Page 53 of Necessary Cruelty

“This place is like the Addam’s Family mansion, I swear.” Jake rustles one of the sheets that cover all the furniture, even the bed. “I bet there are a dozen bedrooms in this place that nobody even uses.”

A strange note has entered Jake’s voice, as if he finds something personally insulting about this house. I want to ask him about the disgust in his tone. We’re alone, and Vin would never know.

But I decide I don’t want to know the answer.

“What do we have here?”

It’s only when Jake pushes a rusted metal wheelchair out of the shadows that I realize our mistake. This isn’t some random guest room.

This is Vin’s old bedroom, the one he slept in as a child because it’s located on the first floor.

We have to get out of here.

I yank at Jake’s arm, but he ignores me and pulls the wheelchair further out into the light. Dried leaves and petals are stuck in the spokes, crumbling to bits at our feet as the wheels turn.

That wheelchair is a relic from another life. Vin would kill us both if he found us here with it. Memories are long in a town like this, but they don’t beat carefully cultivated lies. Few people know that Vin didn’t spend his elementary years away at boarding school, but closed up inside Cortland Manor like the beast from a fairytale. No pictures exist from that time in his life, at least none I’ve ever seen.

He erased those years so completely that it’s as if they never existed.

There is no telling what he might do to keep the past hidden.

“This is creepy as hell,” Jake says with a wide grin. “You think some old relative died in here, or something?”

I loop my arm through his again and try to lead him back toward the door, but he resists. He turns to face me with a wide smile on his face. “Even with the creepy aesthetics, I’m glad we finally have the chance to be alone.”

Maybe it’s that my only other significant interaction with the opposite sex has been with a sociopath, but it hadn’t occurred to me that there was an ulterior motive to Jake’s invitation to get some air.

I’ve gone off alone with a boy that I barely know.

I was so concerned with Vin, I didn’t stop to think that I might be throwing myself out of the frying pan and into an open flame.

So stupid.

Jake stares down at me with an eager smile and expectation in his gaze. If he was a bad guy, there had been plenty of opportunity for him to prove it before now. But a shiver of awareness runs down my spine as he steps closer, eating up the small amount of space separating us.

Before I can convey to him that we should be anywhere but here right now, he bends his head and kisses me.

It’s a nice kiss, just enough pressure and not too much tongue. Pleasant like floating on your back in the ocean on a day when the waves are calm and the sky is clear. He tastes like sunshine, salt air and all things purely good.

But I still feel a stab of disappointment.

Jake is barely a glowing ember next to Vin’s raging inferno.

The kiss is good, but not even close to being the same.

He pulls away to look down at me with that same half-smile on his face, but now uncertainty lingers in his gaze. “Are you okay?”

“She’s probably just bored. That was about as hot as sponge-bathing your grandmother.”

My heart stops.

Vin steps into the dark room, his cold gaze lowering the already frigid temperature by several degrees. The door slams shut behind him, and he watches us like a fox who has cornered shivering rabbits in the grass.

To his credit, Jake shifts to stand in front of me as if his body isn’t something Vin would tear apart to get to me. “Look, man. I don’t want a problem.”

“You should have learned a long time ago that you don’t always get what you want.” Vin’s gaze shifts to the rusted wheelchair behind me, and his eyes narrow before flashing to my face. If looks could kill, I’d be dead and buried. “But today is your lucky day, because I’m giving you a choice. You can go out this door — alone — or I can send you out through the window.”

Jake’s shoulders tense. “And Zaya?”

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