Page 138 of Hide and Keep

“We shall,” I manage to get out with a straight face before taking the smallest sip in history.

My father appears, Mallory’s father not a moment later, then the four of us get a picture together as well.

Despite the flashes nearly blinding me, I seek out Crue. Unfortunately, he’s nowhere to be found.

Damn it. Where’d he go now?

“Would you care to accompany me outside?” Mallory asks me. I’m assuming anyway. I’m not paying him the least bit of attention, not while my bodyguard is missing.Again.

“Um, actually. I’m feeling a bit—”

Another thump to my hip that’s a bit too hard to be coincidence.

“You wouldn’t refuse me in my time of need, would you?”

Time of need? He seems needy, all right.

I glance at our fathers, the hope on their faces palpable. Could they be any more obvious?

I attempt to keep the sarcasm from my voice as I ask Mallory, “What exactly are you in need of?”

His thin lips spread.

Letting him lead me away, all I can think of is Crue.

Look for me.

“Someone needs to cut my mother off. She’s already on her second rosé of the evening,” Mallory says as soon as we’re outside.

This is what he needed? To complain about his mother’s drinking? Two rosés isn’t bad at all. Our fathers are probably on their third or fourth whiskeys by now.

His hand glides down my back and settles on my ass, then he asks, “You don’t drink rosé, do you?”

“Not really,” I mutter with a half turn to try to get him off me.

I assumed there’d be people out here, too, but we’re all alone.

Mallory pulls me closer, my cheek in his rough grasp.

“Where’s yours, by the way?”

“My drink?” He’s the one who took it out of my hands on our way out here.

“No, your mother.”

He’s heard so much about me but doesn’t know my mother’s dead?

“Martha’s Vineyard,” I say because that’s where we were. Since her body was never recovered, maybe she’s still there.

“I didn’t realize anyone still went there. It’s so overrun with commoners.”

By anyone, he means people like us, the elites.

“They do.” At least they did. A lot can change in five years. “My mother spent every summer there. We’d go visit her the last weekend of August before bringing her home.”

“Your father has the right idea. Ship the missus off for the summer so he can have free run on the mainland.”

It wasn’t his decision. It was my mother’s. She chose to be away from both of us, just like she chose death over life. And my father had free run anyway. They all do.

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