”

“Maybe it’s not that he’s rubbing off on me. Maybe you just make people want to glare.”

“Well, speaking of glares, I didn’t want to mention this earlier, but when I got back to our dorm tonight, I caught Mia in our room. She was on your laptop and she got out of our room real fast when I confronted her. It was highly, highly suspicious. I thought you should know.”

“My laptop?” I ask. I rush to my bag and pull it free, opening the screen and suddenly regretting removing the login password because I was too lazy to keep entering it. When the screen flashes on, it opens to the desktop, but the folder containing my story is open, and the story itself is still highlighted.

“Lacy…” I say quietly. “Did Mia have a USB drive or something?”

She might have. She booked as soon as she saw me though. I can’t say for sure.

“I think she might have just stolen my story. Oh my God. I have to get over there before she has time to do something with it.”

“What is she going to do with a half-finished story in one night?”

“I don’t know,” I snap. “But when she first introduced herself she went on about how she always wanted to be an author. She said she just wished she could skip the whole writing part. It sounded like she’s tried to write before. What if she slaps something she already wrote onto the end of my story? I’d have no way to prove I wrote it first.”

Lacey holds up her palms to me, urging me to slow down. “Even if you were right about this and she somehow is planning to send this out for publishing, do you really think anyone is going to agree to publish something like that?”

“Maybe not, but nothing would stop her from self-publishing it. She might even just publish what I have right now and promise to write the rest in a part two or something.”

Lacey works her lips to the side and nods. “Okay. That actually sounds possible. And fuck her if she’s thinking that. What do you want to do?”

“We need to tell Jackson to drive us over there.”

She gives me a dry look. “Really? You think Mr. Keep My Woman Safe is going to want to drive you around town right now?”

“He might,” I say.

“Yeah, but right now he doesn’t know you have a reason to want to leave. If you ask and he says no, he’ll probably lock this place down. You’ll never get out.”

I rub my temples, hating that Lacey might actually be right. I might not be able to risk telling Jackson. Besides, I’m not an idiot, if I know these people might be looking for me, I can keep on high alert and steer clear of any potential trouble. I can do this. I can do this.

“Let’s go,” I say firmly.

“Yeah?” asks Lacey. “Hell yeah. Where does he keep his keys?”

I find Jackson’s keys on the armrest of the sofa and lead Lacey outside. Guilt rips at me for sneaking behind his back like this, but I’m confident I’ll be able to make him understand later. He’ll have to see there was no other way for me to do this. He’ll have to understand. I hope.

We close the front door to his mansion as quietly as we can and then rush toward his fancy sports car. The “keys” are really just a metal Ferrari emblem that apparently has some kind of electronics inside, because the car automatically unlocks when I get close enough with the key. I waste a few seconds trying to find where I insert the keys before Lacey reaches over and pushes the start button.

“You just have to have the key fob in the car to press the button.”

“Oh,” I say. “I guess I wasn’t paying attention before.”

I shift the car into reverse, thanking God that my first car was a manual transmission so I know how to work this thing. Once I very carefully back out to the main road, I engage the clutch, shift gears, and put the lightest pressure possible on the gas. The car roars like a caged beast and jerks forward. I yelp and Lacey laughs.

It takes almost the whole drive to the dorm to get a feel for how much power the car has. I’m so distracted during the drive that I forget to keep an eye on who’s driving behind us and making sure no one is following us. When we get to campus though, I decide to park by the library, which is on the other end of campus. Anyone watching for us at the dorms would probably expect us to park on that side of campus, so we may be able to sneak in through the back of the dorms on foot and avoid notice.

Lacey and I leave the car in the parking lot and hurry across the abandoned campus toward our dorms. It’s past midnight, so the only sound is our heavy footsteps and breathing as we pass through the quad. I pull up short when the dorms are in view. I motion for us to stop at the edge of the Fine Arts building, using a pillar to cover myself as I peek around the corner. “Hold on,” I say, gasping for breath.

Lacey does a dramatic impression of searching the rooftops by shielding her eyes and squinting.

“Stop it,” I say. “Can you seriously just look around and make sure you don’t see anything weird? The guys messing with his car had guns. This is real, Lacey.”

She sighs and leans around the corner with me, narrowing her eyes against the darkness and helping me look. After a few minutes of nothing, I decide the coast is clear and start making my way toward the dorm with Lacey just behind me.

We enter through the back without anyone stopping us and both breathe a sigh of relief when we’re inside.

“Mia’s room is on the 2nd floor,” whispers Lacey.

We take the stairs and stand outside her door. I realize I’m either going to have to knock and probably have the door slammed in my face when she sees it’s me, or… I don’t know what else.

“Let me,” says Lacey, shoving past. She digs in her pants and pulls out a credit card.

I frown in confusion, but understand what she’s trying when she starts to wiggle the card between the door and the wall, right beside where the lock is. After just a few seconds, there’s a faint click. I test the door and raise my eyebrows when it actually opens for me.

The room is dark, and judging from the heavy breathing to my left, Mia is asleep. I move slowly through the room, looking for her laptop or a USB drive. It doesn’t take long. I find her Macbook sitting on the desk. I flip it open and groan quietly when I’m prompted to enter a password. I remember a few months ago I was getting onto my dad because his password was “LetMeIn”. I kept trying to convince him it was an extremely common password. I only managed to get it through to him when I looked up a list of the ten most common passwords, and sure enough, there it was.

So on an impulse, I start going through the list as best as I can remember. I try “qwerty”, “12345”, “abc123”, “letmein”, “11111”, and several more before sinking to my knees and glaring. I start seriously considering just smashing her laptop to bits, but she probably backed up whatever she did on the cloud, so it wouldn’t really accomplish anything.

“Try something with her name,” whispers Lacey. “She seems so into herself, you know?”

“Yeah,” I say, standing back up and trying the same passwords but mixing her name into them. After five minutes, when I’ve lost track of which passwords I’ve already tried, I end up typing some combination of “abc123” and her name.

And it works.

I raise my eyebrows and grin at Lacey, who smiles deviously.

Her internet browser is still open, and my mouth falls open in shock and disgust when I see what she was in the middle of doing. The browser is open to Amazon’s publishing interface, and she already has her name typed into the author field, a file uploaded, a hastily made cover uploaded, and pricing information entered. The part that makes my stomach turn to ice is when I read the title of the uploaded book file. “How We Fall.” It’s the title of my book.

“That little…” starts Lacey.

“I can’t believe I was right,” I whisper. “She was going to publish my book under her name. It wasn’t even finished. What the hell.”

“We could kill her,” suggests Lacey. “She’ll never see it coming.”

I ignore her, clicking around until I find out how to remove all the uploaded files from the page. Once I’ve cleared everything out, I search her computer for the file and delete it. Next I yank the thumb drive free and shove it in my pocket. I’m about to stop there, but my anger gets the better of me and I pick up her laptop, bending the screen backwards until the plastic snaps and the screen detaches from the keyboard. I don’t want to risk her having a copy of the file saved somewhere else, and she deserves to have her computer destroyed for being such a conniving bitch, anyway.

The sound of the computer is too loud in the quiet room, and when I turn around, I see Mia sitting stark upright in the dark room.

She says nothing. She makes no sound. She just stands up and charges us. Lacey doesn’t even have time to react before Mia rams into me, knocking me to the ground. She soundlessly tears at my hair and my face with her nails. I manage to roll out from under her and Lacey is able to pull me to my feet. Mia grabs a lamp and wields it like a hammer, advancing on us as we back out of her room.

“She’s fucking crazy,” mutters Lacey.

“Just go!” I shout.

We both turn to run into the hallway and are caught in the strong, remorseless grip of men in dark coats. I start to scream but a gloved hand claps over my mouth. Mia charges us and the men like a possessed animal, wielding the lamp. The man holding Lacey pins her wrist in the air and the other man backhands her hard enough to send her flopping to the ground, unconscious.

Lacey and I are dragged back through the hallway. The gloved hand is clamped so firmly over my mouth I can’t even open my jaw to bite. I try desperately to kick and pry myself free or scream, but I’m completely and totally helpless. Until the man reaches for the door to the stairwell. The movement gives me just enough freedom to slip my arm free and yank down on the fire alarm.

The siren blares throughout the dorms.

The man holding me wrestles my arm painfully back in his grasp and carries me down the stairs, not bothering to clamp his hand over my mouth anymore.

“Fucking bitch. You’ll regret that,” he says in a thick accent.

“Go out the back,” says the other guy, who has an equally strong hold on Lacey.

“No shit,” snaps the guy holding me.

They kick the back door open at the bottom of the stairwell and take us toward a car parked in the middle of the grass behind our dorm. Lacey and I are thrown into the back seat, where the men use plastic ties to bind our wrists behind our backs. They slam the doors on us. I expect them to get in seconds later, but instead I hear a muffled groan, a gunshot, and then something bangs against the car hard enough to crack the window on Lacey’s side. I strain to see outside the car, but I can only hear the sounds of struggle. There’s a loud snapping sound and two meaty thuds, then nothing.

The driver’s door is yanked open and Jackson gets inside, breathing heavily. He leans across the middle console and runs his hands over my legs, arms, and face. His eyes are intently scanning me and his expression has worry written all over it.

“I’m okay, don’t worry,” mutters Lacey.

“Did they hurt you?” Jackson asks me.

“Where are those guys? I heard a gunshot. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. We’re getting out of here. And then you’re going to explain what the fuck you were thinking running off like that.”

Lacey and I exchange a few dubious looks, but Jackson is clearly not happy with us, and neither of us seem to want to be the ones to provoke him. The passenger door is yanked open. Both Lacey and I jump back, but Jackson doesn’t react. The man who enters is handsome. He wears a dress shirt and his hair is combed back. From the look he exchanges with Jackson, it’s clear they know each other.

“So,” I say casually. “Any chance either of you want to cut these plastic things off of us?”

“I think I’ll leave them on for now. Less chance of you running away again,” says Jackson before turning back to the wheel and continuing to drive in silence.

“So,” says Lacey. “Who is the hunk?”

I kick her foot, but she ignores me, leaning forward to look at Hunter.

“Hunter Carlyle,” he says, half-turning to grin at her. “And you?”

“Lacey.”

He quirks an eyebrow at her. “Just the first name? Like Cher or Prince? I like that. It’s classy.”

For the first time since I’ve known Lacey, I see her blush. She leans back, touching her fingertips to her lips and smiling distantly when Hunter turns back around. I lean over to her and lower my voice so only she can hear me. “Should you really be flirting? What about Cameron?”

“Cameron,” she whispers angrily, “broke up with me today. He said he needed to focus on baseball. I’m a distraction, I guess.”

“Why didn’t you call me or something?”

She shrugs. Tears glisten in her eyes, but she blinks them away. “I didn’t want to ruin your night.”

I hug her and let her rest her head on my shoulder for the rest of the drive. As bad as I feel for her, I can’t help wondering if getting out of that relationship could really be bad in any way. After the pain of being broken up with goes away, I think Lacey might end up happier.

“Where are we?” asks Lacey a few minutes later when we pull up to the gate at Fairfield’s.

I notice for the first time he wasn’t taking us to his house and frown in confusion. “Are you allowed to take people out of places like this?” I ask. I can guess at what he’s planning, and don’t see how it’s a possibility.

“Technically?” asks Jackson, “No. I’ve prepared for something like this though. I think I’ll be able to figure it out.”

“We grabbing her?” asks Hunter.

“Something like that, yeah,” says Jackson as he pulls the car in front of Fairfield’s.

“Wait here,” says Jackson. “This will only take a minute.”

“Nope,” I say, getting out of the car. “I made the mistake of separating from you once. I’m not doing it again.”

Jackson looks like he’s about to protest, but the corner of his mouth twitches up in a small grin and he nods. “Fine. Let’s go. Hunter, keep an eye on her friend.”

Hunter winks. “One step ahead of you.”

I raise my eyebrows at Lacey as we walk away and she mouths for me to shut up. Nothing like cute guys to distract us from nearly being kidnapped or killed.

Jackson heads straight for the reception desk and asks for a man named Carl. The woman mutters something into a walkie-talkie and tells us to wait. A few moments later, a short, balding man hobbles into the reception area. He sees Jackson and narrows his eyes.

“Is it that thing we talked about?” he asks cryptically.

“Yes,” says Jackson. “I assume none of your information has changed?”

The man licks his lips, nodding rapidly. “Yes, sir. Nothing changed. Meet me out back in two or three minutes.”

Jackson and I head to the back of the building and wait again. We stand in silence for close to a minute before I finally wander closer to him and bump him with my shoulder. I give him a pleading, sorry for doing something so stupid look.

He laughs softly, pulling me in tight and hugging me to his chest. “It’s okay, Princess. But you should know, I’m going to make you pay for it when I get you alone. I still have several weeks of this contract left, and I plan to use them to the fullest.

I smile into him, hugging him tightly and wondering for the first time what happens when the contract ends. I was so worried about not being discarded before the month was up that I never stopped to think about what happens at the end. Does he just give me a handshake and send me on my way? Is any of this real, or is it all part of the game he plays? I’m about to ask him when the back door to Fairfield’s opens and Carl emerges, leading Jackson’s sister carefully out.

Sarah lets herself be led to Jackson.

“Remember,” says Carl. “I can give you one day before they come looking for her.”

“Yeah, thanks,” says Jackson, leading Sarah and I back around to the front of the building where the car is still waiting.

Jackson orders Hunter to get in the back so Sarah can sit up front. Judging by the look on Hunter and Lacey’s faces, they were talking about something while we were gone, and Hunter doesn’t put up a fight about being pushed to the back. Lacey moves over to the middle seat so I can get in, conveniently pushing herself closer to Hunter.

The drive home is… interesting to say the least. No one speaks, but there’s definitely something brewing between Lacey and Hunter, who keep looking toward each other and laughing softly. Jackson is preoccupied with humming the lullaby I first heard him use to calm Sarah down in the cafeteria. She probably hasn’t been out of that hospital in years, and he’s probably trying to keep her from starting to panic.

I spend my time looking out the window, letting my mind wander. I retrace the last few weeks in wonder. I feel like I’ve lived more in three weeks than I have in my whole life, and despite the faint tinge of regret when I think how I could have been experiencing life like this all along, I’m glad I waited. I don’t think any of this could have been so special if things hadn’t happened exactly how they did. Jackson wouldn’t have told me my writing was forgettable, I wouldn’t have had the extra bit of anger to push me past my shyness, and I might not have been the virgin he craved.

I also think about how my mind is practically brimming with ideas for my story now. I just haven’t had time to work on it. The time I’ve spent with Jackson has already filled me with pages and pages of material. I don’t feel guilty about it anymore, either. The inspiration for my story is just an extra little bonus. Being with Jackson is its own reward, and I know more firmly than ever that I would want to be with him whether it helped me with my story or not.

I just wish I knew if he forgives me for it. For all I know, he’s up there dreaming of ways to punish me in the playroom for lying to him and for being dumb enough to leave the house without him at a time like this. Though I have to admit, part of me is hoping he hasn’t forgiven me yet because I’ll take any excuse I can get to have him put his hands on me again.