Ransom foamed at the mouth, he was so furious. I’d never seen him so upset. I took a step back, suddenly feeling like being this man’s center of attention was my own private downfall.
“I…uhm…”
Should I tell him? Should I not?
Screw it. The truth was better than all the lies I’d spewed out for years.
“You what?” he asked. “Tell me.”
“When I was in second grade, my teacher, Mrs. Archibald, told my parents I needed to get tested for dyslexia. I’d fallen behind pretty significantly, which made me drift and lose interest in class even more. My parents became really upset. Made a whole stink about how a general-ed second grade teacher didn’t have the right to make such assumptions. She ended up getting fired, after Mom put pressure on the school’s board. I never got tested, but…” I licked my lips, closing my eyes. That period of my life was one of the worst. Precipitating the time when I lost faith in myself. Dad was on his last year as President, and he couldn’t afford the bad press. The scrutiny.
“From that moment on, teachers started helping me out with tests and assignments. And by ‘helping’ I mean cheating my way into decent grades. I still wasn’t good, but I passed all my classes. The bigger the gap between me and my classmates became, the easier it was to believe I was just…”
“Stupid,” Ransom completed for me softly.
I swallowed. “Yeah.”
Now, at twenty-one, I did not consider myself high school educated. I’d missed so much material. Only in recent years, when I discovered the magic of audiobooks, did I start to catch up on subjects that had interested me. History, literature, and geography. Suddenly, I could consume books. I’d devoured all the classics. Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte and Leo Tolstoy.
Ransom looked haunted, staring at me with eyes so deep and dark I thought I was going to drown in them.
“Your parents…” he trailed off, shaking his head. “I’m going to kill them.”
Clutching his phone until I heard it crack, he stormed out of my room. I chased after him. No one was supposed to know about the Mrs. Archibald story. White-hot panic coursed through my veins. My parents would skin me alive when they found out I’d confided in him.
“Ransom, please don’t tell them!” I grabbed the hem of his shirt, tugging. His phone was pressed to his ear. “They can’t know that you know, I—”
But it was too late. Someone answered him on the other line.
“Mrs. Thorne? Ransom Lockwood here. Change of plans. We’re not coming to D.C. In fact, it’s not safe for Hallie to be anywhere but in Dallas right now. Unlike your other daughter, Hallie is famous, headline-grabbing, and a hot commodity. I don’t want her star to overshadow her sister’s plebeian duties. Have fun at the funeral.”
He hung up.
I stared at him, shocked.
This was the first person who had truly stood up for me. Had my back more than once.
Also: have fun at the funeral? He was so going to hell for that one.
“I think I just fell in love with you.” I stumbled back, clutching my chest, like Cupid had pierced an arrow through it.
He massaged his eye sockets, looking tired, almost deflated. “Like my day wasn’t bad enough. Get dressed.” He tucked his phone into his pocket, a sullen, fallen angel. “We’re getting you diagnosed right now. Then I’m taking you to dinner. Vegetarian something. My treat.”
Oh, my.
I’d been dyslexic less than ten minutes and I already loved every second of it.
Well, shit.
It was official. I had a conscience.
It was wonky, out of tune, and questionable. But it was there.
Hallie Thorne was no idiot.
An extremely flawed individual? Sure.
Fucked-up? I could get behind that description.
But she had undiagnosed learning disabilities, and she walked around thinking something was wrong with her.
That needed to be rectified.
I didn’t have long to babysit the girl, but before I left, I wanted her to know one thing.
She wasn’t stupid. It wasn’t her fault.
She just had a really shitty family.
An hour later, the Explorer pulled in front of a private clinic on the outskirts of Dallas. A red-bricked, simple building surrounded by decorative plants.
“They’ve agreed to assess you anonymously. That means we pay a fee, and they give you a diagnosis and we fill in the paperwork with your personal data afterwards,” Ransom said by way of explanation as he breezed past me, opening the door. I gingerly made my way inside, in bug sunglasses and an overkill hat.
He approached the woman behind the reception desk and talked to her quietly while I stood in the automatic doorway, looking around. I felt like I stuck out like a sore thumb, even though it was probable no one recognized me.
Why was it important for me to get diagnosed? It wasn’t like I was planning to go back to school. I would never put myself through the torture.
Ransom turned around and walked over to me. He put a hand on my shoulder. I did not, in fact, detonate. But I was close. I’d never before been attracted to someone so wildly, and it scared me. Up until now, it had been really easy to pass on opportunity.
“They’re going to run vision and hearing tests, and questionnaires on you. Then you’ll go through a psychological assessment and they’ll test your reading. You’re going to be here for a while.”
“What’s a while?” I swallowed.
“Four, five hours.”
“My parents are going to kill you if they find out.” Not that I was going to tell them.
“Your parents are lucky I don’t kill them.”
A sunny, middle-aged woman in a red suit and noisy jewelry picked me up from the reception and ushered me into the depths of the building.
The first two tests—vision and hearing—were easy-peasy. The reading test, however, was a dud. I was extra slow, extra nervous, and got most of the words mixed up. By the time the psychological assessment came around, I was already exhausted.
When Ransom came back to pick me up, he held a brown bag. He shoved it in my hands as soon as I made my way to him.
“Vegan tacos with spicy cauliflower and tofu. There’s some beer, too.”
“You’re giving a beer to an alcoholic?” I arched my eyebrows, feigning disbelief.
“We both know you’re simply a lightweight. Go eat outside. I’ll be there in a second.”
Guess this was his version of taking me out for a meal. I would have protested if I weren’t so exhausted from milking every ounce of my brain over the last four hours. I went outside, settling on a wooden bench overlooking a sad, mostly empty parking lot.
The tacos were delicious, and the beer went to my head fast.
Rather than freak out about what Ransom and the nice woman in red were currently discussing, I diverted my thoughts to exploring what I could do for a living.
Perhaps nail art. I adored nails, and it seemed like a lowkey thing to do, away from the limelight, which I started to realize I didn’t actually love. Or maybe I could be a dog walker. I loved animals. I would adopt an unholy amount of dogs and cats if I could. My mother forbade it. Something about not wanting a negative headline when I moved out of the mansion and the landlord discovered my pets had destroyed his place.