“Thanks.” I swallow the hurt and helplessness that lodge in my throat when I think about Mama. “Anyway, my father’s really protective now. This will probably get me grounded for weeks.”
Man. Way to sound like a twelve-year-old in front of the finest man you’ve ever encountered in real life.
“Grounded?” His dark eyebrows sky rocket. “Exactly how old is the Girl Who Chases Stars?”
Well, so much for the short-lived not-flirtation we’ve been enjoying. He’s probably like us. Someone behind bars who shouldn’t be. I seriously doubt he wants messing around with an underage girl to land him here for good.
Smart guy.
Resigned, I drag out the one word I know will shut this down. “Seventeen.”
3
Maxim
Seven-fucking-teen?
She’s jailbait. And I’m literally already in jail.
While I’ve been wondering if it would be too awkward now that we’re both out of handcuffs to ask her out, she’s been sitting over there completely underage.
Shit and double shit. I’d be arrested again for the things I was imagining while she sat across from me. She doesn’t look seventeen. Someone should pop a warning label on this girl.
It’s not her appearance. It’s the things she said at the protest. It’s the gravity in her eyes when she looks at you. I don’t know how to name the color of her eyes—have no idea what I should call them. No way are they just gray. They are silver eyes. Not just the color, but the metal. Tough and tried and smelted beyond her years into this indescribable hue. Metal and mettle.
“You’re, um . . . very mature for your age,” I finally manage, surreptitiously inserting an extra inch between us on the bench.
“My godmother says I’m an old soul.”
At least something is of age.
Jesus, the girl’s not even a freshman in college and I’m getting my master’s. I may be a lot of things, but a perv isn’t one of them, at least under typical circumstances.
The Girl Who Chases Stars is not typical circumstances. She is atypical. Unusual. File this under “won’t find another like this one.” I bet those high school idiots have no idea how to handle her. A part of me really hopes they don’t.
“It’s not fair,” she says, tilting her head slightly and sending a river of dark, pin-straight hair swinging behind her. “You know both of my names, and I don’t know yours. I’ve literally been calling you by your T-shirt in my head for the last hour.”
I hesitate, hopefully not long enough for her to notice. I’ll never see this girl again. Hell, I probably won’t see any of the people in this holding cell again, but they’ve left a crater-like impression on me. Her most of all. I’m ashamed of my last name—ashamed of my father and how he’s like every other entitled son of a bitch who has stolen from them, disregarded their rights, and diminished their humanity. Cade is a name that opens doors and closes deals, but I want nothing to do with it today.
“Maxim.”
“Like the Gladiator movie?”
“That was Maximus.”
“Still. It means ‘the greatest,’ right? That’s a lot to live up to.”
“Let’s just say my parents had high hopes.”
“Had?” she probes, those indefinably gray eyes searching my face. This kid is so not a kid.
She’s a kid, asshole. Remember that or get comfortable behind bars.
“I think I’m kind of a disappointment,” I admit, forcing my mouth into a casual grin at the sympathy in her eyes. “It’s okay. They’ve disappointed me, too. It’s a family trait.”
“I’m sure they’re proud of you,” she insists. “I mean, if my kid traveled from California to Arizona protesting for indigenous people, I’d make bumper stickers with his face on them.”
Yeah, about that . . .
“Lennix Moon,” one of the cops who booked us yells. He opens the barred door and gestures for her to go out into the corridor.
“Well, that’s me.” She laughs and casts an if-I’m-not-mistaken wistful glance my way.
“Yet another name?”
“Middle name.” She stands up and smooths the golden skirt. “Lennix Moon Hunter. Quite a mouthful, huh?”
I’m still scrubbing my mind of the dirty thoughts I had about her mouth before I found out she was seventeen. Out of the question.
“Well goodbye and good luck.” I extend my hand for a parting handshake.
When she takes it, her fingers feel small and sure in mine. Our skin conducts a charge between our palms. That volt hits me somewhere between my chest and my stomach. I wonder if I’m imagining it, but when I look up, her eyes fix to that one point of connection. She glances up, a mixture of curiosity and pleasure right there to match mine.
Except she’s seven-fucking-teen, and there is no place for pleasure or even more than the vaguest curiosity between her and me.
I drop her hand abruptly, breaking the electric link.
“Nice meeting you, Lennix Moon.”
Our stare holds an extra second. I dropped her hand, broke that connection, but it doesn’t seem to matter. There is still something linking us. She seems to know it, to feel it, too, because even with the cop waiting at the open cell door, even with her father out front presumably ready to ground her, she’s still standing here looking at me, a question mark hanging in the charged air.
“Lennix, your daddy’s waiting.” It’s the guy who was talking with us earlier. He’s glaring a narrow-eyed warning my way.
I drop my glance to the holding cell’s dirty cement floor.
“Oh, yeah,” Lennix says and clears her throat. “Guess I better go. I’ll, uh, see you later, Mr. Paul.”
I don’t look up again, but watch from beneath lowered lids as her moccasins take her out of the cell and away. It feels like I missed something or never had something that I’m sure would have been good. I know it’s unreasonable because I met her no more than an hour ago. We’ve had one conversation. Some people leave an impression. Lennix Moon Hunter has left more than an impression. She’s left her mark on me.
And it’s shaped like a star.
“I’m prepared to forgive you.”
These are the first words my father has spoken since he “collected” me from the police station in town. I’m glad the other protesters had all left by the time the officer came and called for “Cade.” Even though I’ll never see them again, I didn’t want that name clinging to me like slime. When I climb into the back of the Escalade, my father sits with folded arms and a ticking jaw, his head turned away from me. His outrage fills the air-conditioned space. His fury and mine silently wrangle as we head toward the airfield.
I ignore his ridiculous opening line, and swallow my irritation and indignation to respond. “Are you flying me back to Berkeley? I have shit to do.”
The frosty look on his face cools even a few degrees more. It’s his subzero face.
“What the hell were you thinking?” he demands, the anger he’s checked roaring, snapping in my face with teeth. “Do you have any idea how much damage you could have done? What a black eye it would be for Cade Energy if anyone had realized who you were? That my own son protested my pipeline?”