Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Two

‘Huh.'

Lydia stood in front of Catherine's craft room, her head cocked all the way to one side. ‘I wouldn't have thought your grandmother would be into that kind of stuff.'

‘What kind of stuff?'

‘The door, it's Haint blue, right?' she said. ‘We use it to ward away spirits. It's supposed to represent water or something, Gullah legend says spirits can't cross running water.'

‘I have no idea,' I admitted. ‘Who are the Gullah?'

‘Hello, girls.'

We both jumped at the sound of Catherine's voice. Lydia managed to land in a perfect curtsey while I managed to slip on the freshly polished floor and skid face first into the wall. My grandmother calmly placed her handbag on the console table and removed her sunglasses, to make sure we both appreciated the full weight of her glare.

‘Good afternoon, Miss Catherine,' Lydia sang. ‘Emily was giving me a tour of your beautiful home. I do believe Bell House is the most gorgeous abode in all of Georgia.'

‘Good afternoon to you, Lydia,' Catherine replied. ‘Thank you for your most gracious compliment. You laid it on a little too thick but still, I appreciate it.'

Lydia clicked her tongue and shot her with double-finger guns and from the look on Catherine's face, I was worried the gesture was just as likely to kill her as a real gun.

‘We're going out for a while,' I said, ducking my head to hide the mini makeover Lydia had insisted I didn't need but ‘wouldn't be the worst thing in the world' but there was no way to hide the fact we'd swapped outfits. Sometimes you had to be cruel to be kind, said Lydia, after pronouncing each and every thing in my closet ‘mid at best'.

‘If that's all right with you,' Lydia added, digging her hands into the pockets of my denim shorts while I yanked up the straps of her dress. ‘Ma'am.'

The smallest muscles around Catherine's eyes contracted as though she was trying to read the fine print.

‘I thought perhaps you might join me while I catch up on my correspondence this afternoon,' she said. ‘And I've made a reservation at The Olde Pink House for supper.'

A dismissive snort escaped the back of Lydia's throat, quickly turning into a cough.

‘Love that place,' she said when Catherine gave her a death stare. ‘So trad-core.'

‘That sounds really … fun?' I replied, panicking at the idea of missing my meeting with Wyn. ‘But I already promised Lydia that I would …'

My words faded away and I stared at my friend. What had I promised her? Thankfully, at least one of us was prepared.

‘This is all my fault,' Lydia said, drowning every word in sincerity. ‘I was so hoping to introduce Emily to some of my friends in the Junior League. Do you think I might be able to steal her away for just an hour or so?'

‘You aren't old enough to be a member of the Junior League,' Catherine countered and Lydia gave a loud, disappointed sigh.

‘Not yet, gosh darn it. But I still try to help out with their projects when I can. You're never too young to take an interest in your community, isn't that right, Em?'

‘Oh, yes,' I agreed, nodding so hard I was surprised my head didn't snap off my shoulders. ‘It's something I'm very passionate about. Community.'

The lies rolled off Lydia's tongue like water off a duck's back but I couldn't have looked guiltier if I'd tried. Catherine zeroed in on me, hooking one arm of her sunglasses over her bottom lip as she focused her gaze.

‘Very well,' she said and I almost passed out from the shock. ‘Emily, I shall expect you home and ready for supper by six p.m. sharp. I would very much like to discuss everything that will be coming up in the next few weeks.'

‘Oh. Oh ,' I replied, realizing what she meant right as Lydia bundled me out the door. ‘Yes, sure, totally. I'll be ready.'

‘And if it's at all possible,' Catherine called as we sprinted through the front garden and hurtled out the gate, ‘it would be wonderful to see you wearing your own clothes.'

‘Two questions,' I panted as we looped around the block then back across Lafayette Square to meet Wyn. ‘What is a Junior League and what is The Olde Pink House?'

‘The Junior League is a delightful organization for delightful young ladies who volunteer to do delightful things for the community,' Lydia replied before forcing herself to gag. ‘And The Olde Pink House is a restaurant. It's old, it's pink, grandmothers love it. Personally, I think it's a total tourist trap but don't sleep on the jalape?o poppers. Also, just so Miss Catherine knows, that is one of my coolest outfits. This dress is vintage, it's almost as old as her.'

‘I thought you said it was from Target,' I said, pulling the tiny tank down over my hips.

‘ Vintage Target. And Em, don't worry about your dad's password. We'll figure it out eventually.'

I wished I could be as certain as she was. We'd tried a million different things, only giving up the search when we had to leave or be late. At least my dad had the presence of mind not to put a limit on the number of password attempts, but I suspected that had more to do with him regularly forgetting it himself than the vague possibility of me, lying on his old bedroom floor in Savannah, trying to hack into the computer myself.

But when it came to my list of things to worry about, my dad's laptop wasn't even in the top five. Right now, my priority was very clear. Across the street, I saw Wyn and Wyn saw me, and I had to hold my breath just to stop another rainbow from flashing across the sky.

‘Wow, that's him?' Lydia whistled as we crossed into the square. ‘No wonder you're in love. Is he even human?'

‘God, I hope so,' I murmured. He really was almost too beautiful. Without warning, Lydia marched straight up to him and punched him hard in the shoulder.

‘Hi, I'm Lydia Powell, Emily's friend,' she said with a killer smile. ‘Nice to meet you. If you hurt my girl, I'll ruin your life in ways you can't even imagine. Break her heart and they'll never find your body.'

‘Hi,' Wyn replied, looking from me to Lydia and back again with genuine and completely justified fear in his eyes. ‘I want to say it's nice to meet you because I was raised right but to tell you the truth, that was terrifying.'

She gave the pair of us a thumbs-up. ‘Correct response. Stay scared, my friend. Now y'all have fun. Em, I'll talk to you later?'

‘She's only joking,' I told him as she jogged off across the square, definitely not on her way to volunteer with the Junior League and definitely not joking.

‘As threats go, it felt legit,' Wyn replied. ‘But she doesn't have anything to worry about.' He held out his hand, I took it in mine and the branches of our oak tree shimmied with happiness. ‘What's the plan for today?'

I gave him a look of disappointment. ‘Do you even need to ask?'

‘No, but I was being polite,' he answered with a grin. ‘Leopold's it is.'

‘I can't believe I spilled on Lydia's dress,' I groaned as we raced through the city streets, trying to outrun a chocolate ice cream stain. ‘She's going to kill me.'

‘No, she's going to kill me,' Wyn corrected. ‘I know it'll be my fault somehow. What I can't believe is how you managed to completely miss your mouth.'

‘It is your fault,' I exclaimed. ‘You made me laugh! If you hadn't pointed out that dog, we would still be sat by the river enjoying our ice cream.'

‘Was I supposed to let you go through life without seeing a dog in a tuxedo?' he replied with an incredulous look. ‘I could never be so cruel.'

‘That's true.' I slowed to a jog, pressing my hand into a burgeoning stitch. I was not a runner. More of a slow walk followed by a long sit down kind of a girl. ‘Where do you think he was going? He was very formal for a Monday afternoon?'

‘If you hadn't spilled your ice cream, maybe we could have asked. Good job I have a washer drier at my place.'

My heart did a somersault in my chest. Did I want to clean Lydia's dress? Yes. Did I want to see Wyn's apartment? Yes. Very much. But was I ready to see his place? That was a different question altogether. In the back of my mind, I saw Lydia lying on my bedroom floor with her notebook, crossing out what felt like our millionth password attempt.

You'll never find out if you don't try.

‘OK. Wow.'

I audibly gasped as we stepped inside a two-storey carriage house and Wyn unlocked the door to the first ground-floor apartment.

‘Really?' he laughed, closing the door behind us and hanging the keys on a hook. ‘What were you expecting?'

‘I don't know but not this.'

I hadn't given much thought to what Wyn's place might be like but if I'd had to guess, I would've said something closer to ‘dorm room' than Architectural Digest . Low ceilings gave the open plan space a close but cosy feeling, the walls were whitewashed, the floors wide wooden planks, and the light that streamed in through the windows was cool and inviting. At the other end of the room was a pair of French doors that revealed a tiny private courtyard. Next to the double doors was a desk covered in pens, pencils, and sketchbooks, his camera off to one side, and right next to the desk was his bed.

‘It's not usually this much of a mess,' he said, scooping up a hoodie and a pair of sweatpants from the sofa and draping them awkwardly over the back of his desk chair.

‘This is not a mess,' I replied, turning in disbelieving circles. ‘Believe me, I'm familiar with mess and this is not it.'

‘Thanks. I'm doing my best not to live like a total pig in case my folks decide to drop by,' he chuckled. ‘They own the building. My grandpa bought it back in the Seventies when regular people could still do things like that.'

When he told me he grew up in the mountains with a family full of artists, it didn't even occur to me that they might have money. If they owned the whole building, his family were definitely not a bunch of starving artists.

‘The washing machine is in the bathroom.' With one hand anxiously gripping the back of his neck, Wyn pointed at my dress. ‘You wanna …?'

‘Yes, I do,' I replied, tugging at the chocolatey fabric. ‘Um, do you have something I could borrow?'

He grabbed the hoodie again and held it up for approval.

‘Perfect.'

He held it out towards me, stretching his arm as far as it would go and I did the same, plucking it from his grasp without making contact. Five minutes ago, I'd wanted to be as close to him as physically possible but now we were here, alone in his place, my stomach was full of butterflies and not the magical kind. Outside in the world, we had some control over how people saw us, but this unplanned visit to his apartment left him laid bare. Wyn couldn't control my perception of him and I knew if our roles were reversed, I would feel vulnerable. It was beyond intimate, being this close to his clothes, his camera, the place where he slept. The whole apartment felt like an extension of him.

‘Em, I need to tell you something,' Wyn called as I slid into the bathroom. Thankfully, it was as impressively clean as the rest of his home, facewash, toothpaste and sunscreen on a shelf by the sink, shower gel and shampoo beside the bath. ‘Something I should have told you already.'

‘Tell me what?' I called back as I shucked off Lydia's dress, soaking the stain with laundry detergent before putting it in the machine. ‘That you're secretly the heir to the Leopold's fortune?'

‘Not quite.'

His hoodie drowned me, the arms flopped over my hands like a pair of glove puppets. The hood hung halfway down my back as I left the bathroom, the washing machine whirring into life behind the closed door. Wyn met me outside. The afternoon light shone brightly behind him, blacking out his features.

‘I'm not in Savannah for summer school,' he said. ‘I'm not even in summer school.'

‘What do you mean, you're not in summer school?' I replied, my fingers curling around the overlong sleeves. ‘Wyn, what are you talking about?'

‘I'm here looking for my brother. He's missing.'

Even though it was still very warm, the atmosphere turned frosty.

‘You should sit down.' He pointed in the general direction of the sofa, his eyes downcast. ‘I'll get you some water.'

‘I don't want any water,' I told him as I reached for the marble kitchen counter and held on tight to the sharp edge, something cold, something real. Something true. ‘I want you to tell me what's going on right now. You lied to me?'

Outside, the sun shifted and the light found his face, the tight, tense set of his jaw etched with gold and grim disappointment in his eyes. He sank, defeated, onto the end of his bed.

‘I'm not supposed to tell anyone,' he said, weaving his hands together and tightening his grip until his knuckles turned white. ‘If they find out, we'll both be in so much trouble.'

‘Find out what? Who's they?' I demanded, still clinging to the marble countertop. ‘What could be so bad it's got you this freaked out?'

The minimalist apartment seemed to grow smaller by the second, suddenly stark and bare. There were no plants anywhere. It was the first time I hadn't been able to see something green since arriving in Savannah and it felt wrong, like I couldn't breathe properly. On the bed, Wyn pushed his hair back, away from his face.

‘Cole came to town a couple of months ago,' he began, his downcast eyes on the floor. ‘He works for my mom, she sent him here on some project, something to do with the rental unit upstairs, I think, I don't know all the details. A couple of weeks ago, he stopped answering his phone, so Mom sent me down to check up on him. This is his place but when I got here, it was untouched. Like no one had set foot inside since the last tenants left, bed not slept in, no food in the refrigerator, nothing.'

‘Not a great sign,' I admitted. The solid marble counter creaked ominously in my hand. I loosened my grip before I accidentally snapped it in two. ‘Why did they send you? Why didn't your parents come looking for him?'

‘Dad doesn't get around so well, he busted his hip in a car accident a couple of years ago, and Mom …' He rubbed the palms of his hands down his thighs and exhaled heavily. ‘Mom is not big on answering questions. If she tells you to do something, you do it.'

He looked up at me, clearly upset. His face was red and blotchy, and his voice was strained, like he was having to force out every word.

‘Aside from the school stuff, everything else is true,' he insisted. ‘Mom didn't want anyone asking me difficult questions about why I was here so she said it was better to have an easy story to share. I wanted to tell you the truth but I couldn't.'

‘But you're telling me now,' I said. I wanted to trust him. I wanted to believe him, I needed to. But I couldn't, not just yet.

‘Just couldn't lie to you anymore. You're too important to me.' He shrugged and gave me a thin smile. ‘You're the only thing that makes sense when nothing else does. This should've been a simple errand, drive down here, kick Cole's ass for not calling our mom then hang out in Savannah for a few days. Cole's not great at keeping in touch, I figured he'd lost his phone again or met someone and gotten distracted—' He paused to shake his head at the irony of that statement. ‘But there's no trace of him, Em. I've been searching for two whole weeks, no one's seen him, no one remembers him, he's not on the security cameras. It's like he was never here in the first place.'

‘Are you sure he was?' I replied. ‘If he's that unreliable, maybe he bailed on his job altogether.'

‘Not even Cole would go against our mother.'

His eyes slowly worked their way up my body, lingering on my lips for a second, before finally meeting mine. ‘Something's wrong. Mom and Dad are freaking out, my grandpa is calling me around the clock, and I don't know what to do.'

A cloud passed over the sun and the whole apartment fell into shadow, white walls turning grey. So Wyn had a family secret he felt he couldn't share. That was hardly something I could hold against him.

‘I still don't understand why you didn't tell me,' I said. ‘Don't you trust me?'

‘I would trust you with my life,' he answered, standing abruptly. ‘But what if you'd told someone else, your grandmother or Lydia, and they went to the cops?'

‘Because that would be bad?'

‘Very bad. Cole has a record.' Wyn's words were flat and devoid of emotion. ‘And a violent temper.'

‘Then why did your mom send him here alone in the first place?' I asked, my heartbeat quickening in my chest.

‘Because Cole has a record and a violent temper,' he answered. ‘Whatever she sent him here to do, she thought that might be helpful.'

‘When you said your mom was an artist, are you sure you didn't mean mob boss?' I took another look around the apartment, searching for clues to the truth about his family. No horses heads or machine guns lying around but that didn't mean his parents weren't into something he knew nothing about. Parents, it turned out, were good at keeping secrets.

‘Em, I'm sorry,' he said, his voice low and husky. ‘I told you my family was complicated.'

He moved towards me slowly, digging one hand into his dark ash waves, and my toes curled inside my shoes as I watched and waited. ‘I would understand if you didn't want to see me again. I don't want to get you into any trouble.'

‘Believe me, I'm entirely capable of getting myself into trouble without your help,' I replied, shaking. ‘And you know there's nothing in the world you could say that would make me not want to see you again.'

When the caps of Wyn's boots touched the tips of my shoes, he stopped and waited for permission to cross the invisible barrier I'd put up between us. I placed my hand on his chest. Permission granted.

‘Every family has its secrets,' I whispered as he rested his forehead against mine. ‘There are things I haven't told you yet.'

‘But we're not our families, right?' he replied. ‘We shouldn't have to carry their burdens.'

‘We're not our families,' I agreed. His breath was warm on my lips and I felt a tingle of magic begin to spark under my skin. ‘We're just us, we belong to ourselves.'

‘And to each other,' Wyn murmured against my lips. ‘I'm yours, Emily. Forever.'

Any doubt in my mind disappeared the moment I kissed him. Tipping my head back, I pulled him down to me, hands lost in his hair, his mouth hot and firm against mine. My feet skidded out from under me as he pressed my body against the kitchen counter, but I didn't fall. Wyn held me so tight in his arms, I couldn't tell if I was standing or floating and I didn't care either way. It could've been raining fire outside for all I knew. The only real thing in this world was his kiss.

My whole body trembled with the force of my desire, a secret I'd kept even from myself. Wyn was mine and I was his and nothing made more sense than to stay here with him until the end of time. I was silent as his lips drew a line along my jawbone and down to the hollow of my throat, testing and tasting, until I heard myself moan and guided his mouth back to mine. It was uncontrollable, inevitable, and I liked it. Slowly at first then all at once, the apartment filled with light lavender smoke, hazy and beautiful. Wyn's eyes were closed, blissfully oblivious to the white flames that began to flicker all around us. Or maybe, I was the only one who could see them. When I reached out to touch them, there was no heat, just a pure and perfect fire, protecting us both from anything that could ever hope to harm us, and as we staggered over to his bed, collapsing in a tangle of limbs, everything became crystal clear.

As long as we were together, nothing could touch us.