Page 79 of Hide and Keep

“You don’t know shit about my stamina.”

“Is that why you’re sitting in my bedroom? Alone. In the dark. So you can prove your stamina to me?”

He’s not here to rape me. He’s one of the good guys. Unfortunately, I have to treat him like a bad one, otherwise…

Otherwise.

I light one of the candles with thick drips down the sides, not only to see better but also because beeswax candles cleanse the air by releasing natural ions and Crue’s negative energy is practically palpable. I’m not sure I would’ve sensed him so quickly if it wasn’t.

“No. I’m in here for other reasons.”

“Which are?”

Using the low light, I sweep my dresser’s contents, searching for anything embarrassing. I already hid the mask from Hide and Keep, so there shouldn’t be anything incriminating out. Clusters of crystals, more candles, several sets of tarot cards,my most recently pulled oracle cards, a stack of books, a moss-covered fairy door. The door itself isn’t embarrassing but the story behind it is. I used to take it out to the woods and pretend it opened to other places. I’d mentally escape to fantastical worlds with kind princes, skies full of dragons, oceans you can go right up to and touch. I don’t know why I kept it. Maybe as a sign of hope? Looking at it now, it only makes me sad. And yes, a little embarrassed. Not because I used to have an active imagination, but because I ever believed there was a way out of the world I was born into.

“To figure out what’s in that building that made you threaten me.”

Now my humor escapes me. It wasn’t just a threat.

“How are your toes, by the way?”

I turn back around to face him, my palms on the dresser behind me, the candle to my side flickering out a nice hazy glow, enough to highlight Crue…and the object in his possession.

Any trace of humor evaporates in an instant, that tiny dancer on my chest turning to a hundred-pound boulder, making it difficult to draw in air.

“Where did you find that?” I choke out.

Crue doesn’t blink. “It’s a conservatory. A butterfly conservatory.”

“Where. Did. You. Find.That?”

“Oh, this?” My bodyguard lifts my sketchbook off his lap and regards it like he forgot it was even there. “It was lying around.”

“It was under my bed,” I snap.

He nods. “It was lying around…” His head stops moving. “Under your bed.”

I was worried about a childish fairy door, meanwhile my floor held one of my worst secrets of all. He was never supposed to make it inside this room. The lock on my door—

The lock.

“How’d you get in here?”

“Same way you do on the nights you sneak out. Through the window.”

I…never considered that. I never considered the possibility of someone other than me coming through my window.

I’m lucky it was only Crue.

Although, this feels like a different kind of invasion. That’smyintellectual property and I did not consent to him so much as touching it, let alone…seeing it. Did he look inside? He must’ve to know about the butterfly atrium.

He looked inside. But how much?

“I thought you’d be happy finding me in here?”

He saw it all. Oh my fucking Goddess. Hesaw.

“Why’s that?” I ask, playing dumber than dumb.

---