Page 34 of Eye Candy

The truth is, was one message. A long wait before the next,You’re mine.

Even if I could’ve responded, there wasn’t anything to say to that. How alone I’d felt, even before he’d taken me and showed me the truth about my dad—that he was nothing but a power-hungry, wannabe politician who’d do whatever he could to boost his numbers—I’d felt so alone. I’d never known my mom. It’d always been just me and my dad.

But even then… it was just me. Always just me, and that got tiring, you know? Sometimes, you wanted to rely on someone else, even if just for a short while. Sometimes you wanted nothing more than to close your eyes and relax. I had Kelly, yes, but I didn’t really have her. We weren’t that close, even if I’d consider her my best friend. It was like the world wanted me to be alone.

And then he’d appeared out of the shadows of my closet and taken me, opened my eyes to the truth. I didn’t want to be alone. I wanted, more than anything, to belong to someone, to have someone who would do anything,anythingto protect me. Beyond everything I’d ever wanted in my life, I wanted someone to take a single look at me and decide:You’re mine.

And it just so happened that’s exactly what my Devil did… the timing was just suspect.

He didn’t message me again after that. I didn’t think he’d actually go in and try to hurt Fang; it was a warning for me not to get close to him. As I lay down, the realization hit me: he’d been watching us today, watching me, and that meant he was closer than I’d ever thought.

My Devil hadn’t abandoned me. He’d been watching me this whole time.

Chapter Twelve – Laina

I couldn’t hide my good mood the next few days. I worked out with Mike and Kieran, working on getting my stamina up. That night I’d received all those messages, I’d decided to keep them to myself. They were still on my phone, but I told not a single soul, knowing everyone would only freak out if I did, and what would be the use of that?

A knock on the exercise room door alerted us to someone else’s presence: Tessa. She stood wearing a light-colored blouse and a matching knee-length skirt near the door, a string of pearls around her neck. She wore simple, short heels with her brown hair pulled back and curled loosely. She smiled at Kieran, pretending as if Mike wasn’t there. “Can you give us a moment?”

Kieran glanced at me. He’d just traded spots with me on the treadmill—though he’d been running, while I had to turn the speed down quite a bit. I wasn’t at the running stage yet. Icould tell just by that quick look he didn’t want to go, but Tessa was his sister, the wife of his boss, so he had to.

“Yeah, sure,” he said, terse for perhaps the first time in his entire life. He wiped the sweat off his brow as he headed for the door.

Mike said nothing. The big guy was lifting some weights, but he’d set them down when Tessa had walked in. His hazel eyes flicked toward me, wordlessly asking if he should go, too. I gave him a short nod as I stopped the treadmill, and he left the room shortly after Kieran.

I was hopping off the treadmill when Tessa approached me. Her brown eyes were a lighter color than Kieran’s, more amber than pitch-black, and yet they felt so much colder. She studied me, my workout clothes, and my hair, which was currently tied up in a pony. Her mouth thinned into a line, and her gaze narrowed.

She wasn’t impressed by me, but that went both ways. I sure as hell would never start calling her mommy.

“How are you doing, Laina?” she asked, sounding like she didn’t give a shit. This was only her way of starting the conversation; we’d get to the true purpose of her visit soon enough.

“I’m fine,” I told her, and when I said that, her eyes fell to my left hand, but just for a fleeting moment. My jaw ground, but I gave her a smile all the same, not wanting her to see just how annoyed she made me.

“I’ve been meaning to have a little chat with you,” she went on, moving to stand beside the treadmill, whose belt had finally stopped moving. “I wanted to give you some time to get readjusted to the world after what you went through. Let me just say that I cannot imagine the horrors you lived throughthese last two years. For you to be standing here at all is something you should be proud of.”

I said not a word, wishing she’d get to the damned point already.

“Your father hasn’t wanted to say anything, but I think it needs to be said all the same. You are a Hawkins, and right now, you might be thinking you can do whatever you want, whenever you want, that we’ll let you because you’re nineteen.”

“What’s this about?” She needed to get to the point, and she needed to do it soon, otherwise I’d start to ignore her.

“Your father is running again for a second term as mayor. He’s going to announce it very soon. He’s done wonders for this city the last two years. He needs to win again. Now, he’s got friends in high places, it’s true, so they can help grease the wheels, so to speak—but that doesn’t mean you can go running off and make a fool of your father in the process. He will be a shoe-in with you at his side. The sympathy vote can go a long way.”

I didn’t know what came over me, what forced me to ask this next question, but it came out of me before I could think better of it. “Is that how he won last time? The sympathy vote?” All this time, I’d had a nagging suspicion that my dad or someone my dad worked with orchestrated my kidnapping to get him to win in a landslide. I’d had a lot of time to think about it while locked up in that room.

Tessa gave me a smile that told me all I needed to know. “If you help your father, if you help me, this family can go so much further than the mayor’s office.” She took a step closer to the treadmill, setting a perfectly-manicured hand on the arm grip nearest her. “With your father’s connections, the possibilities are endless.”

My brow furrowed. What was she saying? Did my dad’s political dreams go further than mayor? Since when?

“You need to shape up,” Tessa told me in no uncertain terms. “You need to be the traumatized, beautiful girl everyone thinks you should be. You need to stand by your father’s side in the coming days, show this city and the entire state, for that matter, exactly what it wants to see.”

Tessa turned her nose up at me. “Even if that’s not what you are, it’s how you need to act. You need to wash out that color and talk to the press. I’ve scheduled a press conference tomorrow. It’ll be your first official public appearance since your escape.”

A press conference? That was the last thing I wanted to do, and I told her that, “I don’t want to do any press conferences.” The only thing I wanted to do was live my life and figure out the truth of my kidnapping.

Talking to Tessa now, all of my suspicions had returned in full-force. I couldn’t trust anybody. Not my dad, and certainly not Tessa, who seemed to be more power-hungry than my dad.

“It doesn’t matter what you want,” she snapped. “Sometimes you’re forced to do things in life you don’t want to do. That’s just a part of life. We will spend the rest of the day together, going over what you’re going to say, how you’ll answer any questions, and what you will wear. I will help you wash out that hair tonight, bleach it myself if I have to. This is what’s going to happen from now on, Laina. Everything you do matters now.”

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