Chapter 10: His Rules

I walked out of my parents' house before Theron could arrive.

I heard Orin's voice behind me, saying "She's lost it," and I heard the door shut.

I sat in my car in the dark and typed one line to the number Cade had texted me from.

"Where do you live?"

He answered in under a minute with an address.

It was a tall brick house on a quiet street, with every window dark except one on the second floor.

He opened the door himself at eleven at night, in shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows, with a glass of whiskey in his hand.

His eyes went over my face once.

"He didn't believe you."

"Nobody did." I came in without being asked. "Shelley cried, and she said it was her sister in the sweater."

"Clever."

"She's very good at it."

I was shaking in the warm hall, and I hated it.

He took my coat off my shoulders and hung it up without a word.

"I need to stand at that screen on the eighteenth," I said.

"Not as Theron's girlfriend. They won't hand you the microphone."

"Then I need to be married to a Preston." I made myself look at him. "Theron isn't an option. You are."

He set the glass down on the hall table.

For a long moment he didn't say anything at all.

"You told me you wouldn't be my weapon," he said.

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