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I need fifteen hundred dollars—maybe more—to hire the company that will push my name down in the search rankings and scrub my reputation online. The guy I talked to when I called said that cases like mine can be more involved, which means a higher fee.
I don’t have a job. I had one in high school, but Dad says I’m better off concentrating on my schoolwork now. I have a hundred thousand dollars in a savings account—my share of the life-insurance settlement when my mom died from cancer when I was a baby—but until I’m twenty-one, I can’t touch it.
With no income and no credit history, I can’t get fifteen hundred dollars on a credit card without my dad cosigning on the application. I tried.
“Caroline?” West asks.
“What?”
He steps closer. “What’s this really about?”
And I blurt out the stupidest thing. “You don’t have to protect me. ”
Because I’m sick of it. Of being protected. Of needing to be.
“I’m not. ”
His eyes, though. When I meet his eyes, they’re blazing with the truth.
He is. He wants to.
“You know what the worst thing is?” I ask. “It’s knowing I was always stupid and sheltered and just … just useless. Everyone telling me I’m smart, like that’s so great and important. Going to a good college—oh, Caroline, how fantastic. But one bad thing happens to me, and I can’t even …”
I trail off, because I think I’m going to cry, and I’m too angry to give in to it.
West takes another step closer, and then he’s rubbing my arm. The flat of his palm lands against the back of my neck, over my hair, and he’s tipping me forward until my forehead rests against his chest.
“You’re not useless. ”
“No, seriously, I can’t—I need you to hear this, okay? Because the thing is—”
“Caroline, shut up. ”
The way he says it, though—it’s definitely the nicest anyone’s ever shut me up. And his rubbing hand comes around my back and presses me into him, and that’s nice, too. I can feel him breathing. I can smell his skin, feel my hair catching on the stubble underneath his chin.
It’s better here. I like it.
I like it too much. So much that I spend the longest possible span of time I can get away with savoring the heat of him, the weight of his hand on the back of my neck, the way his boot looks stuck between my flats. But then I have to ask. I have to.
“West?”
He makes a noise like hunh.
“Do you have a lot of money?”
I lift my forehead to ask him, which puts me in startlingly close range of his face. I’m close enough to see the frown begin at the downturned tips of his eyebrows and spread across his forehead.
Close enough to see his eyes go baffled. Then angry. Then blank.
His hand drops away from my neck. “Why are you asking me that?”
It’s too late not to say, but the butterflies in my stomach have turned to lead ingots, and I know this is all wrong. I know it is. But I don’t know why or how to get out of it. “I, uh … I need a loan. ”
He steps back. “What for?”
“Remember when I told you about that company that can clean up my reputation online?”
“You said it was expensive, so you’d have to tell your dad. ?
