Veiled (Ada Palomino 1)

“But this is all just bras and underwear,” I tell him, holding them up in the air. Yes, I do have Victoria’s Secret Angel Card. “Miraculously there’s a pair of denim shorts in here but that’s it.”

He stares at me blankly. Although when Jay does blank, it’s like he’s still staring into your soul. “Guess you’ll need to buy some clothes.” He goes back to bringing things out of his bag and then pauses. “Sorry.”

He says this like he’s not used to apologizing. That might be true.

I sigh, loudly and like a little girl who hasn’t gotten her way. It’s the small things that comfort you when you’re under epic stress and scared for your life, though I should be grateful for clean underwear because I have a feeling I’ll need that most of all.

“Here,” he says, reaching across the bed and handing me a t-shirt. “You can use that as a nightshirt.”

I hold it up. It’s a giant Led Zeppelin concert tee shirt. “Where did you get this?”

“Salvation Army,” is his answer.

I hold it up to my nose and smell it. It smells like him, causing my heart to flutter.

“Do you listen to Led Zeppelin? Do you even know who they are?”

That stare again. “I’m not an alien, Ada. I know who they are, just as I know who most bands are. I have every album on my iPhone, from their self-titled all the way to Coda.”

Well I feel stupid. “Good,” I tell him. “That means you’re not as weird as I thought.”

Then before I say anything else, and before he keeps staring at me like that, I take the shirt and the duffel bag and head to the bathroom.

In here the tap is dripping and there are rust stains in the tub. The light is ghoulishly fluorescent and it takes forever for me to try and open up one of the little bars of soap.

I turn the water on until it’s basically scalding and wash my face again and again and again. Jay luckily had the smarts to grab my tooth brush, toothpaste, deodorant and moisturizer, as well as my phone and my purse, which has my wallet, hairbrush and just enough makeup to make me look presentable tomorrow.

I sigh, trying to get air in my lungs, fighting against the feeling of the room spinning around on me. I’m too easily overwhelmed these days, but fuck if I don’t have a good reason.

Putting down the toilet lid, I take a seat, my head in my hands and try to breathe. It’s the first time I’ve been alone since dinner and my mind is chugging along, trying to catch up with all that’s happened.

I texted my father during the drive, telling him I was going with Amy and her family to their cabin outside of Mount Hood. I’ve been there many times and he likes her parents, so even though it was an outright lie, he didn’t question it too much. He did sound rattled though and I know that the dinner was weighing on him. It didn’t quite go as he planned, plus there was the whole being trapped in the basement with Sage and a “raccoon.” I know that had scared the pants off him.

Jay assured me that he would be all right, that Jacob would keep a close eye on him, as would Sage and Dawn, and that he was one hundred percent safer without me in the house for now. I believed that.

I wanted to tell Perry about it, maybe get her to come down and spend some time with him while I’m gone, but I’m not sure that would make anything better. She’d been texting and calling me every day for the past week, making sure I was okay and every single time I had to lie, resorting to snark and sarcasm to get her off my back. The truth is, I don’t want her to worry and there’s nothing she, nor Dex, can do, no matter how special they think they are.

A few times she did ask about Jay, though. Wondering if he was getting me to burn down houses like her Jacob had. I played it off like it was no big deal, that I rarely saw him but even with that, she would end that part of the conversation with “I don’t trust him.”

And in turn that always made me wonder if I should.

Just outside this bathroom door is a man who is supposed to protect—who has protected me—and yet I don’t know a single thing about him. I guess he doesn’t even know a single thing about himself.

Although that isn’t true. He loves Led Zeppelin.

I sigh and take off the black dress that drew so much leering from the creepy manager (and yet zero leering from Jay, which is why I wore it to begin with) and slip on the Zeppelin tee shirt. Somehow it feels right, looks right, and is long enough to cover my butt. Not that he’s a stranger to seeing me in my underwear.