I HADN’T REALIZED we were going to be staying in such style, so I hadn’t brought anything particularly nice to wear. Chris called me and told me to do some shopping. Just take my credit card, he said, so I did.
I hated shopping.
I especially hated shopping in Vegas, where I felt like I was the only one with no money. It was a little bit like walking through the hallways at my school. I kept my eyes firmly planted on the ground as I passed from store to store, and when I was forced to look at someone, my eyes shot daggers at them. What are you looking at? I wanted to say about a thousand times.
I approached buying something nice the same way I approached buying anything: by getting it over with as quickly and painlessly as possible.
I walked into a shop that had some fancy-looking clothes and pawed through the racks at breakneck speed. There had to be something there.
That something turned out to be a pair of black, flowy silk pants and a shimmery silver top that only skimmed the waist of the pants, so that a strip of bare skin showed when I moved. The cloth felt like water on my skin when I tried it on. An hour later I had it hanging in my room while I showered and blew my hair dry, using a rolling brush to give it waves.
Chris knocked on my door at exactly seven. Just like him to be so punctual it was obnoxious. Instead of answering the door, I simply stepped out and let the door shut behind me. I didn’t know why I was being so territorial about my space—it wasn’t like he was begging to get into my room.
Maybe you’re afraid you’ll beg him.
No. Our relationship wasn’t like that.
Yes, but not because you don’t want it to be. Ignore, ignore, ignore.
Chris was wearing a navy blue suit that hugged his biceps and quads. His striped shirt underneath was unbuttoned at the top, and he had a silver chain draped around his neck. He smelled like money. His shoes shone like mirrors.
He grinned. “You actually followed orders for once.”
I raised my eyebrows at him. “If I’d known they were orders, I wouldn’t have.”
“You look amazing, by the way.”
“Whatever.” I started to walk down the hall. He didn’t follow me.
“What the hell is that, Nikki?” Exasperation.
I turned and looked down at myself, brushing off my shirt, my pants, looking for missed tags. “What?”
He pointed at the Chucks on my feet. “Really?”
“You can’t see them,” I said. Truth. The pants grazed the ground when I walked. For all anyone knew, I was wearing diamonds on my feet.
“Then how did I see them?”
Good point. “They’re black, anyway,” I said. “And they’re comfortable. And I saved you some money. You should be happy I’m so low maintenance. Can we go now?”
He didn’t respond. Didn’t move. Just stood there with a cocky half grin on his cocky face.
“Piss off. I wear what I want,” I said, my mood already soured. I took off for the elevator.
I wasn’t too surprised to see him hurrying for the elevator before the door closed. A part of me loved that he was going to have to suck it up and go to dinner on my terms. I resisted the urge to push the close-door button at the last minute, but I didn’t bother to push the open-door button, either. He stuck his arm out and let the door bounce on it before getting on.
“Sure you can live with my tacky style?” I asked sarcastically as the elevator sank to ground level.
“I wouldn’t call that a style,” he said. He checked himself out in the mirrored wall, straightening his collar. “And I wouldn’t call you low maintenance, either.”
“You look fine,” I snapped. “You can stop admiring yourself.”
“You don’t want me admiring you; you don’t want me admiring myself. What do you want?”
The doors opened and I stepped through. “Food. That’s what I want. I’m starving.”
He grabbed my wrist at the last second. I was on the hotel side of the elevator door and he was inside the elevator. It felt like the door would never be able to close, with the brilliant fog of color that burst from his hand onto my arm. “Hey,” he said. “You really do look beautiful.”
I felt myself blush, and then bit the inside of my cheek to stop it. Blushing was for idiots. Blushing was for saps like . . . Jones? . . . No, I would not think about Jones. Not here. Not tonight. Not at all.
“Let’s eat before I starve to death right here on the hallway floor,” I said.
We got to the restaurant and were seated right away. The table reminded me a little too much of the table I’d sat at with Stefan the Gross. I shivered.
“You okay?” Chris asked, studying me over his menu.
“Just cold,” I answered.
We ordered, and I gazed around the room, suddenly feeling very self-conscious about my shoe choice. I imagined everyone looking at them under the table and thinking I was some sort of trashy girl Chris had picked up on the Strip. I dared people to meet my eyes. Nobody did.
The waiter brought our drinks and a basket of bread. I immediately grabbed a hunk and buttered it, just to give myself something to do. Peyton was definitely the right sister to be in the Hollis mix. I was not cut out for the fancy life.
“So,” Chris said, taking a sip of his drink and setting it back down on the napkin. He watched me butter my bread. “Tell me about this studio. Why are we here, exactly?”
“Luna’s getaway driver,” I said, the bite of bread I’d just taken crammed into one cheek.
“Right. The guy you ran away from at Pear Magic.”
I nodded. “He’s got some sort of connection to Angry Elephant, too.”
“Angry Elephant?” There was laughter in his voice.
I stopped chewing. “Don’t look at me like that. Yes, Angry Elephant.”
“So you think Luna could be out here?”
I put my bread down on the bread plate. Did I? This was a question I had not yet asked myself. Was I out here for Luna? Was I out here to bust my dad? Or, when I looked down deep, was I simply out here to feel closer to my mom? I tried to imagine Mom in this city, with its bright lights and noise and constant bustle of people. Mom liked a simpler life. She liked the beach. She liked painting my nails to match hers. She liked cooking and reading and . . . and Bill Hollis. Don’t forget that, Nikki. She liked Bill Hollis an awful lot.
“Hello?” Chris snapped his fingers in front of my face. “Earth to Nikki. Everything okay?”
I swallowed, wiped my mouth with my napkin, my appetite suddenly gone. “Yeah, I’m fine,” I mumbled.
He leaned over the table. “You’re not.” I didn’t answer. My pulse crashed in my ears as the reality about my mom really sank in. All this time I had been looking at her as a victim. But the truth was, she was a hooker. She’d had an affair with Bill Hollis. She had lied to Dad, to me, to the whole world. And now Peyton and Dru were dead. Mom was the cause of it all. Not just Bill Hollis. I felt my hands curl into fists. “What am I missing here?” Chris asked.
I blinked away some of the anger and saw him sitting there, looking vulnerable and tired. In some ways, Chris was a victim of Mom, too. If she hadn’t had the affair with Bill, Peyton wouldn’t have existed. Chris wouldn’t have been with me at Tesori Antico that night. He wouldn’t have been punched and shot at and creamed by a Monte Carlo. It wasn’t fair. He followed me everywhere. He put his life on the line for me. Not once or twice, but over and over. In a world full of people I couldn’t trust, I knew I could rely on Chris Martinez. He believed in me. He challenged me. And I kept him in the dark.
Why? Why did I shut out the one person in this world who proved to me over and over again that I could trust him? It wasn’t fair to let him keep putting himself in danger and giving no skin of my own.
So let him in, Nikki.
It was hard. So hard to let him in. I’d almost lost him once. What if I actually did lose him? Letting people in meant heartbreak. Trust led to disappointment. Love led to loss. Always.
Except maybe sometimes it doesn’t.
“You’re yellow,” I said in a small voice.
He flicked a glance at his hands, then concentrated his stare at me again, confused. “What?”
I took a deep breath. “You’re yellow. Like, sunshine-bright yellow. That means you’re trustworthy. You believe in saving the world. You’re yellow. But you’re also a little bit gray. Or you were. That has been kind of going away for a while now. Gray means you were hiding something. But I’m pretty sure that something had to do with Leon and Javi and that mess with Leon’s sister.”
His lips parted. The air between us felt full and heavy. He had told me in a moment of vulnerability about the gang war that resulted in his sister’s death and his brother’s incarceration. Maybe he’d forgotten telling me. Maybe he’d hoped I would forget.
“This restaurant is swanky as fuck, so it’s off-white swirling with lots of pastels. Like an opal.” He looked around, his mouth still open. “Not the actual restaurant itself,” I said. “The air. It’s pearl air. And you leave yellow on the tablecloth and sometimes when you’re really mad at me, I can see rusty starbursts try to break through the yellow on your forehead, but they can’t, because you’re that yellow.”
“I don’t—” he started, but his voice was soft, husky, and I didn’t let him finish.
“I see colors.” I gave an impatient head shake. “I mean, everyone sees colors, but I see them in places where other people don’t.” The waiter came with our food, and I sat back, pressed my lips together until he left. As soon as he’d gone, I pointed to my lobster. “The word ‘lobster’ is like a speckled blue and black. Blue because it lives in the ocean, and everything related to the ocean comes at me in blue. Except for the actual ocean. It’s pink. I can’t explain it. Black speckles because lobsters aren’t too pretty. Um, ‘three’ is purple. The word ‘restaurant’ is the color of bread.” My confession was coming fast now, my heartbeat speeding up. I suddenly wanted him to know everything, all at once. “Rebecca Moreno’s license plate is bubble gum, pearl, blue, bronze, silver, foamy sea green. JSB946. It’s easy for me to remember because I remember the colors.”
“Oh my God,” he said, his voice almost a whisper now. “Your hunches.”
I nodded, tears filling my eyes. “Peyton had it too. That’s how I found all those clues. She was leaving them for me in colors. They weren’t hunches. They were just hard to explain without sounding crazy.”
He sat back, laying his napkin on the table next to his untouched plate. I could practically see his mind spinning. “And that’s why Peyton had your number in her phone.” I nodded. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I tried. Peyton had my school file, and I left it in her car for you. But you didn’t read it like you were supposed to. And then there was the accident and you couldn’t remember anything, and it just felt like a bad time.” We locked eyes. “I’ve never told anyone except my dad and doctors. I’ve never trusted anyone to understand.”
“Peyton was your sister. That woman in the trailer told us. I do remember that. But . . . help me out here, Nikki. What aren’t you telling me?”
My lips felt dry. I licked them twice. I hated feeling vulnerable, and this had me feeling like I might as well be standing nude in the middle of the casino. At the same time, it felt exciting. To finally let someone in—something I’d battled my entire life.
“We’re not just here to find Luna’s getaway driver. I mean, we are. But the reason we came here is because my mom worked at the studio we’re going to tomorrow. She knew him. She worked for Vanessa. She had Bill’s baby. And . . . and my dad is lying to me. He says he never met any of them. But I’ve seen pictures. I’ve read articles. He knew them all, too. They were like a big, happy family. Celebrating some movie they were going to make together. And then it never happened. The movie went away. My mom ended up dead. And my dad was a suspect. And I’m pretty sure he . . . no. I know he lied to the cops.”
“The file you had me pull,” he said. “And you want to prove that he didn’t do it.”
I opened my mouth to answer, but no answer would come. I wasn’t sure, actually. Was I out here to prove that my dad didn’t do it? Or was I out to prove that he did?