Page 46 of Roses, Pearls, and Hot Summer Nights
He kissed the end of my nose, as if to punctuate his ownership. “You will, actually. I already like knowing that we’ll sleep close together tonight, even if it is in different rooms, on different floors.”
Barrett tugged my hand, breaking me free of the hypnotism of Julian’s gaze. “Come on. I want to kiss her, too. I can’t do itwith Frank, the doorman, watching. Despite our willingness to share, I don’t want to even imagine what he could come up with as gossip, and this building would spread the news across the city faster than wildfire.”
I stared at him, surprised he so openly admitted he wanted to kiss me. I let Barrett lead me away, tempted by the promise of his lips.What a night.
13
When I turned the key to enter my apartment, Barrett followed me inside, shutting the door quietly behind him. I lifted an eyebrow in question, not sure of his intention. It was only ten o’clock, but I worried my aunt was sleeping—or worse, if her husband, my uncle, should actually be home. I didn’t want anyone catching me with Barrett inside the apartment so late.
He nodded toward my room, so I headed that way. If he wanted to walk me there before he would go, fine, whatever. We stepped inside, then when he still didn’t leave, I closed the door.
He stepped immediately closer. “Not ready to say goodnight, if that’s okay?” He said the words in a low voice, as if the confession was a secret for only me to hear.
He isn’t?I swallowed, not sure what he meant and not wanting to misinterpret him. “Um. What does that entail?”
Maybe he read my anxiety because he gave me a gentle smile before tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. “Listening to some music. Talking. I would never presume to do anything you didn’t want to do. You’re always safe with me in that way, I promise.”
I believed him, so I exhaled my tension on a shaky breath. Through everything else in the past few hours, I got a lot of chances to see who he really was as a person. If he promised he was safe—and I assumed we both meant physically—then I was. It was that easy.
My nerves required that I explain, though, so I said, “I would really like that, but I can’t get caught with you in here. Things will be even rougher on me if I get caught.” I shifted from foot to foot, unable to fully physically contain my worries any longer.
With a quick nod, he pushed my desk slightly in the way of the door. It wouldn’t stop it from opening entirely, but it would bang an alarm when someone breached the entryway. He also pushed my bed to bump against the barrier. “She can’t come in without you pushing this back now. If she gives you shit about it, say that you’re moving furniture to redecorate, and to give you a second. That will give me time to hide in the bathroom, if she even bothers to come in here tonight.”
My lips curled, because his idea actually struck me as kind of brilliant. “Thank you. I may do that every night moving forward, if I’m honest. I really like to be able to lock doors, but I can’t here, so that kind of—yeah—sucks.” I didn’t mention it messed with my overall sense of security and made it hard to sleep, but if I was entirely honest, I slept better knowing a locked door kept me away from the rest of the world.
“If I could figure out how to install a secret lock, for you I would.” He frowned, giving my arms a quick squeeze. “Let me think on it.”
I smiled at him, since the intention, at least, was really sweet. “Thank you.” Then I fidgeted with my fingers, not sure what else to say.
“Okay if I sit on your bed?” He asked. At my jerky nod, he sat, so I used the remains of my courage to sit next to him. Heslipped our fingers together, and my breath caught as he leaned us both back against the wall so that we stared up at the ceiling.
He said he wanted to talk, but he wasn’t saying a word, I realized, nor playing any music. “Barrett?” I finally asked, my nerves practically snapping like static. “What are you thinking about?”
He blinked, not seeming even remotely ill at ease then turned his head slightly to stare at me. “I’m trying to decide how to say what I want to tell you. I’m thinking about what your reaction might be, depending on different ways of wording it. It might just be easier to talk to you, right? Then again, why bother even bringing it up, since the moment you try to look any one of us up online, it’s the first hit? But you haven’t said anything, so …”
I cleared my throat, interrupting him. “I haven’t looked any of you up. That probably would’ve been smart. I never think about things like that, though. I try to stay uninvolved, unintrusive, despite the very public world we live in now. Maybe it makes it easier for me to disappear into the background? Anyway, I watch the people around me and they show me who they are, so why bother reading about their past? I never get to know anyone well enough for their past to really matter to me.” I smiled at him and confessed, “This is the most I’ve talked in years.”
Barrett stroked a finger down the side of my face and I shivered. I loved his touch, loved the tiny tingles of electricity just looking at him caused. He touched me in such a gentle and yet intimate way at the same time, and all without crossing any lines that could get me in trouble.
“When I was twelve, Phoenix was ten, and the twins were eleven. They told you our ages, right? I assumed Julian or Jeremy would have brought it up.” I nodded. Julian told me their ages on our first evening together. “When I was twelve, we were in the Hamptons, which isn’t unusual, since that’s wherewe spend every summer. Some vacations, too, come to think of it. Anyway, we were there, and in the summertime, my parents like to throw parties. Typically they held at least one big one, then toward the end of the season a small one. Usually, we weren’t invited to the smaller event, only attending the big one for everyone. For us, we kind of thought it was the grown up party, I guess.”
I blinked, finding the distinction interesting. “Why?” Despite the overall unimportance to his story, I wanted to know him and them more, and for some reason, it felt telling.
He shrugged, making my blanket shift slightly beneath us. “When we were little, it was easier for them to have fun if we weren’t around. I think a lot of adults are like that though, whether because of alcohol or adult activities. The important part is that their annual big party was for show, an almost performative celebration as evidence of their successes. Let all the neighbors, business associates, and important people see the family, so we wore stiff clothes and ate with napkins. Their second annual party involved less of a guest list, and I always assumed it was just their close friends.” He shrugged. “At the yearly big party, we had friends, about twelve other kids of different ages near our own. We loved it, because it was like we had friends, which was really important to all of us. We really looked forward to the big party every year.”
He shook his head and pain crossed his gaze. I squeezed his fingers. “You don’t have to tell me any of this if you don’t want to share. I promise, I won’t look you guys up. Like I said, the past doesn’t matter to me.”
“After tonight? You deserve to know what happened, even if the rest of the world doesn’t deserve to know our story. Look, I can’t tell you everything about my life, not yet, but this isn’t a secret. We can talk about this.”
I leaned my head against his shoulder. “Okay, but only if you promise the topic isn’t going to cause you any pain, because I feel like you hit your limit for tonight. If you’re willing to take my advice, you can just stop, no harm, no foul. Besides, I have secrets, too, and I don’t know if I’ll ever share them.” I smiled, happy to have my own secrets. “I think everyone does, and should, have their own secrets.
He took an audible breath, and I swiveled my head to look at him again. “Maybe someday we can trust each other like that, but some secrets can be weapons. Afterward, we can listen to music or watch something together, but first … We were all hanging out with the kids of my parents’ friends, but I wasn’t watching Phoenix. It’s not like it was my job specifically, but I felt like I was always responsible for him because he was smaller. All of them, actually.”
I scrunched up my nose—his logic only carried so much weight. “You were twelve and he was ten. Shouldn’t that kind of responsibility have fallen on adults?”
He shrugged the shoulder furthest from me, careful not to disturb my position, and said quietly, “I think I was born that way.” His voice sounded rough, like it hurt him to speak, so my brows furrowed. He paused a long second before he spoke again. “I had no choice. Regardless of who was actually responsible for him, Phoenix ran off with two other kids, not locals. We have some family and friends from Louisiana, and they were from there. All of them ran off, but they didn’t come back.”
I lifted my head. “I don’t understand.”
