Billionaires, Bad Boys, and Alpha Males (18 page)

Deena folded her arms.
 
“First of all, my name is Deena, not
Dee.
 
Second of all, it is my
business, because Mom said it is.”

“How so?”

“You’d understand if you came downstairs
and talked to Mom.”

“Fine.
 
Whatever.”
 
Caelyn grabbed her cell phone off the
bed and followed her sister downstairs to the kitchen.

Her parents had changed into their work
clothes—her father was wearing khaki’s and a button-down shirt.
 
He was the manager at a large real
estate office about forty-five minutes from home.

Her mother was dressed in a formal
suit.
 
Her hair and makeup were done
and she looked pretty, but her frown lines were showing.
 
She was a director of public relations
of Bristol Farms, a food and beverage company that she’d been working at for
more than ten years.
 
She’d started
in the manufacturing plant and worked her way up to a very high office
position, something she was extremely proud of.

 
She was putting scrambled eggs and toast
on a plate for Caelyn and setting it at her usual spot at the table.

“She didn’t want to come down but I told
her she had to,” Deena announced, as she sat and picked up a fork.

Caelyn shot her sister a look but didn’t
bother responding.
 
She sat down.

“We’re glad you could join us,” her
father said, looking appraisingly at her.
 
He seemed about to say something else, then decided against it, and just
bit into his toast.

Her mother wasn’t even looking at
her.
 

Everyone started eating, and it was all
too quiet and awkward.

Finally Deena sighed.
 
“Can I tell her?”

“Tell me what?” Caelyn said.
 
She’d barely touched her food—her
appetite was nonexistent.

“That I’m in charge of you now,” Deena
said, grinning.

“What’s she talking about?” Caelyn asked,
looking at her parents, hoping they would dismiss Deena’s comment.
 
But they didn’t.

Instead, her mother picked up a napkin
and toyed with it idly.
 
“Your
father and I have to go to work, so obviously we can’t be here for you.
 
But your sister—“

“My little sister,” Caelyn corrected.

“I’m going to be seventeen,” Deena said.

“In eight months.”

Caelyn’s mother silenced them both with a
look.
 
“Your sister has agreed to
take a few days off from school so she can be with you.”

“Why?
 
I don’t need her here with me.”

“Because you’re acting crazy,” Deena
said.

“I don’t need a babysitter.
 
I’m fine.”

Her father straightened the right cuff of
his shirt, wiping a piece of lint from the material.
 
“We just want to be sure.”

Caelyn tried to ignore the beaming face
of her sister, who was eating this up like it was a chocolate sundae.
  

“We’re all just worried about your mental
health,” Deena said, fixing her expression to appear genuinely concerned.
 

Caelyn opened her mouth to try and talk
sense to her mother and father, but just before the words came out, her phone
started ringing.
 
She looked down at
the caller ID and saw the same number that Elijah had called from last
night.
 
“Shit,” she said.

“Caelyn, language please!” her mother
cried.

She stood up hastily.
 
“Sorry, I just—I have to take
this.”

As she left the table, Caelyn saw her
parents exchanging apprehensive looks.

She ignored them, walking out of the kitchen
and into the hallway.
 
Then she
answered her cell.

First came the automatic recording,
asking if she would accept the call from the county jail, to which she replied
“yes.”

Her pulse was racing again, and she
licked her lips.
 

“Hello?” Elijah’s voice came through the
line, sounding somewhat distant, crackling with static.
 

“Hi,” she said, smiling just from hearing
him.

“I got another chance, so I thought I’d
try you again.
 
I wanted to tell you
that I’ll probably be back in Massachusetts tonight.
 
Not sure if they’ll let me use the phone
when I get there or not.”

“Really?” she said.
 
“I’m back already.”

“You flew back to Boston?
 
You’re back at school?”

“Ummm…not exactly.”

Suddenly, from behind her, Deena’s voice
called out aggressively.
 
“Who are you
talking to, Caelyn?”

She turned around and waved her younger
sister away.
 
Deena didn’t move.

Elijah had said something else, but she
hadn’t heard him because of Deena’s antics.
 
“What did you say?” Caelyn asked him,
her voice strained now.

He tried again.
 
“I said—“

“Caelyn, who is that?” Deena broke
in.
 
“Mom and Dad are waiting for
you.
 
You’re acting crazy, being all
secretive.”

Caelyn put the phone to her chest.
 
“Deena, you better get the hell away
from me, I swear.
 
I need to take
this call.”

“Who are you talking to?
 
What are you trying to hide from your
family?”

“GO.”
 
Caelyn pointed down the hallway, but
Deena just continued standing there, her arms folded.

Caelyn put the phone back to her
ear.
 
“Hey,” she said.
 
“I didn’t hear what you said, I got
interrupted.”

There was a silence.
 
“I’ve been thinking a lot about you,” he
said.

She smiled.
 
She wanted to say it back, but then she
caught sight of Deena’s face out of the corner of her eye.
 
“Thanks,” she said.
 
“Me too,” she added lamely.

“Is this a bad time?” Elijah asked.
 
“I’m kind of getting a weird vibe from
you right now.”
 
His voice was
suddenly guarded, suspicious.

“Well, it’s just that I was eating
breakfast with my family and—“

“Oh, right.
 
I get it,” he interrupted.

“It’s not a great time to talk,” she
finished.
  
She realized too
late that it had come out wrong.
 
With her sister watching and listening, she’d gotten stressed and hadn’t
felt free to be honest with him.

“Listen, I understand,” he said.
 
“You’re back home with your family, back
to real life.
 
You can’t have some
felon calling you and bothering you.”

She almost said his name, but then
realized she couldn’t risk having Deena know who he was.
 
“It’s not like that,” she said, feeling
totally lost.
 
Confused.

“Don’t worry about it.
 
I won’t bug you anymore, Caelyn.
 
You go back to your real life, and
forget I ever existed.
 
You’ll be
better off anyway.”

“Wait, don’t hang up.”

But she was talking to a dead phone.
 
He’d already gone.

Caelyn felt tears stinging her eyes.
 
She looked up at Deena.
 
“Why the hell won’t you leave me alone?”
she said.

“Because, they told me not to.”

“They didn’t tell you to eavesdrop on my
private conversations.”

“How do you know?”

Caelyn felt a rage come over her, cold
and intense.
 
Her sister had totally
ruined her chance to talk to Elijah, to hear his voice, to feel close to him
again.
 
Worse than that, now Elijah
was under the impression that she’d come home and decided to try and pretend
the whole thing with him had never happened—that their relationship
didn’t mean anything, because he was inconvenient to her privileged life.

Somehow, Caelyn thought, she had to prove
to him that she did still want to see and talk to him, that she’d never discard
him for being inconvenient.

Deena went back to the kitchen table and
Caelyn heard her murmuring something to their parents.
 
Caelyn couldn’t even tell what was being
said, but she was sure it was unflattering and insulting.

But that wasn’t the issue right now.
 
She was racking her brain for a way to
show Elijah that he was wrong, that her feelings hadn’t simply changed
overnight.
 

He’d sacrificed for her, and she needed
to make a sacrifice for him.

And that’s when it hit her.

She could make a sacrifice for
him—something that would make a real difference in his life.
 
She would prove to him beyond a shadow
of a doubt that her feelings for him were real.

It started with Jayson.

If Jayson would drop the charges against
Elijah, than Elijah might not have to go back to prison.
 
The offense of leaving the state wasn’t
nearly as serious as being charged with assault, she knew that from her online
research.

And there was one obvious way to get
Jayson to drop the charges against Elijah.

Caelyn got on her phone and quickly wrote
Jayson a text.
 
She felt sick to her
stomach just seeing his name there, in black and white.
 
But she had to do it.
 
This was her only real chance, she
realized, to help Elijah and make it possible for her to see him again outside
of a jailhouse visit.

Caelyn kept it simple and didn’t put too
much detail in her text message to Jayson.

We need to talk.

After she hit send, Caelyn breathed a
deep sigh.
 
It was done.
 
It was like pulling the pin on a grenade
and throwing it.
 
That bomb was
going to explode now, and it was just a matter of where and when.

Caelyn went back to the kitchen table and
everyone was waiting, having done nothing more than picked at their food since
she left.

“Everything okay?” her dad asked.

She smiled, trying to fake it.
 
“Yup.
 
Everything’s fine.”

“Who was that on the phone?” her mother
said.

Caelyn shrugged.
 
“Nobody.
 
Just someone from class that I had to
talk to really quickly,” she lied.
 
The lie flowed so smoothly that she felt ashamed.
 
She wasn’t used to being dishonest.

“Why don’t you just admit that you were
talking to a boy?” Deena said.

Caelyn picked up her fork and stuck it
into some cold, rubbery eggs.
 
“Because, it’s none of your business who I talk to.”

“Mom, she’s being totally weird and
secretive,” Deena said.

“Caelyn, is something going on with a
boy?” her mother asked.

“Maybe she’s pregnant,” Deena continued.

Caelyn stared at her sister.
 
“You are being such a little twerp,” she
told her.
 
“What gives you the right
to say that about me?”

“I’m just saying, it would make sense if
you were.”

Suddenly, Caelyn’s phone vibrated.
 
It was a text, and she had to check it
and see if Jayson had responded, so she checked her phone as quickly as she
could.

And the text was from Jayson.

What do we have to
talk about?

Her stomach did a triple flip and sweat
broke out on her forehead.

“She’s texting with someone right now,”
Deena cried, leaning over and grabbing at Caelyn’s phone.
 
She snatched it away, reading it quickly
as Caelyn screamed at her to give the phone back.

Caelyn was able to take the cell phone
back, but Deena had already read the exchange.

“I told you!” Deena said.
 
“She was texting with Jayson, that guy
she’s been dating.
 
She said they
need to talk.
 
I told you she’s
pregnant!”

Caelyn was flushed and sweating, angry
with her sister and sick to her stomach that she was going to have to try and
explain herself now.
 
Of course,
explaining would mean lying, because there was no way she was going to come
clean until she’d secured Elijah’s safety.