Page 199 of Hide and Keep

Everybody wants a billionaire father…until they realize he’ll do anything to stay that way.

I’m coming out of my last class when I see Crue holding out another matcha lemonade for me. For some reason, he has one for himself, too. He’s made his dislike for the clones’ preferred drink known, so why would he subject himself to the torture of drinking one?

I snatch it out of his hand without a word.

We walk down the hall side by side, neither of us drinking from our cups.

Paris and Brad hesitate at the stairwell, giving me lingering looks.

“Your clones are watching,” Crue points out. “Aren’t you gonna take a sip for them?”

With an internal roll of my eyes, I fit the lid to my lips, pretending to drink the green liquid.

“That’s it?”

I side-eye my bodyguard.

“You didn’t notice anything different in it?”

“Did you poison it or something?”

“Then how would I get paid?”

A garbage can in my sight, I head right for it, but Crue’s hand on my elbow stops me in my tracks.

“I’m joking. Just try it.”

“I did. It tastes the same.”

“Really? You’re gonna pull that shit again?”

“What shit?”

“Faking it.”

It’s all I ever do!The words churn inside me like an unspoken tornado.

It takes immense restraint to keep them in, so much I don’t dare move anything else, especially not my arm to lift the cup to my mouth.

Crue eyes the lemonade. “Take a drink, little bat.”

If I am a bat, I’m the vampire bat. They seek out the same prey night after night based on its breathing pattern while it’s sleeping. Both agile and lightweight, they can drink blood for up to thirty minutes without even waking up the source. I don’t sneak into Crue’s room at night to drink his blood, but I’m in there for longer than thirty minutes and I haven’t woken him up yet.

“Did you come in it?”

“And rob you of getting to drink that straight from the source? No. Drink up.”

“If you poison me, I’m so coming back to haunt you, too.”

“As long as you’re a succubus,” he mutters, reminding me he gave me his consent to sit on his face while he’s asleep.

Unable to respond with anything remotely appropriate for our current surroundings, I tap his cup with mine in cheers before swallowing a tiny—

Wait. This isn’t matcha lemonade. It’s not lemonade at all.

I study the side of the transparent cup. It looks like the same lemonade I get all the time—a milky green. But it tastes like a chai latte… Not just any chai latte but a chai latte with almond milk and three pumps of pumpkin brown sugar. That drink’s tan though. How is that even possible?

“What is this?”

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