Page 45 of Hide and Keep

“Good luck with that.” I chuckle while retrieving my own phone to check Paris’s location. Paris is…gone, already at the party. She didn’t even text me to ask what was taking so long, she just left.

What if something happened to me? Would she even give a shit?

Would anybody?

“Is that your ride?” Crue’s voice makes me jump, and now I’m the one hiding my screen.

“Yes. I told him to circle the block. As soon as you get tired reading about your future kids and pass out, I’ll meet him at the bottom of the driveway so we can finally begin our night of debauchery.”

“How do you get over the gate?”

“I fly over it,” I lie.

Obviously, Crue hasn’t explored the outer perimeter of the Munreaux estate yet. Yeah, near the driveway we have tall wrought iron fencing to give the illusion of security, but like a lot of residents around here, we use the property’s original stone walls as our border. Hand-built by farmers back in the late 1700s and early 1800s, stone walls aren’t very high, only like two and a half feet tall usually. Covered in moss and algae nowadays, they’re historic and charming, which New Englanders love. Robert Frost even wrote his poem “Mending Wall” about a New England stone wall.

Yawning, I notice how dirty my hands are and flip them over to find a bunch of filth caked under my nails, too.

“Do you have anything in here I can use to clean my nails?”

“No, but I’m sure your room does.” He doesn’t even look up from his phone, his forehead creased as he reads.

Using my pinky nail, I start digging out the grime, then drop it right onto Crue’s floormats. Crue gives me a nasty side-eye but doesn’t say a word. We sit in silence for I don’t know how long, me picking my nails, him reading, until somewhere around finger eight or nine, my eyelids prove too heavy to lift again.

Something’s burning my eyes. I crack one, instantly blinded by a ray of sunlight streaming through the passenger window of Crue’s Bronco directly onto my face.Ow.

I roll my head to the left and find Crue fast asleep in the driver’s seat, one hand still around his phone, the other holding…mine. He’s holding my hand?

Both my eyes snap open.

Crue’s holding my hand. Purposely. It’s not like “oops, my hand fell on top of yours.” No. His arm is stretched over the center console, his forearm resting on my thigh, while his hand visibly envelops mine.

I don’t know when he took hold of my hand. Or why. But I’m not rushing to get out of it. I’ve never held a boy’s hand before.

Technically, he’s holding mine because his is so much bigger but I’ve never had a boy hold my hand before either. It feels nice.

What a way to wake up. With the plumpest set of lips I’ve ever seen, or felt, contradicting the unforgiving jawline thatappears to be clenched even during complete relaxation, Crue’s the perfect male specimen. Under his crewneck is a full sleeve of tattoos that had me losing my train of thought more than once in the pool yesterday. That arm is too far away from me to explore right now but the phone he’s holding with it is aimed my way with his thumb on the glass, keeping the screen lit up…and revealing what he was looking at before drifting off.

“Bodyguard Requirements” is in bold letters.

Has he never been a bodyguard before?

Below that’s a list. There are a lot, making most of the words too small to make out but I do see “high stamina, excellent combat and defense skills, and strong communication skills” at the bottom. In parentheses, directly under that last one, is “do not engage with Protectee unless prompted.”

All Crue’s done is engage with me so far.

The hand on mine tightens suddenly as my novice bodyguard sits up in a rush, asking, “What’s wrong?”

I immediately throw his hand and arm off me, anger filling my voice. “Other than you molesting me in my sleep? Nothing. Can’t you keep your filthy hands off me for—”

“You’re the one that had filthy hands.”

Had?

I stop to assess my hands. They’re clean, even the nails. Didn’t I pass out before getting to all of them?

I did. So how are they clean? And my hands? How’d they magically get clean without any water in here?

“Did you clean my hands?”

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