Page 14 of Selling Innocence

After wasting as much time as I could, I ventured into the hallway. I half-expected to find Tor there, leaning against the wall. I’d woken a few times during the night, and each time, when I’d rolled over and glanced toward the door, I’d found him seated in the chair, his golden eyes locked on me.

Had he stayed up the whole night or did he just sleep so lightly that any movement from me woke him?

I sighed, wishing the note had included directions. From what little I’d seen last night, this house was huge.

I tried to recall the night before, the direction we’d gone, but I’d mostly stared at the floor, too afraid to look directly at Tor or to do anything wrong.

Still, as I searched my memories, I was pretty sure we’d gone left down a long hallway with closed doors.

Large houses weren’t new to me, didn’t make me uncomfortable. I didn’t prefer that, but I at least was used to it.

I passed by lots of closed doors, the house oddly silent.

When I’d lived in places of this size, we always had people around. We had cooks, cleaners, security and staff, all waiting to rush in with anything we might have needed.

It made me slightly less comfortable, the entire house feeling abandoned.

Then again, if it was abandoned, I’d be free, right?

Just as that thought hit me, a door opened, and a familiar man stepped into the hallway in front of me.

Char’s hair was wet, making the red darker and more burgundy. A drop of water ran down his neck, soaking into the neckline of his plain black T-shirt. He narrowed his eyes when he spotted me, forcing me to stop short. “Are you trying to escape?”

I shook my head, grasping the front of the shirt I wore, bunching it in my hands to keep from shaking.

“Then why are you wandering around without an escort?”

“There was a note telling me to come to the living room,” I said.

“You aren’t anywhere near the living room.”

“Well, no one drew me a map.”

He lifted one of his dark eyebrows. Was that his natural hair color? Does it matter?

Char clicked his tongue, then jerked his head in the direction I’d come from. “Follow me.”

“You’re going to help me?”

“I’m going to help myself. If you get turned around anymore, you’ll never make it to the living room, and that’ll waste my time. Let’s go.” Char walked past me as though I were nothing but a nuisance to him.

It made me feel like I had back home, back before Nem had returned. How often had my father done the same? Treated me like I was just a bother he was forced to deal with? Other than the Quad, the security had done the same. The boarding schools my father had paid had treated me no differently.

I was just a problem for everyone.

Even Nem and the others…

They all had to do so much to watch over me, and even if they never acted like it were a problem, it didn’t make me feel any better.

Just once, I wanted to stand on my own. I didn’t want other people hiding things from me, thinking I needed to be protected.

However, a lifetime of trying so hard to do well, to get noticed for being good kept me silent as I followed him, swallowing down everything I wanted to say.

Instead, I took notice of the house’s layout. Most mansions were set up in a fairly standard way, with the ground floor for public spaces and entertaining and the upper floors for living. With houses as large as this one, they didn’t put all the bedrooms together. They were made for different extended families to stay together, thus were made up of wings.

Which meant I must have wandered into the wing Char used rather than finding my way to the stairs?

And of all the people I could have ended up around, it had to be him?

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