The Charlotte Chronicles (Jackson Boys 1)

“You have interior alarms?”

She looks at me like I’m stupid, and I guess I am. “Yes, don’t you?”

“No, I don’t think so.” At least, I didn’t up until this moment. Nick and I will have to do some snooping. “I think your dad did threaten me out there in the hall, but I’m not sure what the consequences will be.”

“Oh, it’ll be castration,” she says impishly like it’s no big deal, but I think my nuts are shrinking just at the thought. “That’s his go-to threat.” She moves over on the bed to make room for me. I stretch out beside her, still a little tense, but then I tell myself her dad is three doors down and I’d be able to be on my feet and in the armchair before he even twists her doorknob.

“Real comforting, Charlotte.” I suppress the urge to cup myself protectively.

She smirks, but the expression fades away quickly at my next question.

“Why are you really leaving? There’s no way there is better medical care somewhere else in the world than you can get here. Is it because we hid you were sick? We won’t do that anymore.”

We both look at the other side of the bed, where an IV stand sits like a creepy skeleton. Charlotte has had to have one bag of IV nutrition a day since Halloween. It’s nearing Christmas, and she looks a lot healthier now. The bones in her wrists and shoulders don’t look as sharp, and her cheeks are fuller. She can stand to gain another twenty pounds, but I keep that to myself. The last time I mentioned that she should eat more, she threw her sandwich at me and didn’t talk to me for the rest of the day. But I bet she texted Nick, I think sourly.

“I just. . .” She pauses and then squints at the ceiling as if she can read her thoughts up there. “It’s not just the hiding thing because that was my fault not yours. It’s everything. I’m so behind in all my classes, and everyone looks at me like I’m about to keel over. Where I’m going, you know, everyone there is kind of in the same boat I’m in.”

“We can take care of you better than anyone,” I tell her. She glances at me and smiles, and it’s the smile that she gets when she’s about to do something that she knows no one is going to like. I saw that smile when she agreed to play Never Have I Ever at the Carson’s pool party last summer, right after she’d turned fifteen. We’d had a big fight after that. She kept telling me that I couldn’t treat her like a child forever and that every other girl played a round. Every other girl wasn’t Charlotte though. I didn’t care what everyone else did. I only cared what Charlotte did, but she didn’t see it that way. She just thought I was being Nate, the no fun police when it came to her.

“You know, before I was sick you were pretty mean to me all the time.”

“Was not.” I was never mean to her. Watching out for her, yes. Mean, no.

“You were. You’re always criticizing what I’m wearing or that I’m hanging out with the wrong people who—” she points a finger into my chest, “—are the same people you hang out with.”

I grab her finger so the pointy nail doesn’t dig any farther into my chest wall, and then I cover her hand with mine so her palm is flat against my pecs. “I’m just watching out for you.”

She comes closer until her head is resting on my biceps, and then her hand curls underneath my arm. “Nate.” My name is like a soft sigh escaping, and it sounds like nothing I’ve ever heard from her before. It’s almost like a caress, a whisper of longing underneath a note of tenderness. My hand grips hers tighter, and I roll so I can face her, my palm still clasping hers over my heart.

“If I’ve ever made you feel bad, I’m sorry,” I tell her. There are a few strands of hair that are falling across her forehead, so I move them for her, tucking them behind her ear. Her eyes flutter shut, and this time I see contentment. She ducks her head, and I run my fingers through her hair, rubbing her scalp. Her new hair is slightly wavy, honey gold, and soft. The moan that she releases is so sexy that it goes from my fingers straight to my dick.

Do I tell her that the only times I’ve ever seemed angry were when I was scared or jealous and sometimes both? That she grew from kid to someone who made my pants too tight with just a smile in what seemed like overnight; and that if she was affecting me this way, she had to be affecting every male around her in that fashion, except for Nick who apparently still sees her as Charlotte, his five-year-old playmate?