Page 84

I have to let her go.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

June

“Oh, you know how I am.” I’m babbling, I know it, but this is the first time I’ve spoken to my sister since all this started. She deserves an explanation. I just wish I could come up with a good one for now. I do want to tell her the truth eventually, but I have to do that face-to-face. Plus, I really need to ease her into this whole thing.

“I know how you are?” She’s still crying, but somehow she manages to be mad at the same time. “You disappeared off the face of the earth! And now you’re just going to shrug and act like this kind of thing happens all the time?”

“I guess I shouldn’t travel alone anymore.” I hate hearing how upset she is. The tears she burst into as soon as she heard my voice when I called from the hotel. “You would’ve kept me from getting lost and losing my phone and . . . and hitchhiking,” I add, since I have to somehow explain how I wound up in LA when I was flying to Las Vegas originally.

“Did you hitchhike? Oh, June. Who even are you?”

“But I’m okay! I’m totally in one piece, no problems.” Thinking fast, I argue, “Though I did walk into the bathroom door this morning, so don’t be surprised when you see I’m a little bruised and swollen tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? You’re coming home tomorrow?”

“I thought I would show my face again, yeah,” I joke, though something tells me it doesn’t land. “I have a flight. I’ll need you to pick me up.”

“What’s the flight number? Which gate will I pick you up from?”

These are all good questions I don’t have an answer to. I shoot Adrian a panicked look, but, of course, he doesn’t know why. He can hear only my half of the conversation from the other side of the room, where he stands with his back against the closed door and his arms folded. He’s been acting kind of strange since we left the club, even for him.

“You know what? I don’t remember, but I’ll call you from the airport when I get there. Probably sometime in the afternoon?” I look toward Adrian, who nods. He already squared everything away over the phone with Sophia while I was in a scalding-hot shower. She agreed to lend me her jet.

Listen to me. She lent me her jet.

Emily huffs. “Why do you sound sketchy?”

“You’ve always been way too suspicious.”

“That’s the funny thing about me. When my sister goes missing without a trace and I don’t hear anything from her for weeks, I tend to be a little more skeptical.”

It’s amazing how she always ends up sounding like the big sister instead of me. “I’m sorry I worried you, and I love you. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay? I’ll call you as soon as I’m on the ground.” Maybe by then I’ll have a more suitable cover story. I can plot an entire book, but I haven’t been able to plot a plausible story to explain my disappearance. The truth is too fantastical to be believed, but why else could I have vanished without a trace that wouldn’t make her just as frightened?

“You better,” she warns in her thick, trembling voice.

Once I hang up, I fall flat back onto the bed to stare at the ceiling. “I feel like scum.”

“I doubt you could get any cleaner if you took another shower,” Adrian murmurs. “You were already in there for an hour the first time around.”

“I didn’t mean it that way.” Though I do still feel kind of scummy after being in that disgusting place with that disgusting man. “I meant more like I feel like scum for lying to my sister.”

“What would you rather do? Tell her the truth? What would that solve?”

I try to come up with a witty retort, I really do. The problem is, he’s right. Giving Emily and our parents the full story at this point would do nothing but ease my conscience. And it would open up a whole bunch of questions and worries much worse than anything they’re already dealing with. I would only be unburdening myself, and that’s selfish.

“I just wish . . .” The words die on my tongue, a silent ellipsis hanging in the air.

“You wish what?” I’m not looking at him, but I can feel him crossing the room.

I can’t say it out loud, and not only because I don’t want to be rude. It’s not really true, what was about to tumble from my lips a moment ago. I don’t really wish I had never met Adrian. Even though it would mean not putting my family through torture, I can’t honestly say I would pass up on the chance to meet him if I had had a choice.

He sits next to me, then leans over, propped up on his elbow so he can gaze down at me. I have never so wished I could read someone’s mind before. What could he be thinking? “I guess this is our last night together,” I whisper. If only my heart weren’t aching the way it is.

I have to convince myself not to imagine sadness in those sparkling emerald eyes. It’s not fair to him, or to me. “I guess it is,” he murmurs. “Life . . . life is going to be a lot quieter without you in it.”

That’s it? That’s the best he can do? I guess it is. I can’t ask more from him than he’s capable of. “Don’t pretend like there were no good times. Lots of them.”