The itinerary had more team building and working on systems, but JUNIPER was proving to be effective, and testing with everyone was going extremely well.
I found myself enjoying not only her but the whole team. I only took two calls from my brother to handle confidential projects, and Izzy completely understood and gave me space without hesitation.
“Is she always in your cabin?” Bastian asked the third time he called to check in.
“Are you always so up in my shit? Don’t you have a wife to bother?” I responded back.
Bastian laughed like he enjoyed giving me hell. “She just yelled that she needs me to go pick up some essential oils for God knows what, and that you should buy your girl something nice. If you want to keep her around, you might want to try doing something different instead of burying your head in your phone like you normally do . . . or are you only fucking her?”
“I didn’t say I was doing any of those things with her. She’s my employee.”
“Right. So, question still stands. Are you only fucking her?”
“None of your damn business.” I hung up.
And then I called the florist.
19
Izzy
We were twelve days in with just two days left of glamping, and I was surprised to admit that things were going well. We tested new breaches on JUNIPER daily and brainstormed different scenarios. We worked on our day-to-day tasks and did some zip-lining, campfires, and swimming in between.
Cade was on a first-name basis with everyone, and he and Rodney were practically pals—except when Rodney stared too long at me in my bikini and Cade whacked him over the head.
Lucas didn’t ask me questions, but I knew they were flying around in his mind. He’d pried about my gold bracelet that I now twisted more than I should on my wrist all the time. I didn’t disclose anything. I couldn’t. We were in a safe little bubble for now with Cade staying too close, hovering too much, and staring too long.
I told him so that night, and he laughed, not giving a shit.
“It’s not funny. We have to go back to work after this where you’re the boss.”
“I’m your boss right now,” he murmured, typing away on his computer at our table while I watered the fifth bouquet of roses that’d been brought in the days since Cade had hacked my phone. He’d murmured they were sent to match my red spray paint.
And I couldn’t stop myself from bringing out a tiny linen-wrapped canvas I’d packed in my suitcase. While he worked, I set it down on the table, folded up a piece of paper to use for edging, and started to spray paint. It took some time to move the paper and get the angles perfect before I went to grab a brush and my paints. All I needed was black and white, and I shaded it quicker than I normally would because the art flowed freely through me now.
Everything was freer. I didn’t hesitate to show what I was feeling as much. I was more comfortable in my own skin. I even embraced the emotions I’d long since bottled up. My heart and my soul were liberated because they were toppling head over heels in love with Cade.
This rose turned out jagged, but with a bright white background, it appeared as though it was growing in the sun, in the light, and not succumbing to any darkness. Would I grow in our love too? Or would there be darkness?
“You hone your talents in things outside the digital world, I see,” Cade murmured as he stared at my picture, my hands, and then my face. “You’re truly a beautiful specimen, Izzy Hardy.”
It would have been a precious moment, one in which we could have talked about what this relationship was starting to look like, had my sister not called.
Lilah’s name popped up on my phone, and when I swiped to pick up the video chat, her frown made me immediately ask, “What’s wrong, Lilah?”
“Well, I thought Bug got out, but she’s fine.” She followed up with that right away, knowing panic raced through me immediately. “But I was looking for her everywhere . . .” Her face fell and she glanced down.
“Okay, well, what? What’s wrong?”
She held up a crinkled note. The writing was almost illegible. But it didn’t have to be well-written for me to know every word. Every curve of the w’s, every period and punctuation mark.
“What is this, Izzy?” Her question came out scratchy, like she’d been crying. “This isn’t your handwriting.”
My heart dropped; the blood drained from my body.
“Whose is it?” she whispered.
Everyone had a secret, right? Everyone wants to keep one thing hidden in their life. Maybe more. People thought the skeleton in my closet was that I was an addict. They didn’t know the whole truth.
They wouldn’t want to. Life was ugly. It was unkind. It was unforgiving at times too. To keep living, though, a person has to take the ugly and find the beautiful, take the wretched and search for the blessed.
Maybe I hadn’t done that. Maybe I’d just buried it all deep down and tried to hide it instead.
Vincent was ugly. He was the ugly sort of love that shaped me, that molded me, that made me the person I was today.
“Please don’t leave me. Please. You can’t. You can’t die,” I sobbed as I cradled him.
His buddy was already standing over me, tapping his dirty tennis shoe on the ground. “You gotta go, Izzy.”
“I’m not leaving.” I fisted the paper in my hand. His letter to me. It said goodbye. It said he was leaving, but he couldn’t.
“You’re going to stay? For what?” he asked, his voice cracking with fury. “You’re sixteen. He’s twenty-one. Do you know what that looks like? He should have never been with you, and now he’s gone.”
“No.” I said desperately. He couldn’t be.
“Yes.” His friend pushed back, trying to grab my elbow to pull me from the floor where we’d slept that night, but I ripped my elbow back. “And he didn’t leave a letter to his mom or his family. He left it to you.”
Jonny never had approved with us being together. No one had. And his words pelted me like a hailstorm that I couldn’t see through.
“We love each other,” I murmured.
“He didn’t love anybody but the drugs,” he grumbled and swiped the mess off the floor. Needles and powder and . . . God, had we done all that? “How much of this did he give you?”
I was sobbing, the tears pooling so high before I blinked them away that I could barely see my lover’s blue lips. Could I drown in them? Could I get lost in my own tears so I didn’t have to wake up either? Because without him, I didn’t want to.
“How could this happen? I was right here the whole night. I was right—”
“He gave you more than you asked for, and you passed out.” He shook his head in disgust. “He’s known for—”
“Don’t you dare talk bad about him right now.”
“He’s been cheating on you this whole time!” his friend bellowed at me. The words cut through me, trying their best to cause damage.
I shook my head in denial. I would ask him when he got up. “He needs our help, Jonny. He’s not fucking breathing, Jonny. Call someone. Call someone, please.”
He pursed his lips, and his chin shook but no tears came. “You gotta get out of here, or he’s going to be charged with statutory rape and dealing to minors before they pronounce him dead. You’ll cause the family a shit storm. Disappear. Don’t come to the funeral, and don’t mention his damn name.”