I just fucking want to talk to my mom! I want River to be River McFarley again. I want to go back to the river, to the secrets, the kisses, the messy, passionate curiosity, to that happiness and terror where I didn’t need words.
I walk with pictures a few feet toward the crowd of people around the entrance to the hall. Probably over a hundred invited guests are listening to a great story about Mom—how wonderful she is, how perfectly she sees behind people’s facades.
I hate it.
I hate all of this.
I hate her! Because she left and didn’t protect me from the world.
“Miss!” I hear a security guard call out. “Stop, put the painting on the floor, and put your hands up.”
As if in slow motion, I turn and stare at him over the picture. He’s young. Still very young. He has his gun pointed at me and probably thinks I’m an assassin.
“Picture down! Hands so I can see them!” he shouts, approaching me with his weapon drawn. Fear flickers in his eyes—he’s afraid of me, of the girl who’s always the victim.
I just want to go to my mom!Water drips from my clothes, forming a puddle around me. Sure, I seem insane, but I just can’t let go of the painting. It feels like it’s glued to my hands, like I’ll lose everything if I set it down.
Part of my consciousness notices that the speaker has fallen silent. A murmur swells through the crowd, and suddenly, everything is dead quiet.
Except for the steps coming behind me.
“Don’t shoot! Please. You’re scaring her!”
My knees want to give way. Suddenly, he stands next to me and takes the painting from my hands. I allow it because even when I don’t want it, his presence calms me, just as it has all summer long. I smell his scent of forest and herbs, of leather, of warmth and coolness at the same time. He places the picture on the floor in slow motion and stands up again. Despite my confusion, I recognize the silver lanyard with the VIP pass around his neck.
My mind is empty. He’s not wearing his black wig, cowboy boots, or stupid leather pants. He’s blond and broad-shouldered again and looks like the fallen, broken, beautiful angel he was to me on Old Sheriff.
“All is well, Tucks,” he whispers. He puts the other pass around my neck and calls out to the security guard. “We have VIP passes. She’s with me. She just lost her pass and wanted to come here.”
A new murmur ripples through the arcade.
However, the murmuring is not because of me.
It’s not me they’re staring at.
“Chaos is about to break out, but we can still pull through. Remember the lessons!” River looks at me intently, but I can’t nod.
It’s over. It’s over, but he doesn’t want to accept it.
Chapter 25
“That’s Asher Blackwell!”
The sentence whizzes through the air like a boomerang and knocks me over. I don’t even know who said it. And even though I know it’s true, I turn and look back as if Asher Blackwell was somewhere behind me and not right at my side—frozen, with eyes so wide all the water in the ocean could fit in them.
The guard behind us drops his jaw and lowers the black pistol pointed at me. The other security officers who have arrived by now also step back, almost in awe. “My daughter will kill me if I come back without an autograph,” one of them murmurs, but his voice echoes loudly between the high-end shops like a ping-pong ball.
Kill me, kill me, kill me.
Asher Blackwell.
I look from River to the crowd where my mom is and back again. I realize the crowd is framing us like a painting, and we’re no longer separate from it. Voices rain down on River.
Young women push their way to the foreground, holding pens and paper out to him, and a blonde in a floor-lengthevening dress exposes her thigh. “Sign for Evelyn!” she shrieks next to me.
“Asher! Asher! Asher!” The frenetic shouts swell and become so loud, I want to cover my ears, but my body has forgotten how to move. I’m freezing cold, and the water is still dripping from my clothes.
“I’m sorry.” River squeezes my hand tightly and looks at me, his eyes shining—deep, dark, and wet. Like a river. “Nothing changes. We’ll still do it. Remember the lessons in the store.”