Forever loved. Never forgotten.
“The reason we are all here.”
I pull myself up, holding onto the fountain for leverage, belatedly relieved when it doesn’t topple with my weight.
Ben’s eyes widen. He blows out a relieved breath as soon as I make it to my feet. “You’re lucky. We’d both be on the streets if anything happened to Celeste there,” he teases.
“What are we doing here?” I ask, “Why are you hiding in the bushes?”
“Hold on.” Ben reaches into his back pocket and pulls out his phone. Hitting dial and then holding it to his ear, he waits only a single beat before talking. “Cas, I’ve got her. Cameras down for twenty minutes, please. I’ll bring her back to the fountain when we’re done. Thanks, man.”
“What the—?”
Ben holds up his hand in a stop motion until the lights go off and then he beckons me forward and into the thick of the hedges.
“I don’t really want to go back with scratches, Ben…this seems a little excessive.”
“Trust me, Honeybee,” he chuckles, leading me between twoseparate hedges that have been cut to look like one.
“Secret path?”
“Told you this place was full of them. This one is mine, though. I think Dax knows it exists, but he doesn’t know where to find it. You can only see it from the inside. See?”
I turn around and sure enough the hedge is carved to look like it has a door frame on the right and a double thick hedge, about as wide as two people stands on the left. Ben reaches into the thicker side and tugs. The whole thing swings forward, pivoting upon hidden hinges and slides straight into the doorway gap.
“A hedge door? How?”
“There’s a tall pot sitting on a shelf and frame set-up from what I can tell. The hedge has been trained to grow around it. Pretty sneaky but makes it impossible to see the entrance.”
“It’s devious.”
“Knew you’d like it.”
“You’d never realise that was a door. How did you even find it in the first place?”
“You can just make out the handle on this side.” Ben points to a black metal rod that sticks out of the back. Though visible, it would still take extraordinary efforts to discover it. “But I found it because of the paths at the house. One of them leads to…well. I’ll let you see it for yourself.”
Chapter Twenty-one
Asilence spreads between us as Ben leads me through the maze. I notice the lack of cameras and lights out here, so I assume the secret doorway isn’t just a cute puzzle to solve but exists to provide some other concealment. It’s well kept too, suggesting that Ben looks after this place or someone else knows about it too.
I’m not sure if it’s the quiet way Ben walks just ahead of me or the fact that this place feels so isolated from the rest of the world, but there’s a loneliness that emanates from him. Everything from his sloped shoulders to his downcast eyes speaks of exhaustion. Even his bruises are shadows within shadows. Purple and black, they create pits of darkness around his eyes. I make a mental note to tell Dax exactly what I think about that when I next see him.
“Does it hurt?” I ask, startling a pretty little jay from the bush near Ben’s head.
“I’ve had worse,” Ben returns with a half-smile. I guess he heard me with Cas.
“You shouldn’t have it at all. I’m sorry.”
He shakes his head. “I should have realised what was happening sooner. I got there late.”
“You got there just in time. Twice!”
“Agree to disagree with that one,” he grumbles, but his shoulders relax a little. “Just one more turn…”
He leads us around a hairpin turn and into an open square, bigger even than the centre of the maze with Celeste’s fountain, because in the middle of a grass lawn sits the most perfect storybook cottage.
“Oh wow. How is this…?”
