Sheltered(42)

She couldn’t even respond to his hissed use of her name. She had to go with this thing instead.

“Oh my word, you’re naked. Why didn’t you tell me you were taking your clothes off? I could have had a lo—”

“Evie, your parents are home.”

Every part of her immediately went still. Like a reflex, she thought. Like a rabbit freezing in the headlights, though in this case the rabbit had more than an oncoming Ford Coupe to deal with.

She couldn’t even speak for a second. Questions wanted to come up, but none of them actually made it. What did he mean, her parents were home? They’d said 2:30 Sunday, not 11:55 Friday. It wasn’t even the middle of the night, like she’d thought—it was 11:55 on the day they’d left, and that simply was not fair on any level whatsoever.

“No,” she said, but even as she did so she could hear them, shouting at each other about some probable nonsense. You’re a drunk. You’re a bully. The usual sorts of stuff. Vacation cut short, Evie’s about to be murdered—or worse.

What if discovering her with a man in her bed meant he’d decide on murdering her mother instead? He’d never laid the rules down, after all. He’d not written her a guidebook—I’ll Only Kill Her if You Run Away.

Anything could happen, for behavior like this.

“How long do they usually fight for?” he whispered, but she couldn’t think. She couldn’t think of anything but the trail of evidence they’d left—the plates, the Chinese food, the smell of Van just about everywhere.

The smell of sex, for God’s sake. It was all over her room and her sheets, and any second they were going to come up the stairs. Any second now.

“We left everything—”

“Evie, Evie. Stay calm, okay? I cleared everything away. Everything’s spotless. Stay calm and just tell me—have I got enough time to get my clothes on?”

“It won’t matter if you have your clothes on, are you crazy? It wouldn’t matter if you turned yourself into a Sunday school teacher, Van—”

“Honey, I’m not suggesting I stand here and shake your father’s hand, okay? I want to spit on the guy. I’m just asking—how long’s this going on for?”

Panic had hold of her now. She couldn’t stop it. It made her do crazy things, like forget to breathe, and clasp and unclasp her hands.

“I don’t know. I don’t know. God, please don’t spit on him—he’ll kill you. You don’t get it, it’s worse than I’ve said, it’s so much worse.”

She hated herself for saying it, but it was true. If her father caught him in here, if Van did something crazy like that…he’d drown them both in the pool. He’d smash something over Van’s head, the way he’d done on New Year’s Eve. He’d drag them by their hair and promise to do unspeakable things to her mother and oh, she didn’t know what was worse.

That he might do those things, or that Van might actually see them.

Though the latter seemed at least a million times more bearable, when he quite suddenly put his hands on her face. Kissed her in a dozen weird places, like her temples and her forehead and right into her hair.

“I know,” he said. “I know.”

Just like that. Her heart soared, then sank as she heard footsteps on the stairs.

“Van—”

“Stay there. Just stay there, baby, and pretend to be asleep.”

He kissed her again, but this time he did it on the lips. Soft and reassuring—God, everything about him so reassuring, even if she had absolutely no idea what he was going to do.

He was going to have to be fast about it, whatever he decided on. The heavy thud-thud of her father’s footsteps—like something out of a goddamn ghost story—were already at the top of the stairs, and Van had barely begun to snatch up his clothes. By the time that terrible sound reached her door, he was as conspicuous as he’d ever been—so naked still, in the middle of her neat little room.

And it seemed worse, too, that he had all his things in his arms. He looked like a thief who’d come in to somehow steal things that didn’t actually belong to her. He looked big and bristly and like the Gollum she’d first thought of, only in reverse.

She didn’t want to hide from him now. She wanted him to do the hiding—so much so that her heart nearly stopped when he melted his way back into the closet behind him, just as the door to her bedroom swung open.

It looked like a magic trick, she thought. Like he’d faded to black without even really trying, though somehow it still didn’t seem like enough. Her father knew when she breathed wrong. He’d guess this no problem at all, and then what?