AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I sighed. “He kissed me earlier today.”
Her eyes opened wide. “I’m sorry to be mean, but didn’t his mother just die?”
“Yeah, I mean, he and I had been talking about her. I guess you could say I was comforting him. Then I had to leave. I think he just got caught up in the moment. Ya know?”
“Then what happened?”
“Nothing. I left.”
“And now you wish you could talk to him?”
I turned to my side and faced her. “No. It’s Press I want to talk to.”
“Press? Why?” She shuddered.
I rolled to my back and stared up at the ceiling. “He’s not that bad. I mean, he’s not bad at all. He’s been so kind to me.”
“Are we talking about the same person? Lavery Barrett?”
I smiled. “He isn’t anything like I thought he was.”
“Brix is my cousin, and I love him, but he, Ridge, and Press have always been…”
“A lot older than us.”
Jada shook her head. “Even in their early twenties, they seemed like grumpy old men. Brix and Press especially.”
“Don’t forget Zin Oliver. He’s the grumpiest of them all.”
She shuddered again. “Grumpy is being too nice. Zin is an asshole.”
While, based on my interaction with Zin earlier today, I had to agree, the truth was the four of them were nothing like I’d always thought they were. Not that I knew them very well. The Avilas, Ridges, Barretts, and Olivers moved in different social circles than Jada and I did. Even though they were cousins, her family didn’t have as much money as the Avilas.
“It always seems like Press has an English stick up his ass. Beau does too, just not as bad. They weren’t even born there. They’re as much American as we are.”
“He’s been really good to me,” I said, wishing for the tenth or twentieth time since our call ended that I could talk to him again. “I feel so bad for him.”
“It is sad. I remember when my dad died. That’s still hard, and it’s been a few years.”
“Same here,” I said. However, Jada had been a lot closer to her father than I’d been to mine. Especially since he’d spent the years before he died in a coma. “I remember thinking that was the absolute worst time of my life.”
“I know. Kids at school were brutal.”
Now, though, I knew life could get so much worse. I’d never been more terrified than I was in that shipping container after having been abducted by human traffickers. And now, to think there was a person, someone I didn’t even know, who’d paid to have me kidnapped made me almost wretch. I shook my head, trying not to think about it, but how could I not? The same fear I’d felt then settled over me, suffocating me. I got off the bed and paced the room.
Jada sat up. “What’s going on?”
“Panic attack,” I said, trying to catch my breath.
“What can I do?”
I wanted to tell her to call Press. He, more than anyone, knew how to help me settle myself. “Seraphina,” I said instead, sitting on the bed, hoping my heart rate would go down.
“Be right back.” Jada raced out of the room and down the hallway to where my sister slept.
Seconds later, they both rushed in. Seraphina sat beside me, rubbing my back.
“Deep breaths,” she said, reaching up to brush my hair from my face. “Jada, please go get a glass of water.”
