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My jaw tightened and I fisted my hands down by my sides. I shook my head. “I’m not telling her. She can’t know. She’ll never let me do this if she knows. She won’t take it. Tenleigh, she—” I stopped talking. She’s fierce. She’s loyal. She’s a fighter. She smells like wildflowers and mixes mountain talk with SAT words. And she’s so unbelievably beautiful. But I wasn’t going to give this pig anything of Tenleigh. “She can’t know,” I finished.
“Relax. It was a joke, son.”
I stood there, unsmiling, letting him know I hadn’t found it funny.
“I’d prefer her not know anyway,” he continued. “Or anyone for that matter. I don’t want it getting out that the scholarship is transferrable, under any circumstances. So let’s keep this between you and me. You keep it quiet, you sign a contract to work for me, and the scholarship goes to her. You quit, you die, the scholarship is rescinded. Are we clear, son?”
Stop calling me “son,” you piece of shit. I’m the son of a man who worked himself to the bone, day in and day out, for the piddly salary you paid him. He went deep into the dark earth every day for his family, for pride, because he’d do anything to put food on the table and clothes on the backs of those he loved. That’s the blood I have coursing through my veins. I am not your son. I’m Daniel Barrett’s son. And I’ve never been more proud of that.
“We have a deal. I’ll work for you. I won’t tell her.”
“What are you going to do? How are you going to keep it from her?” he asked with interest.
“I’m going to break both our hearts.” My voice sounded dead even to my own ears.
He stood looking at me for another second as if I was some form of alien that had come down from a distant planet. Finally, he held out his hand. I walked forward and grasped it. We shook. It was done. I felt as if I’d just made a deal with the devil. And now I was going to hell.
Tenleigh stood in my doorway, moving her head from side to side. She opened her mouth once to speak, but then snapped it closed. “Can I come in?” she finally asked.
I hesitated. “Tenleigh, my house, it doesn’t look so nice.”
“None of our houses look nice.”
“I know, but what I mean—”
“Let me in, Ky.” Her voice was weak.
Shit. As I drew in a much-needed breath, I felt ashamed she would see what my place had become—or rather, what it had not. But it was time to own up to what I’d done. I moved aside and she passed in front of me. I shut the door and turned to her as she looked around. I never bought new furniture or a stove. The pipe still hung from the ceiling like a daily reminder of the life I never got to live. I never unpacked most of the boxes I’d packed almost four years ago. I still didn’t even have a bed. I slept on the floor in a pile of blankets, a couple space heaters nearby to keep me alive in the winter. There were containers sitting everywhere to catch the water that leaked from the roof.
But for all that I didn’t have, I had plenty of books—piled everywhere, all with little white slips of paper sticking out of them.
Tenleigh brought her hands up over her mouth as she looked around. “Why?” she started and then stopped, looking around some more. “Why are you living like this?” A tear slipped down her cheek.
“Don’t cry, Tenleigh.” I reached up and swiped the tear with my thumb, brushing it aside. “This is nothing to cry about. It’s my choice. And it wasn’t going to be forever…just until…”
“Just until what?” she whispered.
I ran my eyes over her features, her expression filled with sadness. “Just until I could come find you. Just until I left here to find you and beg you to forgive me. Wherever you were, that’s where I was going to go.”
She sucked in a big breath. “Oh my God. But I came back.” She started to cry. “I came back.”
I moved forward and wrapped my arms around her. I felt the wetness of her tears against my bare skin. “Shh, you came back to help kids who grew up just like us. It’s a good thing, Ten. It’s a heroic thing.”
She tipped her head back and looked up at me. “Why didn’t you come find me sooner, Ky. Why?”
I shook my head and looked out the window behind her. “Because I made a deal and I couldn’t break it. In order to transfer that scholarship to you, I signed a deal. If I broke the deal, you lost your scholarship. Truthfully, I don’t know if Edward really would have rescinded it if I quit. But I couldn’t risk it.”
