After we hugged, I moved to the side, letting her in. She sat the bag down on the counter. “What are you up to, Grant?”
“Uh,” I cut in before he could say anything. They both looked at me. “Can I talk to you for a minute, Grant? Privately?”
We went upstairs. Down below, Heather was settling in, arranging the plastic containers, probably full homemade trail mix. I leaned in close to Grant.
“Heather can’t know about the stalking situation,” I whispered.
“I got the security equipment from their house.”
“But Zaid doesn’t know the details right?” The look on his face explained it all. I pinched my brow. “There’s a chance thatshedoesn’t know the details. Or she would have already assaulted me with lectures about being safe.”
“There’s a chance Zaid told her,” Grant said.
“If that’s the case, let him tell her. But not right now,” I begged. “Not us.” I hated to be doing this, asking Grant to lie to Heather for me, but it was the only thing that I could do right then. “I don’t want her to worry about me anymore. She’s already worried enough.”
My heart sank at the confession. It was more honesty than I was used to divulging. Grant’s brown eyes studied me, trying to read everything I wasn’t saying.
“It’s routine security,” he offered, his eyes twinkling in the light. “A past time for me. No reason for it.” My shoulders loosened.Thank you, Grant.I sighed.
“Routine security. Got it,” I said.
We both went down the stairs, and Heather handed me a container. Cashews, yogurt chips, and sour candies. She had made it for me.
“I call it the Hazy Special,” she said. I took a handful. “How’s the process?”
I took a deep breath. At least she hadn’t called it the word I had come to hate. “It’s only been a couple of days,” I said. “I’ve been trying to get used to living in a real home. Not a cell or a hospital room.”
She nodded, but her gaze was searching, like she was trying to find meaning beyond my words. She wasn’t listening. “What about going to school?” she asked. I cringed. School? She was trying for that again? “There’s a local community college. Experimental College, or something. Las Vegas University too, right?” She turned to Grant, and he nodded from the kitchen. “You could take a few classes. See how it goes. Less responsibility than a job, but still work, you know?”
I rolled my eyes and emptied the rest of the trail mix back into the container.
“You can pick whatever classes you want,” she added. “You might even like it.”
“You mean that if I did it,youmight like it.”
“Hazel.”
I crossed my arms. Her tone when she said my name like that always irritated me. She stretched it like it was three syllables long, with an inflection that I imagine was worse than a guilt-tripping mother. After all, Heather had whole-heartedly taken the place of ours.
“You do realize that to get a degree, you have to take specific classes, right?” I asked. “You can’t sign up for six semesters of underwater basket weaving and expect them to give you a BA.”
She shrugged. “Is a degree the goal?”
What was the point if it wasn’t?
“Whatever,” I sighed. “Isn’t that what you wanted from me? A goal?”
“Hey, let’s forget about it for now,” she said. She rubbed my back. “I have exciting news.” She leaned in closer to me. “Don’t tell anyone,” she bobbed her head in Grant’s direction, “but I found an engagement ring. And a collar!”
My jaw dropped. “Are you kidding me?”
“I know, right?” she said. She was beaming, brighter than a damn firework. “He doesn’t know that I saw it, but knowing him, he might have wanted me to find it there. He’s too careful to let me find it by accident. Anyway, he hasn’t proposed yet, but I think he’ll wait until—”
“You’re getting engaged to my abductor?”
“Hazel,” she tilted her head at me. There it was again,thatvoice grating against my nerves. “He did it to protect you.”
“He planned to kill me. Until you came along.”
