3
Cold fingers pry the book from my hands, and I immediately jolt awake. I blink a few times, trying to focus on my alarm clock: 2:22 a.m.
“God, what happened?” Miles says, taking in the books spread all over my bed. “Some nerdy kid must have broken in, solved a bunch of algebra equations, read some US history, and highlighted Gatsby’s worst lines. Are you all right? Did this person knock you out?”
I roll my eyes at him but quickly gather all the schoolbooks and notes strewn across my bed. Studying provided a great distraction and got me to quit pacing around my room. “Unlike you, I have to take finals after winter break.”
“Oh, I’ll have finals,” Miles says, bitterness in his tone. “Just not history or algebra or anything like that.”
I’m about to ask for more details, but I catch a whiff of him when I walk past to drop my books on the desk. “Have you taken up smoking?” I press my nose to his shirt and inhale. “Cigarettes and weed?”
“I was with Dominic,” he admits. “That’s why I’m so late. He wanted to talk.”
Dominic DeLuca is one of our Holden Prep classmates. He was also the guy Simon Gilbert liked to make out with when no one was looking. Dominic and I aren’t exactly friends, but he did help Clyde a couple of weeks ago and came to our rescue during the whole kidnapping thing.
“So…you and he are still in touch?” I ask.
“He needs a friend. He’s still pissed at Bret.” Miles shrugs, and then his hand is on my waist, his slinged arm between us. “Let’s not talk about Dominic.”
“Or school or finals,” I add, laying my ear against his chest. Or my mother. “Let’s talk about Turkey. Do you really have to go?”
All three of the Becketts are boarding a flight from DC to Turkey tomorrow afternoon for what they’re calling a Christmas vacation. CIA agents are all about the globe-trotting. I feel his lips in my hair, his warm breath against my scalp, and I’m already sizzling. He hesitates, then says, “You want me to stay, I’ll stay.”
Yes. I should tell him yes. Stay. But Needy Girlfriend isn’t my style, and besides, this thing with us is still so new. Miles has a million reasons not to trust me, and I have a lifetime of conning to shake off before I can fully let someone in. And yet here we are, trusting. But how long will it last? Until I tell him about visiting my mother in prison? Until he finds out how badly I want to see her? That she’s the reason the book his parents gifted me is so valuable?
“You should go with your parents,” I say. “I don’t want them to start calling me names like that girl.”
“That girl?” Miles laughs against my hair. “Doubtful. But just say the word and I’ll come back, okay?”
I tilt my head up, wanting to get a good look at his face. I won’t see it for a while. My eyes shift to his mouth after only a moment, and soon he’s kissing me with much less inhibition than when we were outside the warehouse with his parents in the car nearby. Okay, now is definitely not the best time to mention what may or may not happen in January. We haven’t really been alone like this since before the kidnapping, so both of us dive in, wanting to take full advantage. But there’s no denying the struggles of making out with someone who has an arm in a sling. Miles tries to take off my shirt one-handed, and I end up with my head caught in it. His shirt, a button-down, hangs halfway off, leaving part of his chest exposed.
Both of us start laughing, me with my head still caught inside a T-shirt. When I try to wiggle free of it, the shirt falls down into place.
“Back where I started again.” Miles steps away from me, shaking his head. “This sling is so inconvenient.”
“Starting over is not a bad idea.” I keep a few feet of distance between us and study Miles. “I have a plan.”
Wordlessly, I move toward him, and my fingers wrap around the strap of his sling. Gently, I tug it over his head with one hand, and the other supports his arm, holding it against his chest. The sling falls to the ground, and Miles draws in a breath when my hands glide over his shoulder, sliding off his shirt.
“Does it hurt?” I ask, pausing my movement.
He fixes a heated stare on me that warms every inch of my skin. “No, not at all.”
Excited nerves course through my gut. I fumble a little with putting his sling back in place, but by the time I’m turning him around, nudging him until he’s seated on my bed, my hands are steady again. I grip the hem of my T-shirt and slowly, deliberately raise it higher and higher until it’s off my body and on the floor beside Miles’s shirt.
“Okay, I like this plan,” he mumbles, his gaze never leaving me.
I inch closer to the bed, and Miles scoots farther away, eventually leaning against the wall. Then he reaches for me with his good arm, tugging until I’m seated on his lap, one knee on either side of him. He kisses my lips, then all along my jaw while his good hand glides up my now-bare back, making my skin tingle. I tilt my head up, and his mouth moves to my neck, his hand gently gripping the back of it, holding me in place. Not that I plan on moving away. I reach both hands behind me and unhook my bra, loving the sound of Miles’s breath catching in the back of his throat. He continues to kiss my neck while his hand roams around to my front, his thumb teasing the bottom of my bra cup before sliding beneath it.
My mind turns completely fuzzy; I forget to do anything with my own hands, forget my worries over my mom and over Miles leaving the country, over him going back to his school and all the distance between us. Or maybe I am thinking about those things and that’s why I catch myself pressing closer to Miles, closing all the distance I can without reinjuring his arm.
“Am I hurting you?” I ask, worried for a moment over the pressure of me leaning onto his shoulder.
“Even if you are,” he says, breathless, “you’re not moving.”
I pause for a second, committing all of this to memory. Sometimes I wish for a pen nearby to record the perfect, perfect words Miles utters, especially in these moments when he’s speaking without thinking. Because he’s a guy who thinks things through.
“Okay,” I reply, my mouth on his. “I’m not moving.”
…
Around four in the morning, I wake up with a jolt, blinking in the now-dark room. I was dreaming about Jack, the Secret Service agent who murdered Simon Gilbert. I was back at the cabin in the woods with Jack’s rifle pointed at me. I screamed for help, and then Agent Sheldon burst into the cabin like she was there to help, but she looked at me and shook her head.
“Oh, it’s only you,” the Dream Agent Sheldon said. “I thought I was here to save a real civilian. Not an informant.”
And then she just left me there. To die, if the dream version had gone like the real one.
“Hey…” Miles rolls onto his back and uses his good arm to feel around for me in the dark until his fingers find my cheek. “You okay?”
I catch my breath and collapse back onto the bed beside Miles. I curl into his side and bury my face in his neck before spilling all the details of that weird dream. If it were daylight and I had time to put up my defenses, I’d likely have held back some of it. But the fresh fear and the confidence a dark room provides leave me vulnerable.
“He’s gone,” Miles says after I finish talking. “He can’t hurt you again. And this Agent Sheldon, she’s all black and white, no gray.”
I laugh at that last part. “All black-and-white? Like someone else I know.”
Miles doesn’t offer a comeback, but I can practically hear him rolling his eyes. “My dad says that attitude is common for a lot of FBI agents. The bureau is trying to diversify their trainees to avoid having so many similar personality types.”
“Good,” I say, faking calm. “That means I might have a chance. I mean if the Secret Service lets in murderers, the door has to be open a crack for a non-murderous former criminal like me.”
“Ellie,” Miles says, not buying my sarcasm. “No government agency willingly hires murderers.”
“Except the secret league of assassins,” I argue, because I’m feeling conflicted about too much to agree on anything. “Aren’t they a government group? But maybe they don’t hire killers, they just make them?”
Jack was part of a very old and secret organization of assassins, one Miles and I accidentally uncovered in our search for Simon’s killer. They call themselves St. Felicity’s Shelter. According to Miles, they’re a noble group that seeks to take out the next Hitler before he or she becomes an evil dictator. St. Felicity’s is comprised of individuals in nearly every type of government operation—CIA, NSA, FBI, Secret Service, politicians. But Jack decided nobility wasn’t for him, and he wanted to use the depth and secrecy of the organization to make money. Hired hit men to begin with. Apparently the plan was to recruit me, and since I’m no hit man (hit woman? hit person?), I have to believe there were non-murderous plans in the works.
Were or are in the works.
“St. Felicity’s is aware that members of the organization went rogue for cash,” Miles says, employing more of that logic of his. “They came in and cleaned up, so we know they know. They’ll dig deep and clean up things from the inside. They have to. But in the meantime—”
“Keep your windows and doors locked,” I interrupt, flopping back onto my pillow. “And take self-defense lessons four times a week.”
“I’ve been taking self-defense six days a week since I was eleven,” Miles says, trying to smile. But I don’t miss the hint of worry in his eyes, that maybe it’s all too much for me. It is and oddly it isn’t. I’m someone who has had to grow up fast. But that does raise an interesting question. “Do you think Jack was telling the truth about Simon? That he’d joined St. Felicity’s Shelter? Why would they put a seventeen-year-old kid on their roster?”
“I asked my dad about this.” Miles pulls his good arm around me and strokes my hair. “Invitations happen practically from birth, but you don’t accept until you’re old enough to make a pledge of loyalty for life.”
“For life?” I repeat, though I had heard this from him before. “What exactly does that involve?”
“It means you go about your life, just as anyone would, and if you’re needed for a job, you drop everything and accept the call of duty.” His voice has taken on an eerie tone, or maybe I’m imagining it because the explanation is so creepy. “When asked to, you put the organization above anything else—family, job, religion. Always and forever.”
“I wish we could have protected Simon,” I say. “He was digging for information on Jack’s rogue group, and that got him killed. What if we had known and could have helped him solve everything without…”
“Murder being involved,” Miles finishes, and he’s now very tense. “I think about that every single day.”
A mixture of grief, sympathy, and affection for this boy who I may be falling in love with hits me. I lift my head and kiss his cheek. “You are so not a normal boyfriend. What am I going to do with you and all your save-the-world ambition?”
He looks at me, and that heat flares in his eyes all over again. “Sure I can’t talk you into joining military school with me? I can teach you shoe shining, ironing, rope climbing—all the basics.”
“As romantic as that sounds”—I kiss him again, wanting to take all I can while he’s here—“I would miss my sister too much. I waited five years to see her again.”
Miles is an only child, so I know he doesn’t fully get the sister bond, but he tries. “I got permission to keep a car on campus and leave on weekends.”
I rest my head on his chest again. “So after the holidays, when you get back from Turkey, Sundays will be our day. I can live with that.”
“Me, too,” Miles says.
We doze off for a while, and then right before the sun comes up, I help Miles back into his shirt and out the window again. My heart breaks seeing him leave for what will be the last time in weeks. He won’t be my neighbor or classmate anymore.
Everything will be different.
Before I climb back into bed, I spot an envelope on my desk. My name is written on the front in Miles’s handwriting. I open it carefully and smile at the sheet of paper. The last present he gave me was a social security card. Today he’s given me a learner’s permit so I can get my driver’s license. I have no idea how he does this stuff, but I’m not complaining.
There’s a soft knock on my bedroom door, and before I can move to answer, it swings open. My sister stands there, attempting to look stern, her blond hair falling around her face, her satin robe hastily tied. She looks surprisingly perky for someone who should be hung over.
“Did I just see a boy climb out your window?” she demands.
Even though Harper left my family when I was only twelve, she had plenty of time to acquire the observation skills we’re known for. Very little gets past her.
“It was more of a stumble out the window. That sling is a pain in the ass,” I say, still staring at my learner’s permit. “Did you know about this?”
“The permit? Yeah, I got one, too. Isn’t it awesome?”
Due to our grifter family ways, Harper and I were both undocumented Americans born and raised in this country with virtually no proof of that fact or any footprint whatsoever. Apparently the Becketts are helping turn this around for us.
Harper enters my room, buries herself under my covers, and says, “Come on, tell me everything that happened with Miles. Are you guys going to do the long-distance thing?”
Worry creeps over me, but I join her under the warm covers and prepare to indulge my nosy sister in some TMI details. “Think that’s a bad idea?”
“Normally, yes,” Harper says. “But with Miles, no. He’s loyal down to his core. I doubt he’ll look at another girl ever again.”
“Don’t get carried away. We’re still in early relationship territory. Very early.”
But as I glance at the window again, replaying Miles’s departure, I can’t help but get carried away. Can’t help but want his skin on my skin all the time.
Maybe, somehow, it will work out for us.
And maybe this is all enough for me—my school, Aidan, Harper, Miles. Maybe it’s enough even without my mom?
But that cold dread from earlier returns just thinking about the idea of never seeing her again. Of not seeing her in the near future. I can accept never seeing my father again, but is it so wrong to want my mother in my life?
I can’t convince myself of this, which is why, later that afternoon after Miles sends me a text saying they’re boarding their flight to Turkey, I get Aidan alone long enough to tell him yes. I want to see my mother next month.
He just looks at me like he’d been expecting this and then says, “I’ll take you.”
“No.” I shake my head, then glance over my shoulder, checking for Harper. “I wouldn’t do that to you.”
“We’re going to tell her eventually,” he says in a firm tone. “And when we do, she’ll be way more pissed at me if I’d let you go alone.”
I swallow back the lump in my throat. Harper just talked about Miles being loyal, and look at me. Lying to both of them. Taking advantage of their trust. Bringing Aidan down with me. “Okay,” I tell him, feeling like we should shake on it or something. “It’s a date.”