Broken Pretty Things by Amber Faye
Chapter 31
“Andrea.It’s so good to see you again.” Preston Rayne’s face is characteristically unreadable; he could be thrilled or he could be enraged at the sight of me. I wouldn’t ever be able to tell. He is sweeping past us in the foyer, and he juts his chin out at a short woman with a tight bun and an apron. “Please, make sure the young lady has what she needs.”
The short woman dips her head at me in a way that makes me deeply uncomfortable. “Come find me if you need anything,” she says.
“I’ve got it, Greta,” Gunnar says, shooting her a charming smile that actually makes her blush, and slipping his arm around my waist. Then he’s leading me to the wing his bedroom is in, my overnight bag slung over his shoulder.
I should never have broken in here. All it did was let Gunnar and Spencer know that I can get in and out of the mansion whenever I want — and that’s nothing but a bad thing.
“You have staff now,” I mutter, and he laughs, looking around and stopping at a door. He pushes it open and motions me inside. I stare at him. “I’m really staying here? In your house?”
“It’s safe,” he says.
“And this has nothing to do with any … expectations you might have, after the other night?” When I meet his gaze, he has the decency to let his smile fall away.
“No,” he says, a harsher edge to his voice. “This has to do with delaying JJ Waller’s bad decisions long enough so we can get him help, and you out of town.”
“Get him help. That sounds good.”
“Well, we’re working on it.” When I slip inside the guest bedroom, all pristine and neat with what looks like hotel art of roses lined up on the walls, Gunnar steps inside too, closing the door behind us. It’s early evening, and the sun still shines through the open curtains. “You wouldn’t recognize him.” His voice dips lower, almost conspiratorial. “He needs real help. I’m talking medication. Psych ward kind of help.” He makes himself at home, sitting on the end of the bed and leaning back on his hands. “If you won’t leave Torrent Bay, you’re gonna stay here until Ransom says it’s safe to leave.”
I kick off my shoes at the doorway and stretch. “Maybe it won’t be so bad to stay here,” I say, searching his expression and finding nothing. “Staff, cooks, no more rumors being fed to my mom.” I reach over and punch him in the shoulder at that. “My mom? What did you tell her?”
He rubs his shoulder. “I didn’t tell her anything. Larissa’s mom loves gossip more than she loves oxygen, you know that. We just let her continue to believe something she thought she found out.” He sucks in his cheeks for a second. “Maybe we did your parents a favor, telling them about you and Dimitri.”
“Oh, shut your whole face,” I say, raising my arms in the air and pacing across the room. “I’m so sick of this. I’m sick of hearing stuff about myself. Do you know what it’s like?”
He snorts. “You think people don’t talk about my family?”
I was sort of exaggerating anger earlier, but now it builds for real, so quickly I almost see literal flashes of red. “You think people talking about your family, your father’s money, your huge-ass house is the same as everything they’ve been saying about me? About my body? About what I want done to me?”
He has the decency to stand up and hold up his hands, palms out. “OK, I get it. I don’t want to get into it with you.” He pauses before heading to the door, though, and leans in closer to me. “Did you bring your box of …?” I punch his shoulder again. He laughs, grabs my waist, and kisses me on the top of the head before I can react, flailing away from him. “We’re gonna have fun.” He leaves the room and the door clicks shut behind him.
And then it locks.
* * *
I am lockedin Gunnar’s spare bedroom for an hour and a half. When he comes to open it again, I am so angry I could punch him in the face, but he is dressed nicely and smiling so widely that I pause before beginning my tirade.
“What the hell was that?” I say instead.
“For your own safety,” he says simply. “I asked you to trust me. Now, listen: I know I’ve done a lot of shit to you recently, but one thing I’m not going to subject you to is a Rayne family dinner.” He nods over to the bed. “I’ll have to lock the door again, but I’ll bring you up a plate in an hour. Is that cool?”
“No, it’s not cool, you asshole. Just tell me to stay in my room, or stay in the wing. What the hell is wrong—” He reaches out and squeezes my hand and I stop to look down, confused.
“Hey,” he says softly. “It’s OK. Trust me.”
I snatch my hand away. “No.”
He shrugs one shoulder. “Then get dressed for dinner.”
I stand in the middle of the room, looking over at my overnight bag. I don’t have fancy clothes. He looks ironed and lint-rolled and, well, kind of incredible. I look … not that. “What do I wear?” I gesture at my jeans, plain t-shirt and grey sweater.
“Wear that. My dad doesn’t care.”
I don’t think that’s true, and no, I most definitely do not trust him. I wonder if this is his plan, somehow, because I can’t figure out how I got here: to a place where I’m asking to be a part of a Rayne family dinner. I shrug off my sweater and pull out a floaty white blouse from my bag, smoothing it out and gesturing for him to turn around. One side of his mouth quirks.
“You want me to leave?” he asks. I can’t tell if he’s speaking so slowly and deliberately right now because we almost had sex, or because we both know if he steps outside of this bedroom, he’s going to lock the door again. It’s enraging, almost, that his tone of voice would be exactly the same either way.
“Fine.” I whip off my t-shirt, and stand in front of him in my flesh-colored bra, lined with simple lace. Nothing fancy, definitely not what you’d flash to a guy you were trying to fuck. But still, when his smile drops into something a little less in-control, it feels like a very, very tiny win.
“Is the cafeteria thing true?” he asks, so suddenly I raise my eyebrows.
“Yes,” I say, and pull the blouse over my head, straightening it at the hem.
“You really pulled off your shirt and showed the whole school your tits?”
I brush my hair out with my fingers and then fish around in my bag for a mascara wand and a compact. “Well, no.” He waits. I drag makeup over my lashes, and let him. “Not the whole school. You weren’t there.”
He shakes his head suddenly, like he’s trying to rid himself of some image. “That’s not like you.”
“I got sick of everybody taking ownership of me, and creating crazy stories I had no power over,” I say. “The thing about lies is, if enough people believe them, they’re absolutely indiscernible from the truth.”
He licks his lips. “Fuck dinner,” he says.
“What?”
“I don’t want to do dinner. Dad will want to quiz you about where you’ve been, about how we made up, about what’s been going on with us. He’ll want to introduce you to whatsherface.” He waves his hand away. I guess he means his dad’s new girlfriend, or fiancee, or wife — I have no idea. “I don’t want to deal with any of that.”
“Well, me neither, but you know I hate …” I rub my arms. “I hate being locked in places.”
He softens. “I know.” I know he knows. I know that’s why he’s doing it, at least on some level. No matter whether he’s starting to come around to ‘my version’ of the truth, a big part of him still isn’t sure what to believe. And he isn’t ready to stop being mad at me. Not fully, not yet. “What do you want to do instead? Will your dad be mad?”
“No,” he says simply. “I don’t really want you wandering around, looking through my dad’s shit. And I don’t want you wandering around ready to get snatched up by somebody.” He shoots me a toothy smile, but I don’t return it. “So I guess you’re stuck with me, if you don’t want to be locked in here.”
It’s hard to deny that snooping around a lot more while I’m here had crossed my mind. Of course it had.
“Or I could be locked in here with you.” He shrugs, and in the same motion pushes his hands inside his pockets. He chews his lower lip, and then smiles. And now I kind of wish I had brought my box.
“What about the piano?” I suggest, and it seems to surprise him enough that he drops the hungry expression he probably wasn’t even aware he had.
“Uh,” he says, and I love that I knocked him off-kilter a little. “Sure.”