Jessica Verday: The Hidden

“Stuck like glue?”

“That’s right,” he said softly, catching my eye. “Stuck like glue.”

“Lucky for you I happen to like glue.” I kicked off my sandals and unzipped my hoodie. It was hard to pull my injured hand through the sleeve, but once it was out, I was able to shrug the shirt off the rest of the way and tossed it on the floor.

Caspian reached down and picked it up. Then he walked over to the closet door and hung it on the knob. “Is this okay here?”

“Yeah, it’s fine. You know, you’re going to be handy to have around. You can put away all of my laundry.”

He made a short bow, then came back to the bed and stretched out beside me. “If laundry duty is what milady wants, then laundry duty is what she will get.”

He turned to face me, and his black streak of hair covered one eye. My heart fluttered.

“That’s the picture of domestic bliss,” I said. “Add in a big fan and an exotic drink, and you have every girl’s dream fantasy.”

“Domestic bliss, huh? You wanna play house with me, Abbey?”

I felt my cheeks heating up. “I, um … You know what I mean. Servant. Fantasy. That sort of thing.”

“Right. Right. Every girl’s fantasy. But I’m only interested in one girl’s fantasy.” He leaned forward. “Yours.”

I thought back to our recent hotel stay in West Virginia. Where we’d shared a bed … and a towel. Then something else struck me. “Hey, who did the laundry at your house?” I asked softly.

His face grew serious, and he looked away. “We went to the Laundromat. There was a lady there who washed it for us. Eventually she showed me how to do it. She even made me a cheat sheet so I wouldn’t forget. Only took a couple loads of pink shorts and one overflowing washer, but then I taught Dad.”

I watched his face move as he spoke, and was struck once again by how beautiful he was. And by something more … How mine he was.

“So you did all of your own laundry? What else did you do?”

“I got myself up for school and made my own lunches.”

I pictured a younger version of Caspian trying to put together peanut butter and jelly sandwiches every morning, and my heart felt sad. Mom had always made my lunches for me when I was little. She’d even taken special requests, like when I wanted egg salad for three months straight. “I would have made your lunch for you,” I said softly.

He went to squeeze my hand, but pulled back as he remembered he couldn’t. “I know, Abbey,” he replied instead. “I know.”

We lay there in silence until finally I said, “You know what’s going to be the best thing about having you here with me?”

“Having a manservant at your beck and call?”

“Nope. But that’s a close second.” I moved my free hand closer to his until that faint tingle of almost touching buzzed through me, and I gazed up at the constellations covering my bedroom ceiling. “The best thing is having someone to look at the stars with.”

A couple hours later Mom called me down for dinner, while Caspian stayed up in my room. The whole time we ate, I kept thinking about what it was going to be like to have him there without my parents realizing it. I’ll have to be careful. Have to watch that I don’t let anything slip in front of them, that they don’t hear me talking to him.

“You’re awfully quiet over there,” Dad said. “What are you thinking about?”

“The fact that we should get an alarm system.”

Okay, so that wasn’t really what I’d been thinking about, but it sounded good.

Mom and Dad exchanged uncomfortable glances. “Your mother and I have someone coming over this week to talk about our options,” Dad replied.

I forked a piece of broccoli and kept eating. “Okay.”

They both just looked at me, dumbfounded.

“So … you’re okay with that?” Dad asked.

“Yeah. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Well, we wouldn’t want you to be uncomfortable with the idea of needing to have one, to feel safe here.”

I put my fork down. “Dad, someone broke into our house. I think an alarm system would be okay.”

Mom put her hand on the table with a loud bang. “Enough! Enough of this conversation! I don’t want to discuss it anymore.”

“I think we should all discuss this,” Dad said.

“Yeah. It’s only an alarm system, Mom. No big deal …”

Mom’s face was stricken. “ I don’t want to discuss this. We’ve lived in this town our entire lives and nothing like this has ever happened before. I don’t want to know that we’re getting an alarm system put in because there’s some crazy person breaking into homes and hurting people’s children and … and …” Her voice grew louder with every word until she was practically screaming.

Then she shut down.

“I can’t deal with this. I need a pill.”

She suddenly left the room, and I waited for some type of explanation from Dad.

But he didn’t give me one.

“What was that all about?” I prodded him. “‘I need a pill’?”

“Your mother is just upset by everything that happened. The doctor prescribed her some pills to calm her nerves.”

“Calm her nerves? You’d think she was the one who’d been attacked.”

Dad sucked in a sharp breath of air.

“I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just-”

He shook his head. “I know what you meant. But it’s going to be tough for a while. We all need to … adjust. Your mother and I love you very much, Abbey.”

“I know, Dad. I guess I just need some time to adjust too.” Time to adjust to the fact that they didn’t know what had happened, and I could never tell them.

My broccoli was cold now, but I didn’t feel like heating it up. Pushing my plate away, I maneuvered my sling out from under the table and stood up. I turned toward the stairs, but stopped short. “Hey, Dad? What would you and Mom do if I died? Or if I had already been dead when you guys came home and found me?”

All of the emotion bled from his face. “What kind of a question is that?”

“Just a question.”

“It may be ‘just a question,’ but it’s certainly not something you need to worry about.” He patted my arm. “You have a very long life ahead of you.”

When I made it back to my bedroom, Caspian was lying on the bed, looking up at the stars. “You know they’re much better in the dark,” I said.

“I know. But I was waiting for you.” He propped himself up on one arm, and I sat down beside him. “How did things go down there? I heard yelling.”

I sighed. “Yeah. It was Mom. She’s freaking out because they have a security system guy coming to put an alarm in.”

“And she doesn’t want that?”

“Oh, she wants it. Or doesn’t. Or doesn’t want to want it … I don’t know. It’s confusing. She’s confusing. It’s not like it’s going to stop Vincent if he comes here again anyway, but they don’t know that. I think she’s just mad about the fact that she feels like she has to get one.”

I shrugged. Or tried to. The sling on my arm pulled tight and hurt. “I can’t wait to get this stupid thing off,” I said, lifting it up.

“Aw, poor baby. I can’t even rub it or anything.”

I gave a mock sigh, but my arm was really hurting now. “Can you grab me that pill bottle on the desk?” I asked him. “The tall one with a yellow lid.”

He obliged and dropped it next to me on the covers. I popped the top open and reached for the glass of water sitting on my nightstand. After washing down two pills, I recapped the bottle and rolled it back across the covers to him.

Caspian scooped it up and put it back on the desk. Then he walked over to the closet. A moment later, a blanket was placed next to me. I looked at it in surprise.