I thought about just saying yes.

I thought about telling him I’d see him tonight, letting him take me to dinner. I imagined him sending a dress to my apartment, something designer and beautiful and expensive. I imagined the food we would eat at some corner booth in the back of some exclusive restaurant, imagined his hands sliding up under my dress, his lips on my neck as his fingers pushed inside of me.

But I wasn’t going to pretend this was normal.

I couldn’t.

So I pulled the note back out.

“What is that?” Landon demanded, his eyes darkening.

“It was in the sweatshirt I got back from Paisley.” I held it out to him. He took it and I watched as his eyes scanned the paper.

“You believe this?” he demanded, his eyes back on me.

“What? That I shouldn’t trust you?”

“Yes.” His tone was short, impatient, like he was in a hurry to get to the meeting he’d mentioned he had at three, like this was some kind of afterthought.

It was annoying as hell.

“Well, I don’t know, Landon, a woman just did get her head blown off in front of me when I was with you. Not to mention my sister got followed and had a gun pointed at her back.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “Oh! And let’s not forget the fact that you yourself told me you needed to stay away from me because you were too dangerous.”

“The note doesn’t say I’m dangerous, Aven. It says you shouldn’t trust me.”

“Or your family.” I reminded him, reaching for the note and plucking it out of his hands. It was mine, and I wanted it back. “And it’s the same thing.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Stop with the semantics, Landon!” I turned on my heel, gathering up my bra and panties from where he’d tossed them on the floor. God, had that just been a few moments ago? Just a few moments ago that we’d been on his desk, him moving inside of me, his hands over my body?

Dammit.

He was so overpowering – he knew how to play me. And every time he pulled me back under. I’d been foolish, coming here, sleeping with him. But he was like a drug I couldn’t kick, a tidal wave I couldn’t escape.

Even now, I could feel him coming toward me.

“No!” I whirled around and put my hand up. “Stop. I’m serious, Landon. Don’t touch me and don’t come any closer.”

He stopped, his hands curling into fists by his sides, the only physical sign of how hard it was for him not to come to me.

“You believe this?” he demanded again. “You believe this woman who you barely know?”

“I believe that my sister was attacked. I believed I saw a woman get shot right in front of me, most likely because of something your father did. And I believe that you yourself told me you were dangerous to be around.”

He stared at me, blue eyes blazing.

The electricity crackled between us, even now, even still, and I hated him and loved him all at the same time.

After a few moments, I took a step toward him, then another. I put my hand against his chest, palm flat. I could feel his heart beating through his shirt, strong and steady, a direct contrast to my own heart, which felt as if it were going to burst out of my chest.

I swallowed. “I’m not going to lie to you, Landon. I’m not going to play this cool and pretend like I don’t love you.” My eyes filled with tears, and I couldn’t look at him. I averted my gaze, staring at the dark wood floor of his office. “But this is insane. This is totally dysfunctional and unhealthy and just completely… crazy.” I wished I had the vocabulary for some other word, something better to describe what it was that was going on between us, but I wasn’t sure such a word even existed.

He didn’t say anything for a moment.

“I love you,” he finally whispered raggedly, taking my chin and tipping it up, forcing me to look at him. “I can’t stay away from you, Aven.”

“Then you have to let me in.” I swallowed, knowing I shouldn’t let myself hope that he was capable of that, but not being able to stop myself. “What happened with Paisley, Landon? What did Conner do to her? Why did you have to take the blame for what happened?”

“It’s complicated, Aven.”

“Good,” I said, shrugging. “I can handle complicated.”

“Not this.”

“You don’t get to decide what I can handle, Landon.”

His eyes leveled me, not moving, his jaw set in that determined straight line, the expression on his face making it clear to me that he did think he could decide exactly what I could handle and what I couldn’t.

“You need to tell me,” I said. “Or I’m gone. It’s over.”

“Don’t push me.”

“Or what?”

“Or there will be consequences.”

“Stop with the fucking consequences!” I pulled away from him, zipping the sweatshirt I was wearing up angrily, and shoving the rest of my ruined clothes into my bag. “I told you my biggest secret, Landon. The thing I’ve never told anyone else, ever. And you can’t even…” I trailed off, hating that my voice was cracking, that I was getting emotional.

He stared back at me, his eyes devoid of emotion, just like I knew they would be.

Unbelievable.

I grabbed my purse and left, not turning around even when he called my name.

* * *

“Cheers to us!” Emma said, clinking our glasses together.

It was later that night, and we were out at Two Past Midnight, a new restaurant/bar a few blocks from our apartment that we were trying for the first time.

It was turning out to be a good gamble – the menu was filled with normal bar food, things like cheesy bacon potato skins and spicy buffalo wings, not the kind of pretentious food that was ever-popular in New York, the kind where everything was made of kale or avocado or whatever trendy green plant the hipsters had decided to love that month.

The clientele matched the menu – normal-looking people, all of them in various levels of business casual clothes. No one looked like they’d paid more for their haircut than I paid for my rent, and there was no sign of the scraggly-looking beards that were supposed to make you look hip but really only made you look like you needed a shower.

“You’re not drinking,” Emma said accusingly. “We ordered the Riesling because you couldn’t possibly stand to drink red wine, and now you’re not even drinking it.”

I took a long sip of my wine, then another, enjoying the warm, bubbly feeling that began to slowly take over my body.

“Okay, so,” Emma said, sliding her stool around so that she was facing me. She opened her mouth to talk, then shook her head and stopped herself. “First, do you want to play your voicemail again? Or is it time to talk about my sordid day at work?”

“We’ve played the voicemail five times.” On my way out of Landon’s office, I noticed that I had a voicemail from Miles Marx’s office, asking me to come in for a second interview, this time with the man itself.

Emma and I had played it over and over, and I’d already driven her crazy trying to decipher what the tone of the call was. But it was impossible to glean anything from the assistant’s voice -- it was totally neutral and gave nothing away.

“True, but there’s no set number of times you can replay a voicemail,” Emma pointed out. She swirled the wine around in her glass, even though she was far from an aficionado. “Remember that guy from Queens I dated for a while? Jeff? Or was it Jordan? I can’t remember…” She shrugged. “Anyway, remember he left me that voicemail about how his grandma died while she was trying to shovel her own driveway and so he had to cancel our date? And it sounded so implausible that we played the message back like a bazillion times to see if we could figure out if he was lying? And then finally we googled ‘woman dies shoveling in queens’ and then called his local ambulance service before deciding he was a bastard liar?”

“Yes, I remember. And playing that message got us nowhere. So there’s no use obsessing about this one.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.” I took my phone off the bar and placed it in my purse with defiance. I’d already responded to the email they’d sent, asking me to confirm my meeting with Miles the next morning. Which meant I should probably go easy on the wine.

“Good,” Emma said, doing a full spin on her bar stool until she was back facing me. “Now let’s talk about the accountant at work that I’m obsessed with.”

“Does this accountant have a name?’ I asked as the bartender set down a platter of overstuffed potato skins in front of us, along with two small square white plates.

I helped myself to half of a skin, knowing that an alcohol hangover was the worst, but a carb hangover was also bad. Too many carbs would make me sluggish in the morning, and I had an idea that Miles Marx didn’t do sluggish.

“His name is Roman,” she said. “I know, it’s a little ‘look at me I’m rich’ but he comes from old money.”

“You’ve obviously been google stalking him,” I said, taking a bite of potato skin and trying not to groan in pleasure. I hadn’t eaten anything since my brunch this morning, and after Paisley had shown up, I’d hardly been able to enjoy it.

“Of course. Well, just a little. Enough to know that he’s rich.”

“Of course.”

“Not that money is important,” Emma said, draining her glass of wine. “I mean, there’s other things too. Like looks.”

“Emma!”

“Kidding, kidding.” She reached her fork over onto my plate and ate the rest of my potato skin, which made no sense, since she had her own plate and there were five more skins sitting on the main plate in front of us.

I sighed and took another one for myself.

“Anyway, so you know how I was finagling my schedule so that I could make sure I got to ride in the elevator with him every morning?”

“Yes.”

“Well, this morning he wasn’t there. So I was, like, bummed out. But then later, this bitch Carla sent me out to do something that the intern was supposed to do, and I was all annoyed, because I’m, like, I’m not doing coffee runs when we have interns to do that. But it turned out okay, because when I got in the elevator, guess who was there?”

“Roman?”

“Roman! And it was just the two of us, and he was like, ‘I’m sorry I missed our morning ride.’ And I was all, ‘That’s okay, I’ll take a ride with you anytime.’”

“Emma!”

“I know.” She shook her head, then reached behind her and pulled her long blond hair up, twisting it into a loose bun and tying it with the hair tie on her wrist. “I’m so quippy.”

I smiled and worked my way through two more potato skins as Emma filled me in on the rest of her encounter with Roman, a flirty back-and-forth of sexually charged banter that culminated with Roman using their interoffice messaging system to continue that banter throughout the entire afternoon. The culmination was Roman asking her out for this weekend.

“And the best part,” Emma said, “is where he’s taking me.” She took a sip of her drink. (She’d moved on from wine to one of the bar’s signature drinks, something fruity and pink that probably tasted delicious before knocking you on your ass.)

“Where?” I asked, eyeing the last potato skin before finally taking it and putting it on my plate.

“Cancun.”

I choked on my potato. “What?”

“I know,” she said, stirring her straw around her glass and staring into space dreamily. “Isn’t it romantic?”

“You’re going to go on a trip out of the country with a guy you barely know?”

She looked at me. “Do we really want to talk about going trips with guys we barely know?”

I nodded. “Point taken.”

“Anyway. I think it’s exciting. I’ve never been to Cancun.”

“I’ve heard it’s beautiful, “ I said, trying to keep the doubt out of my voice.

“I’ll get so tan,” she said, sighing wistfully. “I can’t wait to swim and be near the ocean, drink cocktails on the beach and have sex in the sand.”

“He must really be excited about hanging out with you if he’s already whisking you away to Cancun,” I said, feeling like I needed to be supportive even though there was a million red flags flashing in my head. But Emma was right – I wasn’t the most qualified to be giving romantic advice to anyone.

And besides, there was no changing Emma’s mind once it was made up. If anything, challenging her on a plan would only make her want to do it more.

“Yeah,” she said. “Definitely.” But something had changed in her expression, something that made me think there was more to the story than she was telling me.

Before I could decide if I should press her on it, she abruptly changed the subject, only adding to my suspicions that there was more going on with this Roman character than she wasn’t telling me.

“So, what’s up with Landon? Still haven’t heard from him?”

I hadn’t been planning on telling Emma what had happened today – my encounter with Paisley, how Landon had followed me, the sex and the argument we’d had in his office. I just didn’t want to talk about it. I’d been telling myself today had been a blip as far as Landon and I were concerned, our encounter something to be glossed over and forgotten about. It would be better for Emma to think Landon and I were still broken up.

But now, suddenly, I wanted to tell her. I wasn’t sure if it was the wine or the fact that I was still desperate to talk about him, but I found myself spilling it all to Emma.

How he’d found me on the street.

How he’d taken me up to his office, where we’d had sex.

The note that had fallen out of my pocket, how I’d pressed him on it and how he’d refused to answer any questions.

I’d expected Emma to react with wide eyes and tell me how crazy everything was, but to my surprise, it was the exact opposite.

She rolled her eyes. “You’re being so extra,” she said.

“I’m being extra?”

“Yes.” She grabbed the rest of the last potato skin off my plate and popped it in her mouth. “If you want to know what this Paisley woman is talking about, just go ask her.”

“Go ask her?” I frowned. “I can’t just go ask her.”

“Why not? She left a note in your sweatshirt. You don’t do that unless you have something to say.”

“How would I even find her?”

“The same place you find everyone,” Emma said wisely. “Facebook.”

* * *

An hour, a cab ride, and a few Facebook messages later, I stood in front of Paisley’s building, an impressive silver skyscraper on the Upper East Side.

I paid the driver and stepped out, suddenly feeling intimidated. I hadn’t expected her to live in a place like this – I figured her place would be more like mine, a walkup on some random street in Morningside Heights or Bushwick. Maybe Park Slope.

But this neighborhood was sought after, and the building was spectacular, all shiny floors and soft lighting and modern fixtures.

A doorman asked my name, then buzzed Paisley before pushing a button that unlocked the elevator for me.

I took it up and stepped out onto the fourth floor, walking down the hall until I got to 411, her apartment.

She opened the door before I could knock.

“Hey,” she said, giving me a warm smile. Her hair was pulled back in a bun, her feet bare. She wore black leggings with cutouts on the side, and a lightweight oversized black cashmere sweater. Her face was scrubbed of makeup, her skin clear and flawless.

“Hi.” I walked inside. Her apartment was small but extravagant, done in shades of grey and white.

She poured me a glass of wine and we sat down on her couch.

The couch was white, and I tried to keep myself from spilling my red wine all over it. It looked super expensive, the kind of couch you bought when you were either OCD or had copious amounts of money to replace it when it inevitably got ruined.

“This is a really nice apartment,” I said.

“Thank you. “ She looked at me, her eyes wide and bright. “Are you wondering how I can afford an apartment like this?”

I blushed and reached for a cracker on the plate she’d set on the chrome coffee table, desperate to do something to hide my awkwardness. I took a bite, feeling like a mouse as I bit carefully so as not to get any crumbs on her couch. “Oh, no,” I said. “I wasn’t – “

“It’s from the settlement,” she said, curling her feet up under her. “The settlement that the Sheer family gave me in order for me to drop the charges in my stalking case.”

“Isn’t that illegal?” I asked. “To give someone money in order to drop charges against them?”

“I was never going to win a legal case,” Paisley said matter-of-factly. “So I dropped the charges. I filed a civil case, and in exchange, the Sheers gave me a settlement in exchange for signing an NDA.”

“So you can’t talk about what happened.”

“That depends.” She curled her hands around her glass. Everything about her was slow, sanguine, like a cat. “Are you going to tell anyone what I tell you?”

I shook my head. “I don’t need to know details,” I said, my stomach clenching as I thought about “I just need to know if it was Conner or Landon.”

“It was Conner who did the stalking. It was Landon who took the blame.”

“But if there was no criminal case, how could he take the blame?”

“They were building one against him,” Paisley said. Her tone was still matter-of-fact, as if we were discussing an unfortunate but realistic part of life, like New York real estate prices or sexism in the workplace. “The DA was trying to pin all the threatening letters and texts Conner had sent to me on Landon. Saying he was the one who was using Conner’s phone, that Landon had been secretly in love with me the whole time I was dating Conner.”

“Was he?”

“No.” Paisley shook her head. “That’s not Landon’s style. At least, it wasn’t back then.”

I wanted to ask her what she meant by that, but I told myself it didn’t matter. “So their father was willing to throw Landon under the bus, let him take the blame for something he didn’t do?”

“Victor is very protective of his sons,” she said. “But Conner in particular. I think he thought that if anything were to happen, Landon would be able to handle it better.”

My hand tightened around the stem of my glass, rage building up inside of me at the thought of Victor Sheer saddling Landon with a criminal record and jail time for something he didn’t do.

I took a long sip of wine now, white couch and tomorrow’s job interview be damned, wanting to feel that feeling of my limbs getting a little numb, my brain going fuzzy, the edges of my emotions dulling. Talking about Landon, about his family, about everything, was making me remember how much I missed him, how much I cared about him.

Paisley refilled my glass without me asking, and I allowed myself one sip before forcing myself to set it down on a square white coaster that sat on her coffee table.

My phone vibrated in my purse, and I pulled it out.

Landon.

Please, Aven.

It was only two words, but I couldn’t remember him ever saying ‘please’ to me like that. For him, it was akin to taking out an ad in the New York Times and begging for me to talk to him.

Another text followed immediately.

I’m going crazy.

“Is that Landon?” Paisley asked.

“Yes.” I tried to sound like it was no big deal as I silenced my phone and put it in my purse.

“He must really like you if he’s blowing up your phone like that.” She raised her perfectly- groomed eyebrows, a look of surprise flitting across her face.

I decided to ignore her comment and move on.

“That note you left in my sweatshirt…” I started

Paisley looked uncomfortable as she straightened up on the couch. “I know,” she said. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. I should have just talked to you, but I didn’t know how you’d react, and when I saw you sitting there in that restaurant, I panicked. I wrote it outside and slipped it in the pocket right before I came in to talk to you.”

“It’s fine,” I said, even though it wasn’t. But I’d come here for information, and contradicting her or making an enemy out of her wasn’t going to get that done. “I just… when you said that the Sheer family shouldn’t be trusted, that I would be danger if I did… you meant Landon, too?” Her note had specifically mentioned Landon. But I had to hear it from her directly.

Paisley ran her finger around the top of her wine glass. When she finally spoke, she seemed as if she were choosing her words carefully. “The Sheer family is very loyal. The three of them would do anything for each other, and they don’t care what they have to do to protect each other. I mean, come on, Aven. What kind of person takes the blame for their brother for something they didn’t do?”

I swallowed. “Being loyal doesn’t make someone dangerous.”

She sighed, and looked at me with something akin to pity. “Look, I know you care about Landon. A lot of women…” She stopped and sighed again, then took a deep breath. “I can’t say anything else, really. I just… I shouldn’t have put that letter in your pocket, and I’m sorry if I freaked you out. You’re going to do what you’re going to do.” She set her own wine down on the table, and I felt like I was losing her, like she was going to wrap up the conversation, and I wasn’t ready for that.

So I changed the subject to something more concrete.

“Did Abigail… did she say anything to you? Do you have any idea why someone would want to kill her?”

“No.” But her eyes moved quickly over to the side.

“Paisley,” I said. “Please.”

“It doesn’t matter. She’s dead now.” She shrugged, her eyes getting misty, but she held it together enough so that she didn’t start crying.

“Yes, but… if Victor is the one who got her killed, because she knew something, don’t you think he should pay for it?”

She laughed, a horrible, bitter sound, then reached over and took a cracker in her hand, crumbled it between her fingers, watching as the crumbs fell onto her pristine white coach. “You don’t get it yet, do you, Aven? There’s no ‘paying for it’ with the Sheer family. They have money. They have power. They have secrets that they’re willing to literally kill for. It doesn’t matter what I know, and it wouldn’t matter if I told you.”

“Paisley,” I said. “Please.”

“Abigail didn’t say anything to me,” she said, brushing the crumbs into her hand and depositing them onto her plate. “Nothing concrete. Just that she thought Victor was doing something inappropriate at the mental health center that her husband ran.”

I frowned. “The Benedict Center?”

“Yes. Victor Sheer is a big donor there. He has a lot of influence.” She snorted. “Like he does with anything he’s involved in.”

“But –”

“That’s all I know,” Paisley said, and now her tone was firm. She stood up, making it clear that our meeting was over, that if I pushed her, she wouldn’t be friendly any longer.

“Well, thank you,” I said, standing up, “For meeting with me. And I’m so sorry about Abigail. If there’s anything I can do…”

“Thank you.”

There were a million more questions I wanted to ask her, but at the same time, I didn’t want to push her. She was someone I might need for more information in the future, and if she felt like I was pushing her, she was going to break down.

So I said goodbye.

As I was leaving, though, I did ask her one more question right after she walked me to the door.

“Paisley,” I said, stepping into the hallway.

“Yeah?” she stopped with the door half-closed, opening it up a little bit again reluctantly. Her eyes had a distracted look to them, as if she were already mentally watching a reality TV show, curled up in bed in her pajamas as she fell asleep.

“Why did you ask if Landon knew that I was interviewing with Miles Marx?

But this time, Paisley just sighed. “That one is between you and Landon.”

And with that, she shut the door.

* * *

Landon had sent me seven texts and had tried to call me five times by the time I hailed a taxi to take me back to my apartment.

I gave the cabbie my address and then settled back into the seat, reaching over to turn down the volume on the tiny screen that was built into the back seat of all the New York City cabs, the one that broadcast human interest stories and gave you updates on the news and weather.

The air outside was warm, and I’d just finished rolling down the window in the back when my phone rang again.

I hesitated, then finally, I picked up.

“Yes?” I did my best to sound neutral.

“Why are you in a taxi?” His voice was low, growly, demanding, and it felt as if it brushed over my skin, setting my nerve endings on fire.

“Please tell me you’ve gleaned that piece of information from the fact that you can hear background noises and not because you’re having me followed.”

“I’m not having you followed.”

“Then it was the background noises?”

“No. I’m following you myself.”

I glanced out the back window of the cab, but I couldn’t spot him in loose rows of cabs and trucks and limos that tangled up the streets of Midtown.

“Landon –“

“I don’t want you in cabs, Aven.”

“You prefer I take the subway?”

“Don’t be smart. I prefer you be with me at all times, but barring that, I prefer a private car of my choosing.”

I didn’t say anything. “What do you want, Landon?”

“Why weren’t you answering my calls?”

“I was busy.”

“You seem to have forgotten our agreement.”

I shifted on the seat. “And what agreement would that be?”

“Don’t play coy with me, Ms. Courtland.”

“Our agreement is now null and void.”

“Is it?” He sounded amused, not at all the desperation of someone who wanted to get me back.

I tried to ignore the pulse that was building between my legs, the goose bumps that had bloomed across my skin, the way my cheeks had flushed just at the sound of his voice.

“Landon, we can’t do this anymore,” I said firmly, forcing my brain to override my body for once, aided by the fact that we were on the phone and he wasn’t here, in front of me, his presence overwhelming me, his hands playing my body like only he could do, his lips whispering his empty promises against my skin.

“Can’t do what anymore?”

“This thing where I break up with you, and then you just act like nothing happened, and try to use the fact that I’ve agreed to be dominated by you to –”

“So you admit you’ve agreed to be dominated by me.”

“Not anymore.”

“And we’re broken up? I never knew we were in a relationship.”

“That’s exactly what I’m talking about!” My hand curled into a fist on the seat, the frustration so intense I wanted to scream. “You refuse to define things with me, so that I can’t even say that I broke up with you, because then I sound like the crazy one.”

The cabbie caught my eye in the rearview mirror and gave me a knowing look. Of course the one time I was having a humiliating conversation on the phone, the cabbie would be interested in listening to what I had to say. Usually they were on their own phones or too busy yelling at traffic to pay any attention to what I was doing.

I took solace in the fact that no matter what the cabbie was imagining about my situation, the truth was way more scandalous.

“You sound sexy when you’re angry,” Landon said.

“Landon, stop. I’m not angry. I’m confused and upset, and scared.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line.

When he spoke again, any trace of amusement and teasing was gone from his voice. Now he was low and deep and serious.

“What did she say?”

“Who?”

The cabbie pushed hard on the gas, and flew through a yellow light, and the quick movement accentuated the dropped I’d already felt in my stomach from Landon’s question.

“Paisley.”

Of course he knew I’d been there. He had my phone traced and bugged and he was following me.

“You mean you don’t know what she said?” I asked sarcastically. “The all-knowing Landon Sheer actually needs information from me?”

The cabbie was flying through a string of green lights before finally pulling to a stop in front of my apartment building. I reached into my purse and slid my card through the reader, added a tip that was more than generous for such a little eavesdropper, and then slid out of the cab.

I stood on the sidewalk, scanning the New York traffic for Landon’s car.

“I’m tracking your movements, Aven, not your conversations.”

“Just my in person ones,” I said. “But my texts and phone calls, you can hear?”

“Correct.”

“Well, it’s good to know you draw the line somewhere,” I said sarcastically.

“Everyone has their limits,” he said. “Pushing them is when things get interesting.”

A black Tesla pulled over at the end of the block. I was too far away to see inside of it, but just knowing he was there, knowing he was so close made the electricity that was already zipping through my nerve endings intensify.

“Hi,” he said.

“I’m going inside.”

“Come to my car.”

“No.”

“Then I’ll come to you.”

“No.” I slipped my key into the lock that opened the downstairs door to my building before he could change my mind. The fact that there was even a downstairs door to my building that you needed to use a key to get into provided little comfort to me. I knew that if Landon was determined to get inside, he would.

I shut the door, making sure the automatic lock clicked into place, then climbed the stairs to my apartment.

Another lock, another door.

“Do you know how hard it is for me to sit out here, knowing you’re inside?” His voice was a low growl, and the warmth between my legs pulsed.

“I appreciate your restraint.” I rolled my eyes even though he couldn’t see me, then dropped my keys onto the counter next to a note from Emma telling me she’d gone out, not to wait up, and that she hoped everything had gone well at Paisley’s.

“Tell me what Paisley said,” Landon demanded.

I walked to the refrigerator, grabbed a bottle of water and took a sip. The cool liquid slid down my throat, and I thought about whether or not I wanted to tell Landon anything. I didn’t owe him anything. In fact, I knew I should stay away from him.

But what do you want? a voice in my head whispered. What do you really want?

I knew the answer. I wanted to be with him. But how was telling him what Paisley said going to help relationship?

“If you want to know what Paisley said, I’m going to want something in return.”

“What?”

I capped the water bottle and thought about it.

“Aven.”

“Yes?”

“What do you want?”

I was still thinking, and I took my time, savoring this moment, where he was the one who was waiting for me to answer, waiting for me to decide.

What I wanted was for him to let me in. But I knew there was no way I could say that. It was way too vague. No, I needed something more tangible, a step that was going to be more in line with getting to my ultimate goal.

“I want us to go to therapy.”

* * *

The silence on the other end of the phone was deafening. I’d never really believed in that phrase before, because how could silence be deafening? It didn’t make sense. But this silence was deafening. It stretched over the phone, almost reverberating in my ears, so strange in its simplicity and emptiness.

“Therapy is a waste of time,” Landon said finally.

“How do you know unless you’ve tried it?”

“How do you know I haven’t tried it?” he shot back.

“Have you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, me too. After my parents died.” I’d seen a therapist right after my parents had died, on the insistence of my aunt, who thought it would be good for me to talk to someone. The therapist was a small birdlike woman named Julie who’d acted like I was a child instead of a teenager. Even so, it was helpful to talk to someone, to get tips on how to deal with my grief, to hear someone tell me that what I was feeling was normal.

“Therapists are useless, Aven. They fill you up with psychobabble and drugs, until you’re dependent on both of them and forced to pay more and more money to get more and more therapy while the whole time you’re getting more and more fucked up.”

“Not if you’re honest with them,” I said. “Not if you go into it with an open mind.”

“Really? Did you tell your therapist what you told me?”

My hand tightened around the phone, thinking about what I’d told him, about the night before my parents had died, how I’d been the one responsible. My mouth went dry and I took a sip of water, but it didn’t help.

“Aven?” he prompted.

I stayed silent.

“Ah. So then maybe you shouldn’t be espousing the virtues of honesty in therapy.”

It was uncomfortable for me, and I wanted to hang up on him.

But I didn’t. I fought through it.

If I wasn’t willing to confront things, to talk about things that were uncomfortable for me, then how could I expect him to do the same?

“If we go to therapy, I’ll talk to the therapist. I’ll tell them the truth.” My throat tightened at the thought of telling a stranger the truth about what happened. And then something even worse – a brief flash of what Landon had told me before, that the only reason I wanted to be with him was because he punished me, that I thought I deserved to be punished for what I’d done, and that was why I was drawn to him.

“I’ll tell the truth and I’ll expect you to do the same,” I said. “This is just… this is too fucked up, and we just… we need to figure out how we can…”

“Aven.”

“Yes.”

“If I agree to this, I need a promise, too.”

“Isn’t it enough to tell you what Paisley said?”

“No. This is far more important.”

“What is it?”

“I need you to promise that no matter what happens, that no matter what a therapist tells us, that we will not give up on this. That we will stay together, no matter how fucked up they tell us we are, how bad they say we are for each other.”

“That’s what I want,” I said. “I want us to be together, but I want us to do it in a way that isn’t so dysfunctional.”

“Do you promise, Aven? Promise that no matter what happens in that office, that no matter what the therapist says, that you will not leave me.”

“I promise.”

“Then I will go.”

I let the breath out I was holding, simultaneously terrified and excited all at once. I knew this was a big step for him, and I couldn’t help but love the fact that not only was he doing it for me, but he was making sure that no matter what happened, we would stay together.

But now that I’d gotten what I wanted, I wondered what kind of things would come up in therapy, what kind of demons he was really hiding.

“Aven?”

“Yes?”

There was a knock on the door. “Let me in.”

* * *

He was still in his suit from work, dark and pressed, the lines elegant and masculine at the same time, hugging his muscular frame.

As soon as he walked in, he pushed past me into the kitchen. He looked around.

“Where is the espresso machine I bought you?” he demanded.

“I sold it.”

“You what?”

“I sold it.”

“To whom?”

I shrugged. “Some random on the internet.” I shut the door and locked it. “I was mad.”

“This is what you do when you’re mad? Sell things that I give you?” His eyes blazed, and I couldn’t tell if he was really mad about the espresso machine itself, or just at the fact that I’d disobeyed him.

In the end, it didn’t matter.

“Go to the bedroom, Aven.”

“What? I thought you wanted to talk about Paisley.” My core was pulsing at this nearness, even though he was across the kitchen. His presence, though, permeated the entire room, his undeniable chemistry and power taking over everything.

I was lucky that I’d made my demands when I was on the phone with him, because I wasn’t sure I would have been able to resist him in person.

“I do,” he said. “But I want to do it in the bedroom.”

“But –”

“Do you want to defy me even more than you already have today, Ms. Courtland? Because I assure you that things can always get worse, that your punishments can always be more… severe, shall we say.”

“No, sir.”

“Then. Go. To. The. Bedroom.”

* * *

Once we were there, he shut the door softly. Now that he was in control of me, he didn’t want to rush, didn’t need to rush. He turned the lock with an audible click, and even though Emma wasn’t here, so she couldn’t have saved me anyway, something about the sound made something visceral rise up inside of me, somewhere between panic and excitement.

Landon took off his suit coat slowly, a movement I’d come to associate with whatever he was about to do to me.

My body was primed to respond to his every movement, even something as slight at this.

And sure enough, when he began to roll up the sleeves of his crisp white shirt, his tanned forearms coming into view, my pussy flooded with heat and a tiny moan escaped involuntarily from my lips.

The sound earned me an arrogant smirk from Landon. “That’s right, Ms. Courtland.” Done rolling up his sleeves, he closed the distance between us, his movements almost predatory.

The fingers of his right hand found the button on my jeans, slipping it through its hole.

He pulled my zipper down slowly, his palm sliding down over the outside of my panties. He pushed the flat of his hand against my pussy. “Your body will never lie to me. It will betray you every time. “ The crotch of my panties was pushed to the side and his finger probed my folds. “So wet. So tight and sweet.”

The pad of his thumb brushed over my clit and then he was gone, moving away from me, to my desk chair.

He turned it around and sat down. It was a cheap chair, one I’d picked up at a thrift store in Queens on my first weekend in the city, Emma and I giving our subway cards a workout as we rode the train up and down the city from borough to borough, lugging things back and forth as we spent our meager savings on what furniture we could find.

The chair had cost five dollars, and as a result had no arms and was made of cheap particle board that was supposed to pass as wood.

It was nothing like the chair in Landon’s office, the one that was made of leather so soft you could fall asleep in it.

And yet even in this small room, Landon looked every much the rich executive he was, the businessman who never took no for an answer.

He regarded me, his eyes moving up and down my body.

I blushed.

“Strip to your bra and panties, Ms. Courtland.”

I did as I was told, taking off my shirt and jeans.

“Very nice,” Landon murmured. I was wearing some of the lingerie he’d gotten me, a black bra and panty set. The cups of the bra were demi, and my breasts spilled out over the top of the cups. I reached up to adjust them, but he stopped me.

“No,” he admonished. “Leave it.”

I dropped my arms, my body breaking out in goose bumps.

“You will never cover your body when you’re showing it to me. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Get on your kneels and crawl to me.”

I did as I was told, crawling toward him across the floor, the braided rug scratching my knees. But the discomfort did nothing but turn me on more.

When I got to him, he tipped my chin up toward his, his eyes on mine.

“You’re so beautiful,” he murmured, his voice soft.

I stared up at him, the angles of his face, the strong cut of his jaw, the slash of his brow and those long lashes over those deep blue eyes. He was so handsome, so strong, to gorgeous that I almost couldn’t take it.

He leaned down and kissed me gently, his lips soft against mine. He tasted like mint and smelled like the expensive cologne he wore, something clean and cedary that sent my nerve endings into tiny little explosions.

“You’re so beautiful,” he said again. “But you’ve been so bad, too. Do you understand that?”

“Yes.”

I waited, expecting him to pull me into his lap and kiss me again. The emotion in his eyes was undeniable – it was as if everything I was feeling deep within my soul was reflected on his face, in his expression, in those deep blue eyes.

But he didn’t pull me onto his lap.

Instead, he pulled back.

He stood up.

“Follow me into the kitchen, Aven.”

Dread and anticipation pooled deep in my belly.

“But I thought you wanted me in here.”

“I changed my mind.”

I stood up, ready to follow him.

Then his hands were on my shoulders, pushing me back down. “No. Crawl.”

* * *

I crawled to the kitchen on my hands in knees, clad in only my bra and skimpy thong panties. The position made my breasts, which had already been dangerously close to spilling out the cups of my bra, tip even further out.

By the time I reached the kitchen, the cups of my bra hit just above my nipples, exposing a slip of areola, and my entire body burned with humiliation.

“You may stand.”

I stood, my body thrumming, and resisted the urge to adjust my bra, heeding his warning not to cover my body when he’d asked me to expose it.

My knees ached, even though the crawl to the kitchen had been short.

“Lean over the island,” Landon commanded. As he spoke, he reached over and ran his finger slowly under the cup of my bra, separating it from my skin. He repeated the gesture with my other breast. His gaze was trained on me, his eyes hooded, his body stiff.

I did as I was told, leaning over the island. As I did, my tits popped from my bra, and the cold linoleum of our outdated kitchen island brushed against my exposed nipples.

Landon crossed to the other side of the island.

“Hands.”

I reached across the island, offering them to him as he slid off his tie, and began to bind my wrists together. When he was done, he pulled the ends, taut causing me to be stretched across the island.

He took the ends of the tie and tied them to the drawer on the other side of the island, leaving me immobile, stretched so far that I had to arch my back and rise up on my tiptoes, my ass pushing into the air behind me.

“Jesus, you look sexy,” he murmured. “Those big tits falling out of your bra, your tight little ass up in the air.”

“Um, we’re not… I mean, I don’t know when Emma’s coming home.” The thought of my best friend coming in here and seeing me tied up and spread out over our island, my body at Landon’s mercy, made the humiliation and shame that was already flowing like a red hot river through my veins burst into an inferno.

He didn’t respond, and I watched as he opened kitchen drawers until he found what he was looking for – a wooden spoon.

“Did you hear me?” I asked.

“I heard you.”

“So maybe we should, um… go back to the bedroom.”

“Why? Are you afraid someone might see what a bad girl you’ve been?”

I swallowed, realizing there was no use in arguing with him. He had me tied and bound. And this was all part of his particular brand of torture, having me here, knowing how humiliating it would be for me.

He unbuttoned his shirt until he was naked from the waist up, and I inhaled sharply at the beautiful planes of his body, the rigid lines of his torso that flexed with every movement.

A line of hair started at his belly button and dipped down below the waist of his pants, and I moaned.

He crossed the room until he was standing behind me, the hard wooden spoon still in his hand.

“Normally I would do this with a paddle,” he murmured, running the spoon down over my spine, causing shivers to ripple through me. “But we’ll have to make do with what we have, now won’t we?”

“Yes, sir,” I managed.

He knelt behind me, pushed my legs apart, and then his mouth was on my pussy, through the sheer material of my panties.

“Oh!” I rose up on my tiptoes as he began to kiss me down there, to eat me, open-mouthed, his breath warm, his tongue probing my slick folds through the material of my panties. His movements were slow, languid, teasing, his tongue pushing the fabric away from my pussy every so often so that he was licking my bare cunt.

My body was tight and wound, and I knew pleasure like this could only be followed by inevitable punishment and pain.

I sucked in a breath through my teeth.

“Do you like that?” he demanded.

“Yes.”

“Tell me.”

“I like when you eat my pussy.”

His tongue swirled around my clit.

I moaned, but he didn’t stop, instead taking me to the edge of orgasm before stopping.

“So wet,” he murmured. “But that’s good, baby. I need to get you nice and wet so that when I hurt you, you’ll like it. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” My body was on fire, tiny little fires that were started to merge together, my nerve endings forming connections, the warmth firing over my synapses.

He stood up, and I laid my cheek against the cold linoleum of the kitchen island.

“Tell me exactly why you went to see Paisley.”

“I wanted to talk to her.”

He was still standing behind me, and I knew he had the wooden spoon in his hand, ready to use it on me as needed.

“About what?”

I hesitated, wondering how, exactly, to answer this question. There were a million reasons I went to see Paisley, and I wondered which, if any, would be acceptable to Landon.

“Don’t lie to me,” he demanded, and then the flat side of the wooden spoon hit my backside, the blow harder than I thought. It was different than his hand, which delivered its sting and then immediately dissolved into a warm pleasure. The wooden instrument was the opposite, the pain radiating and intensifying after the initial strike.

“I wanted to ask her about the note she left in my sweatshirt,” I said.

“And?” he prompted.

Another blow to my ass, this one harder, hard enough to leave a red mark. I gasped, my hands curling into fists as my skin warmed.

“And she said that your family was loyal, that you took the blame for Conner when he stalked her.”

This seemed to please him, and this time, he ran the wood over the sore flesh of my backside, keeping himself from spanking me.

“So she corroborated what I told you.”

“Yes.”

He leaned down and brushed the hair from my neck, his breath skating across my skin as he spoke. “You should have trusted me, angel,” he said. “If you’d have listened to me, trusted me, this would be a lot easier. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

He kissed me then, his tongue pressing past the seam of my lips, taking me. Our tongues tangled together, the slight stubble on his face brushing over my skin and branding me, the roughness and intensity of the kiss making my pussy flood with even more warmth.

The pain on my ass from where he’d struck me began to turn to pleasure.

But just like that, he pulled back.

I groaned and tried to move my lips back to his, desperate and hungry for more.

“You like that, don’t you?’

“Yes.”

He took my lower lip between his, sucking it gently, before pulling away and standing back up, leaving me panting.

A silence filled the room as he pushed my legs apart.

“Legs apart,” he commanded.

I did as I was told.

“Up on your toes so I can see that wet pussy.”

I did it, the cool air of the room sliding over my most sensitive places, putting me on display for him as my body bloomed with humiliation.

He moved the spoon down over my exposed vagina, getting the top of it wet with my juices.

“Did she say I was dangerous?” he asked.

His voice was a low growl, and the fists of my hands tightened as I braced myself against the island. He wouldn’t like the answer, and yet I knew lying to him would be much worse.

“She said your family is very loyal.”

“You already said that,” he growled.

“She made it seem as if your family’s loyalty could cause you to be a dangerous person to be around, yes.”

Another blow with the spoon, this time harder than ever, and I cried out as the pain spread across my ass cheeks, sharp and raw.

“Do you think I’m dangerous to be around?”

I thought about it, hesitating.

Another blow with the spoon, hard and fast. I could feel my own juices on it from when he’d rubbed it against my pussy, knew that he was hitting me hard enough to leave marks.

“Yes,” I whispered.

Another blow, this one so hard my ass cheeks jiggled and my tits bounced.

Then another.

And another.

So many I lost count, but I held myself together, taking it for him, knowing this was what he needed to work out whatever it was he was feeling, whatever emotions that were boiling up inside of him.

Finally, I heard him throw the wooden spoon across the kitchen, the clattering of the wood startling.

“Jesus,” he murmured, and his hand was sliding over my raw flesh, taking in what he’d done to me, the red marks I was sure his makeshift paddle had left on me.

“Do you trust me?” he asked, twisting my hair in his fingers and pulling gently.

“Yes,” I answered honestly. “Yes, Landon, I trust you.”

His hand found my ass then, and he spanked me again, furiously, his hand much different that the wood of the spoon, not better, not less painful, just different, but the feel of his skin on mine made me feel connected to him in a way I had never felt to another human in my entire life.

He spanked me hard, harder, making me take it, and I did, I took it for him, to prove to him that I trusted him, that I knew he would never push me past the point of what I could take, that he would never hurt me.

He might have been dangerous to be around, but I knew that he would never intentionally hurt me. In fact, it was the opposite. He wanted to protect me, but in order to let himself feel the way he was feeling, he needed to do these things to me, needed me to prove to him that I trusted him.

Finally, he was spent. I could hear him behind me, breathing heavily.

My own breath was coming fast and hard. The pain had caused my eyes to fill with tears and one had slipped down my cheek, but my body was on fire for him. I wanted him more than I’d ever wanted him, wanted to feel him inside of me.

A moment later, he stilled.

“Jesus, Aven,” he whispered again. “Jesus, I didn’t mean to…”

He trailed off, and I closed my eyes, imagining the carnage that was the skin on my ass, the red marks he’d left with his hand. But all it did was make me want him more, make my pussy wetter, make my body and mind crave his touch, his cock, his love.

If this was fucked up, I didn’t care.

I wanted fucked up.

I wanted him.

He crossed to the other side of the island, his waist at eye level, and untied me from the handle, but left my wrists bound.

This allowed me more movement, and I wriggled forward, desperate, taking the button and fly of his pants and undoing them until his cock sprung out, hard as steel encased in soft velvet.

I wrapped my hands around it, and began to beg.

“Please,” I said, as I stared up at him, the lines of his gorgeous body, the ridges of his six pack, his hard swollen cock right in front of me.

I took it in my hand and guided it to my lips, and Landon put his hand on the back of my head, forcing me down on him in one full thrust, the salty taste of his precum filling my mouth.

He held my head down, pressing me, choking me.

When he finally let me go, I cried out, gasping for breath.

He shucked his pants before returning to the other side of the island. He flipped me over, pulled me toward him, pulled off my panties before slipping my still-bound wrists over his head.

“Did I hurt you?” he whispered, his eyes on mine. He brushed the new tear that was falling from my eye over my cheek until it disappeared.

“No,” I said. “No, you didn’t hurt me.”

“Are you sure? Because –“

“Yes,” I said, kissing his face, his cheeks, his nose. “Yes, I’m sure.”

He leaned his forehead against mine.

The tip of his cock bumped against my opening, and I groaned. Our gazes were locked on each other, the electricity between us burning so brightly that I could feel it as if it were a tangible thing.

And then he asked me the question he’d been leading up to all night. The question he’d been wanting to ask me the entire time.

“Do you love me?”

“I love you,” I whispered. “I love you so much.”

“I love you, too.”

He pushed inside of me as he spoke, his hips flexing as he opened me, joining us as one. My bound hands were still around his neck and I pulled up my legs and wrapped them around his waist, pulling him further into me.

He paused for a moment, pushing my hair off my face as he gave me a second to get used to his thickness inside of me.

He kissed my lips, my cheeks, my eyes as the tight feeling between my legs gave way to warm pleasure.

“Okay?” he whispered.

I nodded, and then he began to move inside of me, slowly, in and out, his cock brushing against my exposed clit with each stroke.

The whole time he stared into my eyes, stopping only to kiss me on the lips softly, the kisses and the thrusting slowly becoming more and more intense, the speed faster, harder.

“I want to feel you come on me,” he said. “I want you to clench me with your pussy until you come.”

I pulled him harder inside of me, tightening myself around him, and he groaned in appreciation.

“Jesus, Aven,” he moaned.

And then I was coming, the spasms of exquisite pleasure reverberating through my entire body as his cock began to spurt inside of me, filling me with his cum, owning me, shattering me as he made me his.

* * *

“Are there marks?” I asked half an hour later.

We’d showered together and now I was lying on my bed as Landon applied lotion to my raw skin. I was naked, on my stomach, enjoying the gentle feel of his touch.

“Yes.”

“How bad?”

“This should help,” he said, ignoring my question.

“I like it,” I said, just in case there was a doubt in his mind that I hadn’t enjoyed what we’d done. “I like the things we do. And I like being marked by you.”

He finished with the cream, and I reached for a t-shirt, but he stopped me. “No. I want you naked.”

“Okay.” I swallowed. “Are you spending the night?”

“Is that an invitation?”

“I want a commitment,” I said, reminding him. “Therapy.”

“Therapy,” he said, sighing. He’d had a package messengered over to him while we were in the shower, and he unzipped it now, pulling out one of his suits for tomorrow and hanging it in my closet. It looked crazy hanging there in my tiny little closet, this elegant, expensive suit that was probably worth more than my rent.

“Why are we sleeping here when you have an amazing apartment?” I asked as he slipped into bed next to me, his legs tangling with mine as he pulled my naked body close to his.

“Because I like being here with you, in your space, knowing you’re comfortable.”

“Is that it? Or is it that you’re uncomfortable being at your place?”

He stiffened behind me. “I suppose that’s something we’ll be exploring in therapy,” he said drily.

“I suppose so.” If he thought I was going to let him off the hook, or contradict him, he was wrong. I laced my fingers with his, dragging the fingertips of my other hand up his strong forearm, enjoying the feel of his tan skin, the soft hair, the strength of his corded muscles.

“Landon?”

“Yes?”

“There’s one more thing. That Paisley said.”

He stayed silent, waiting.

“She said your father was doing something inappropriate at the Benedict Center. She said that Abigail told her that before she died.” The silence stretched between us as I remembered what else Paisley had said. That the Sheers were loyal to each other above everything else.

“I’ll look into it,” Landon said.

He pulled me close, enveloping me with his body.

I waited for him to say something else.

But he didn’t.

And after a while, I fell asleep.

* * *

Someone pounding on the door to my apartment woke me three hours later, at around 4 am, and at first, I thought it must have been Emma, that she’d forgotten her key.

But the pounding was way louder than anything Emma would have done, and if one of us ever forgot our key, we always called the other.

I groped for my cell phone.

I did have a text from her, saying that she was saying out for the night, that she’d see me in the morning.

“Stay here,” Landon growled.

He was up and out of bed, pulling on a pair of sweatpants that he’d taken from the things he’d had delivered the night before.

I pulled on my own t-shirt and pajama pants, ignoring his warning to stay foot, and followed him down the hall.

“Landon!” a voice on the other side of the door yelled. “Fucking open up!”

“Jesus,” Landon said, annoyed as he opened the door.

Conner Sheer stood in my hallway, his blond hair mussed, a tight white t-shirt encasing his built upper body.

Behind him stood my sister, chewing on her thumbnail and looking nervous.

“Where the fuck have you been?” Conner demanded.

“Right here,” Landon said, sighing.

“I’ve been trying to call you for the past two hours. Thank fucking God Violet had the idea you might be here, or else I’d still be trying to get in touch with you.”

“I had my phone off,” Landon said, and I realized he’d done that for me, that he hadn’t wanted anything to interrupt out time together.

“I didn’t know you were back from Paris,” I said to Violet.

“We just landed,” she said.

“I didn’t even now you were coming back.”

She glanced quickly at Conner, and I got the idea that he hadn’t wanted her to tell me. But why not? Why the hell would Conner care if I knew my sister was back or not? The same feeling of unease that I always got when Conner Sheer was around skittered up my back.

“Now that you’re here,” Landon said. “What is so important that it couldn’t wait until morning?”

“It’s Dad,” Conner said, sounding like maybe he was almost glad to be delivering such shocking news. “He’s sick.”

“What do you mean, he’s sick?” Landon’s voice was impassive, but he’d taken my hand, his own hand tightening around mine.

“His kidneys,” Conner said. “He’s at the hospital and he needs us. We have to go now.”

* * *

The four of us piled into a black limo, the same one that Conner and Violet had taken over to our house.

My sister was seated opposite me, dressed in a black leather jacket and slouchy grey pants. Her hair hung limp around her shoulders in loose waves, as if it had been crimped in the recent past but had lost its curl. Her eyes had dark circles under them, as if perhaps she’d forgotten to wash off her makeup, or maybe she’d been crying.

She avoided eye contact with me, instead looking down at her phone, scrolling through social media apps.

“Why the hell didn’t the hospital call me?” Landon demanded as the driver sped toward Midtown. Either the driver had been told to get there as soon as possible, or he was one of Conner’s drivers and always drove like a crazy person. Either way, it was making me nervous.

“I’m listed as dad’s emergency contact,” Conner said.

“Since when?”

Conner shrugged.

“How bad is it?’

“Bad,” Conner said, and for the first time, I saw something like fear and sadness cross his face. “He’s probably going to need a transplant.”

“Jesus,” Landon said, scrubbing at his face.

I texted Violet, thinking that maybe she’d be more honest with me over text.

You okay?

She texted me back, her fingers flying over her keyboard. Fine. Just worried.

Has Victor been sick for a while? I wrote.

I think off and on. But Conner seems really scared, so it might be serious this time. I’m worried.

I tried not to get annoyed at my sister for her concern for Victor Sheer, a man who was obviously dangerous, a man she was so desperate to impress. It was fucked up the way that Violet was acting, like getting in with the Sheer family was like getting in with royalty or something, like getting a gun pointed to your back and roughed up was just a slight hazing ritual instead of a crime.

The limo pulled up in front of the hospital, and we all piled out of the car.

“Hey, Conner?” I said as we got closer. “I know this probably isn’t the best time, but do you know if your father mentioned anything to you about something going on at the Benedict Center? I talked to Paisley tonight and –”

Conner whirled around. “You did what?”

“Aven!” Landon admonished sharply.

But fuck that.

“I talked to Paisley tonight,” I said, looking Conner right in the eye. If my sister wasn’t going to stand up to him, then I would. “She said that Abigail told her that your father was involved in something inappropriate at The Benedict Center, that it might have something to do with her murder.”

“Aven, for fuck’s sake!” Landon said.

“Landon,” Conner said slowly. “What the fuck is she talking about?”

“Just what she said,” Landon said, his hand tightening around mine in a show of solidarity, obviously deciding that if I was going to go there, he was going to be on my side. “She talked to Paisley. Paisley told her that Dad might have been doing something fucked up at the center.”

Conner took a step toward Landon. “You keep her out of this,” he said. “You have no idea what you’re fucking talking about. Dad is sick, Landon. He needs our help, not some bitch getting up in our business.”

Landon dropped my hand, and I knew what was going to happen. He was going to punch Conner. I could see it, his fingers tightening into a fist.

But before he could, the door to the hospital swooshed open, and a tall man in a white hospital coat stepped outside.

It took me a second to realize he was a doctor, not just an orderly or a front desk attendant.

“Conner, Landon,” the man said, nodding at both of them. I guessed when you were rich you were given preferential treatment at the hospital and were on a first name basis with the doctor.

“Martin,” Conner said, nodding. “How is he doing?”

“Not well. Your father is going to need a kidney transplant.”

“Fine,” Conner said. “I’ll get tested.”

The doctor sighed. “We need a blood relative,” he said. “And with both you and your brother being adopted, he’ll have to go on the donor list until a kidney becomes available.”

“How long will that take?” Landon asked.

“There’s no telling.”

Conner pushed forward. “It’s fine,” he said. “I’ll get tested.”

“But – “ the doctor started.

“It’s fine,” Conner said, staring Landon right in the eye as he made his next statement. “I’m not adopted. I’m his real son.”