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“Maybe we can meet someplace and talk?”
“Yeah. Tell me where. ”
I swing my legs off the bed to stand, but the headache hammers my head hard and fast. A sound of pain escapes my lips, and I wince because Isaiah had to hear it.
“What’s going on, Rachel?” Isaiah became very serious, very fast.
“Just a headache, I swear. So I was thinking we could meet at this coffee shop—”
He cuts me off. “You’re not driving if you’re hurting. ”
I lie back down as my eyesight doubles. With a touch to my iPod, music stops playing from the speakers. I strain to listen for any sound, and all that comes back is glorious silence.
What I’m about to do is wrong. So wrong. The exact opposite of everything my parents expect from me, and for that reason alone it feels right. “Would you like to come over?”
Chapter 37
Isaiah
THE GUARD LEANS OUT OF his little boxed-in brick house at the entrance to Rachel’s neighborhood and assesses me like I’m a serial killer broken out of death row. “Who did you say you want to see?”
“Rachel Young. ”
His hand falls to his hip as if he’s packing, but both the rent-a-cop and I know that the only thing he’s carrying is thirty additional pounds of beer and nachos in his stomach. “I think you have the wrong neighborhood, son. ”
Not in the mood for his games, I push redial on my cell and Rachel immediately answers, “Are you here?”
“At the gate. Do you mind informing your militia that I’m not here to rape and pillage?”
She sighs. “Put Rick on. ”
With his mouth set into a pissed-off line he takes my cell and turns his back to me. His whispered words have an edge t
o them and after a few seconds he hands me the phone back. The gate lifts in front of me, but my car remains idling next to him.
I glance at him from the corner of my eye. “Don’t tell her parents. ”
“Or what?” he asks.
“Or what is right. ” I place my foot on the clutch and shift into gear. It’s not a threat I’ll carry out, but it’s an empty one worth issuing to keep Rachel safe and happy.
Following the directions she texted, I wind my way past mansions the size of miniature castles with far more land between them than needed for a single family.
At the end of its very own road, Rachel’s house sits entirely illuminated against the night sky. It has white columns and white marble steps and what the fuck is she doing with me?
I drive around the front loop and kill the engine. Therapists, social workers, teachers. . . they’ve spent years looking down their noses at me, but they were hard-pressed to make me feel smaller than shit. Being here in front of Rachel’s, that’s accomplished what very few have been able to do.
I force myself out of the car, up the steps, and before I can ring the bell, the door swings open and Rachel greets me with a smile. “Hi. ”
She’s in sweatpants, a T-shirt, and her hair’s pulled up on top of her head with loose pieces falling around her face. Not an ounce of makeup covers her face and she’s barefoot. Each toe painted a mild form of red. Except for the dark circles under her eyes, I’ve never seen something so gorgeous in my life. “Hey. ”
Rachel sweeps her hand for me to enter, and I shove my hands into the pockets of my jeans when I step in. People have a fancy-ass name for this type of area of the house and because I’m not fancy-ass, I don’t know it. It’s a hallway that’s a room but is bigger than some of the foster homes I’ve lived in.
“I don’t think anyone will be home before eleven, but if you don’t mind, I think I’d like you to only stay an hour just in case. ”
“Going gangster with boundaries. I like it. ” The tease is there in my voice, but I can’t stop the sweep of the place. Huge-ass winding stairs. A skylight above me. Several double-doored rooms off to the sides and probably a whole other wing down that hallway straight in front of us.
Rachel tries to smooth out her hair, but the pieces only fall back to her shoulders. “Sorry about this. I know I should have tried to change, but. . . ”
