“I want to move in with you, too. But what about Sloane?” He smiled as if he had been hoping for me to ask that.
“Well, I discovered that there is a vacancy in your apartment building. It also happens to be an apartment right down the hall from yours. So either we can live there and Sloane can have yours, or the other way around. Whatever you want to do, we have to act fast.” He beamed, clearly pleased with himself.
“You have been busy, Mr. Blythe. I’ll ask Sloane and see what she wants to do. So you don’t want to live here?” His apartment was pretty nice. Nicer than mine, even if it was smaller.
“This isn’t my home. The only time it feels that way is when you’re here with me.” Aw, he was just the sweetest sometimes.
“Besides, your apartment is bigger, and the spare room would make a good place for my stuff.”
“What stuff? Your secret room stuff? Can I finally see that now? I mean, not right now, but maybe later?” I’d almost forgotten about Lucah’s secret room in all the insanity.
“You can see it whenever you want. They’re all unlocked now.”
“When did you do that?”
“A few days ago.” I flipped around so I was facing him. “I don’t have anything to hide anymore. No more secrets, no more lies. Whatever you want to know, I’m an open book.”
I liked the sound of that.
“How did you get started in corporate espionage?” I knew that wasn’t what his job was called, but that was what I was going to call it.
“It’s a long story, but basically I wanted to make money and I wanted to be someone else. I spent a lot of time running from my past. I guess that was just another way to keep doing it.” One of the candles guttered out, making it even darker.
“Why?”
He sighed and shifted under me.
“Because I didn’t want eat cereal for dinner. Ever again. And I didn’t want people to know that was where I came from. My parents never tried to put the burden on me or my brothers, but I remember going to the food bank and understanding at a very young age that we didn’t have things that other people had. I didn’t want life ever to be that hard again.”
It made sense, and I could understand wanting to run away from your past.
“This one time in college, I changed my major for a day. I also went by my first and middle name when I introduced myself to people.”
“What did you change your major to?” The water was starting to get cold, but my muscles were all loose and I didn’t think I could get up. He was going to have to carry me.
“Photography. It sounded cool, even though I didn’t even own a freaking camera. I just wanted to do something else. Of course then I woke up in the middle of the night and pictured Dad’s face when I told him I didn’t want to work for the company and I was waiting at the guidance office before they opened the next morning to change it back. I never told my parents.” It had been a moment of insanity, and I’d never told anyone about it, not even Sloane.
“I can’t picture that, but I’m sure you would have been a great photographer.” No, I would have been bad at. I couldn’t even take a decent selfie with my phone.
I shrugged and another candle went out.
“We should probably get out before the water gets too cold. Are you hungry?”
“Yeah. I barely ate anything today.” It was a miracle that my stomach hadn’t growled yet.
“Well, we’ll have to do something about that.” He got up and got a towel before he pulled me out of the tub and wrapped me in it, rubbing the water from my body before he wrapped one around his waist.
“I can walk. I think.” I might have moved a little slower than normal, but I made my way back to the couch and slumped on it. Lucah brought me some clothes and I got dressed as he made dinner in his boxers and a t-shirt.
“Can I look at your rooms now?”
“You can look at them anytime you want.” He stirred spaghetti into a pot of boiling water and jerked his head at the three doors. It felt weird looking at these rooms with him here, but I got up and went to door number one.
It was just a closet, really, and was stacked with boxes. None of them were labeled, and despite what he said, I didn’t feel comfortable going through them, so I went to the second door. This room was a little bit bigger, more of a small office size, but it too was filled with boxes, and his guitar. I walked in and shut the door behind me.
I pulled open one box and found there were a bunch of books in there. I skimmed some of the titles and they were some of my favorites. The next box had pictures in it and I flipped through some of them. They were of Lucah when he was younger and oh, boy. This was some quality blackmail material. I made a note to come back and look at those things later.
The rest of the boxes were also books and photographs and some yearbooks and other little things like band shirts and sweatshirts and so forth.