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His smile broadened. “Bridget. Look at you! Feels like it’s been forever.”
It had been a year, but I didn’t intend to admit I remembered. Instead, I simply smiled. “What are you doing on the stoop? You didn’t call or text first. You could have come inside. You literally have access to keys.”
He shook his head. “I didn’t know if you’d be sleeping. I was going to call in an hour, but I figured if you came home from somewhere else in the meantime, I’d catch you here.”
“I happened to look out the window and noticed you. What’s going on?” My father hadn’t assigned security to me in six months. Layla still needed it, because the crazies were obsessed with her, but Hope and I had been released. Since I no longer posed for any blogs or anything, I was free to be my own person. Much as I preferred it, I did miss occasionally seeing him. “Is something wrong?”
He shook his head fast.Too fast?“No. I’m sorry. Your father asked me to come get you since I was nearby. He wants me to bring you to the boat he has docked in New Jersey. He’s rather insistent that you come now, but if you have a final or something, I can tell him it’s not happening and stall for time.”
“You would do that?” I was shocked. My father paid Michael, so technically he owed loyalty to my father, not me.
“He can’t just summon you. You’re a grown woman with a life, I’m sure. So are you? Busy?”
I sighed. “I’m not, but I need to pack up my stuff. I’m done with finals as of earlier. I was just…putting off coming home. Um, yes, it’ll take me two hours to pack, if you wanted to send someone back to get me.”
Michael wasn’t going to sit on my stoop for the next two hours.
“Do you want help?” He looked upward, toward the dorm.
I smirked at him. “No offense, Michael, but I don’t think I want you packing up my undergarments.”
He ran a hand through his hair, stretching afterward, but I saw his smile.
“Maybe not. Yeah…okay. I’ll be back in two hours.”
“You’re coming back yourself? You’re not sending someone else?” I cocked a brow, surprised.
He pointed at his chest and grinned at me, a wide, unassuming mirth that seemed almost boyish for the serious, steady Michael. He replied, “You’re stuck with me, I’m afraid. See you in a bit, Bridget.”
Stuck with him?As if.
My hands were sweaty, and I needed to check on my deodorant. I would be alone in a car with Michael and just looking at him made me hot. I’d always admired his physical form—who wouldn’t?—but this was something quite different. I had no choice, though, and I knew it. My father had called me to him, so I had to go. He paid for my tuition. I didn’t want to lose my life, not when I was just starting to build it.
Michael liked different music than me. I was a pop music person, and he definitely preferred harder rock. Still, he was fun and kept the conversation light most of the ride to Jersey. He told me stories about when he was in the Army and about some of the places he’d seen in the world.
For a moment, I pretended I wasn’t a job to him.The beautiful women he datesmust feel this way in the car with him. What kind of car was it? I’d been so zoned out with nerves, I’d hardly noticed. Some kind of SUV? We drove quickly down the Jersey turnpike together, and I let my mind wander with fantasies.
“So, um, Layla and Kit are getting serious I think,” I told him. I wondered if he knew about it already. How much of our lives did he actually know about? Layla still needed protection, so Michael might know more than I did. My sisters and I kept a text chain going—Hope started it. We mostly talked about boys theywere dating. Sometimes I told them about a test I took or a paper I wrote, but they didn’t know about my projects.
It was too much to explain.
He frowned. “Are you a big fan of Kit?”
I really wasn’t, but I hesitated admitting it aloud. “Is this a vault? Like, you’re never going to tell anyone?”
He stared at me for a second before turning his gaze back to the road. “You can trust me. I won’t tell anyone what you tell me unless someone I’m protecting is going to be hurt or die.”
I supposed that was fair, and it meant he’d keep this secret easily. “It’s just petty. I…I wouldn’t want to hurt Layla.”I might as well just say it, at this point. “Kit seems empty to me. Like, he’s a shell of a person and not nearly good enough for my sister.”
He nodded. “I agree, one hundred percent. I’m sort of hoping that it’s one of those relationships that just fizzles away on its own.”
At least I wasn’t alone about that. Hope didn’t seem thrilled about him, either, but we’d never admit it to each other. One thing we Radfords were good at—pretending to be okay with each other’s bad decisions. We took so much constant criticism from my father and the world in general, we, the three Redheads, as they called us, just smiled at each other’s decisions. If they thought I was doing something wrong, they wouldn’t tell me, either.
The thought made me pause.What might they think I amdoing wrong? What wouldn’t they tell me?
“What about you? Are you dating?” He tilted his head and pulled off the highway. Had we really been driving for almost three and a half hours? I hardly noticed. It was like he put a spell around me.Wow. What would my sisters think of this?
I nodded. “Sure. Here and there. I just ended it with someone. He was…boring.” It felt mean to say it, but that didn’t make it less true.
