“Parrish,” Tess begins, stepping forward, her heels loud on the marble floors, but her inglorious stepson isn’t done with his rant. Instead, he gets up, too, moving so close to me that I can smell him again. I hate that he smells like laundry detergent and clovers with just a hint of citrus, something lemony and fresh.
He spins his milk-free phone around in his tattooed hand as he leans in toward me.
“No, you can’t go outside and ride your bike because Mia. And you can’t spend the night at a friend’s house because Mia. And you can’t live your fucking life because some girl you don’t even know got kidnapped from daycare a million years ago.”
“Parrish, that’s enough!” Tess shouts, her voice harsh and cold and deadly serious.
Without even meaning to, my hand comes up and I crack Parrish across the face. My palm, where it touches him, burns like the sunburst tattoos on the backs of his hands. As soon as he lifts his own hand to his cheek and smirks at me, I know I’ve fallen right into whatever game it is that he’s playing.
“Mia—Dakota,” Tess corrects, stepping between us. She puts her hand on my shoulder, like she thinks I might actually go for Parrish or something. “Parrish was way out of line, no doubt, and I don’t know how you were raised, but we do not resort to physical violence in this house.”
My eyes flick to hers, and I can’t help it, even though I hate these people and I don’t care what they think, and I want to go home … her words hurt. Actually, they cut me like a knife, making my already fragile heart bleed.
“Parrish, get your uniform,” Tess says after a moment, letting out a long sigh as she exchanges a look with Paul. “We’ll drop you off at the academy on the way to breakfast.”
“Are you kidding me?” I whisper, trying not to lose my temper. Maxine calls me a Red Hot—sweet and spicy in a single bite. I really do attempt to be nice and give people the benefit of the doubt, but when I blow up, I fucking lose it. That’s what he wants, I think as Parrish starts to turn away toward the front entry and the curving staircase, triumph clear in his brown gaze. He thinks he’s won, and if I don’t find a way to flip this situation, he’ll be right about that. Choking down my pride, I phrase my next sentence carefully. “Tess—” Not good enough. “Mom,” I start, trying out the word and seeing her eyes widen in surprise. Now that gives Parrish pause, and he flicks his attention back to me with another scowl building on his pretty lips. “You said we were going to breakfast as a family. This is my first official day here, and I …” My courage runs out, and the words just stop, but I think I’ve done enough.
“Oh, you’re right,” Tess says, scrubbing her hands over her face as Henry continues to cling to her leg, Kimber gapes at me, and Paul moves across the room to put his arm around his wife’s shoulders. “I’m so used to spoiling you, Parrish, but things are different now. You and Chasm can meet up some other time, and I’ve already asked your teachers to email home any missing schoolwork.”
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Parrish snaps, turning back around with fury blazing in his eyes. “This girl, this stranger, shows up here and all of a sudden, we’re supposed to rewrite our entire lives to fit hers?” The look he gives me cuts bone-deep. “By the way,” he leans in to whisper against my ear before I get a chance to pull back. “Looking at you in the daylight, I lied. You’re a two, not a three.”
My hands clench into fists as I resist the urge to shove him back against the wall. My ears are ringing so loudly that I can barely hear Paul when he barks out a reprimand to his son. Doesn’t have much effect though; Parrish just shrugs his shoulders, turns, and saunters down the hall as he slips in a pair of earbuds.
I act like I have no idea what he just said and keep my lips pressed tightly together. It’s pretty obvious at this point that nobody in this family is on my side. Back home—at my real home—everybody was. And I was on theirs.
Despite being a colossal fucking asshole, Parrish was right about one thing: we are strangers, and I have a feeling we’ll never be anything more than that.
I don’t expect the limousine. I mean, I really don’t expect it. Yes, I knew Tess and Paul were wealthy, but like, I thought they were upper middle-class wealthy, not like celebrity wealthy or tech mogul wealthy. Or maybe the white stretch limo is just a rental, I don’t know.
Either way, back home, when we need to seat eight people in a car, we drive my grandmother’s navy-blue minivan with the green side door. Someone backed into it once at the mall, and so my grandma used her insurance check to have the door replaced, but didn’t bother with a new paint job. She put the rest of the money into Maxine’s college fund instead.
Somehow, I end up sitting next to Parrish, our legs pressed precariously close together as the car climbs the steep hill behind the house, leading away from the water and toward the small town of Medina. It’s a Seattle suburb, on the opposite shore of Lake Washington, and home to gazillionaires like Bezos and Gates.
It’s pretty much one of the last places on earth I want to be right now, especially wearing a t-shirt that literally says Eat the Rich on it. I pick at the shirt with my fingertips as I glance in Parrish’s direction. He’s wearing a hoodie, so I guess I’m okay on the dress code situation. But still … telling absurdly wealthy people that I think their wealth is scraped off the backs of the poor is not a game I want to play today.
“Did you see the reporters?” Amelia asks, turning around to peer out the rear window of the car. “There were hundreds of them!”
I cringe a little, but she isn’t wrong. Once again, there was a horde of reporters just outside the property gates, cameras rolling, flashes exploding against the blacked-out windows. It’s why I scrambled into the back of the car so quickly and ended up sitting next to Parrish. He barely looks at me, staring down at his phone and typing out angry messages that I can’t read because he angles the screen away from me.
Instead, I lean back and stare down at my own phone, pretending like I’m just as engrossed in it as everyone else. Tess stares at me while pretending she’s doing anything but gazing at me in desperation and wonder, but everyone else in that car, they’re absorbed in phone la-la land the same as Parrish.
I find it a little weird, a little cold and impersonal, but I decide to use it to my advantage.
Tell us what’s going on! We miss you!
I smile at Sally’s text, and then frown again as I scroll through the dozens of pictures that Nevaeh’s posted today. She has a terrible habit of chronicling every single thing she consumes—granola bars, cans of soda, yesterday’s pizza leftovers. Mixed into all of that, there’s a selfie of her and Ryan snuggled up in the hallway together. Apparently, he asked her to be his date to the party and she agreed which sort of pisses me off because she knew I had a crush on him. She also knows you’re never coming back, so it doesn’t matter for shit.
I turn my phone off and stare out the window.
If I were ever curious what the first level of Dante’s hell might look like, well, I’ve found it.
“So, Dakota,” Paul says, drawing my attention away from depressing thoughts and over to his chiseled face. He’s clearly had work done, but probably from another surgeon of his caliber. I’ll admit, he has a strong chin and high cheekbones, masculine without looking Neanderthal. My eyes flick briefly back in Parrish’s direction as I trace the family resemblance in his face.