The Arrangement 19 (The Arrangement 19)

“Yeah, but you still have a heart to give.” I bump his knees with mine. “Even after everything you’ve experienced. Sean, you’re not normal, and I think that’s great.” I smile at him.

He swallows hard and looks over at me. “Another piece of me died today. When I saw my mother’s hand on the teacup, I thought she was dead. Then we found her. Avery, I thought we could pull her out. I thought... I wanted her to be somehow still alive.”

I press my lips together and drape my arm over his shoulder.

“So did I.”

“I know you did.” Sean smiles weakly at me and takes a deep breath. His chest fills and slowly rises before he lets it out. “I keep making the mistake of thinking everything will work out, that I have time to fix my mistakes.”

“She can still hear you. I’m pretty sure you know that, otherwise I wouldn’t have seen you talking to a headstone. Unless crazy is contagious because I do it all the time.” I smile at him for a brief moment. “It’s never too late.” He looks over at me, surprised.

“And you really believe this?”

“Yeah, I do." I nod, secretly shocked by my sudden certainty. "I guess that’s why I didn’t get sucked down an emotional black hole when they died, or with any of the shit that happened after. No matter what, I’m not totally alone. They hear me, even if I can’t hear them anymore. If I did, I think I’d pee myself.” I laugh and squirm thinking about it.

“Thank you for not questioning me about my mother or our relationship. You took it as a given that she loved me and that I returned the affection in my way.”

I do believe he loved her, but I’m not as sure about Constance. I study the old boards and wonder about the younger version of the Ice Queen, the version who worried her son would fall from a tree. I wonder how she turned into the cold, conniving woman who sat in the solarium each morning, the woman who wanted me gone.

I don’t want people to wonder about me. I don’t want to go down that road.

“Hey,” I say to Sean, bumping his shoulder with mine. When he looks over at me with those blue eyes, I say, “Promise me something.”

“Anything.”

“Promise me that we’ll have one more sweet kiss. Not right now, but at some time when things are normal and ninjas aren’t hunting us down.” I look toward the window, glad no one tended to this part of the woods. If they had, there’d be nowhere to hide.

“They aren’t ninjas or we’d be dead already. Our saving grace is that Vic cheaply surrounded himself with bargain basement thugs instead of trained assassins." He turns and boops my nose. “Miss Smith, I think you might be a candy fang banger after all, but I'll grant your request. Reserved for you is one completely vulnerable kiss with no walls up, no distance, and no hidden heart. Just promise me you’ll use it for good and not evil.”

I smile so hard my face hurts.

“You know I’m going to refer to this place from now on as the Batcave, right?”

“It’s because you want to say,”

We say it together, and laugh, “To the Batcave!”

CHAPTER 5

My eyes flutter open, and I blink the sleep from my eyes. It takes me a moment to remember where I am. There’s a wooden board beneath my head and an arm draped over my waist; I smile as I realize it’s Sean.

I roll towards him and my stomach rumbles. He looks like he hasn’t slept in days. There are dark circles under his eyes. He's awake and watching me.

“Good morning, beautiful.”

I smile at him, taking in his messy hair, scruffy face, and a tiny t-shirt. I look at it again, finally realizing what it is. Across the chest of the rust colored shirt, written in a burnt coffee color are the words CROSS COUNTRY. The rest is too faded to read.

“Was this yours?”

“A million years ago,” he says nodding.

“You were a runner?”

Sean sits up and stretches, the tiny shirt revealing his hard stomach as he moves. He leans back against the wall and tugs the hem down.

“Yeah, it was one of the few school activities I enjoyed. Our father shoved us into everything else. God, you should have seen his face when Peter started swing dancing. The saddle shoes made the old man think Pete changed teams.” Sean laughs once remembering something from long ago.

“I’ve never heard you say much about your dad.” I tread carefully. Sean’s a raw mess of emotions, which means he’s trying to keep everything locked up, but he’ll erupt at some point and go ape-shit crazy. “But I like the tight shirt; it's sexy.”

He grins and looks down at the shirt before running his hands over the faded text.

“Dad was difficult.” He pauses, searching for the right words. “He was either there too much or completely gone. He always went to extremes.”

I smile faintly before my stomach rumbles again, louder this time. Sean looks over at me.

“I’m sorry, we can’t grab pancakes. I wish things were different.” He crawls across the tree house floor and opens the old chest, pulling out bottled water and a silver wrapper that looks like a candy bar. He tosses them to me.

“You stocked the tree house?”

"Not me, Jon," he says, shaking his head. "He was a little paranoid a while back. Those meal bars last a decade. The water is a little questionable, but I drank it, and I’m still here. You’ll be fine.”

I rip the wrapper open and stuff the meal bar in my mouth. I’m starving. It doesn’t matter that it tastes like a combo of hay, clay, and bark.

“So, what’s with you and Jon?” He looks over at me.

“What do you mean?”

“It seems like there’s some tension there. I mean, not from you--you come across tense with everyone--but from Jon. He’s easy going with everyone except with you. Did you guys have a fight or something?”

Sean takes a slow pull of air and lets it out, then runs his hands through his hair.

“Something.”

Okay. I guess we aren’t talking about that.

Sean gets up and looks down. The sun isn’t quite up yet and the morning sky is light blue with a spattering of stars just barely visible through the treetops. He looks back at me.

“Time to meet up with Masterson.”

“Yeah. Marty.” I don’t know what to think of him anymore. I don’t like that he got so close to me, without my having any idea who he really is. It freaks me out. I glance at Sean wondering how much I still don’t know about him.

“He’s an asset this way, and his being enamored with you has kept you alive. Come on.” He tosses the ladder over the side.

I go to throw my leg over the side and look down. My heart jumps up my throat and falls out the window. “Holy shit! We’re up high!”

“You looked last night,” he points out, laughing.

“It was pitch black last night. The ground is much further away than I thought. Who the hell puts a kid's tree house thirty feet in the air?”

“My father. And we’re not that high. You can do it. Just go one step at a time and don't look down.”

“Fuckbunnies.” I mutter the word under my breath and toss my leg over the sill. My foot finds the first rung, and I slide the rest of my body over the edge and down the ladder. The muttering doesn’t stop until my feet hit the grass. “Thank God!”

Sean jumps down behind me, skipping the last few rungs. He slips his hands around my waist and pulls me close.

“I didn’t think you were a religious person.”

“I’m not, not really. Why?”

“You were praying the entire way down. I would have thought you’d be cursing up a storm, and you’re reciting Psalms. How do you even know them?” Sean looks surprised. I shrug.

“My mom used to say stuff. I never really thought about it.”

“Come on.” He takes my hand and we head toward the shed at the edge of the property. We shove through a door into a dark space that smells like grass seed and chemicals before seeing a lump of canvas covering a car. It’s hidden behind a

ton of lawn equipment.

Sean rushes toward it and pulls off the cover. I blink at it several times before saying, “Holy shit! It’s the Batmobile!” There’s a pimped out matte black Maserati, with a shiny black racing stripe down the center. It’s got black rims and black glass. The thing looks totally swicked. “Why do you have this? Is there something you’re not telling me?”

Sean ignores me and grabs a key from under the front wheel well and unlocks the door.

“Get in.” I jump inside and yank my door closed.

“So, are you going to tell me?” Sean starts the engine and the thing purrs to life. It looks new. I lean over and look at the odometer. It is new! I slip my fingers over the Italian leather and moan. “Is this the gardener’s car? Because if it is, I picked the wrong major by a long shot. I should have studied horticulture, ‘cuz damn!”

Sean’s lips tug up in the corner. He presses a button, and a garage door lifts behind us. Sean backs up carefully, then shifts into drive, the car rumbling sensually beneath us.