Chapter 13: Home Game

Cillian took the phone out of Lexie's hand and read the message once.

Then he gave it back to her.

"No," he said.

"No what?" Lexie said.

"No to the vote."

"Can you do that? They're the elders."

"Watch me."

Two words, and I liked him more than I'd liked any man all year.

Behind me, Ciro was already out of bed and into his trousers.

"You'll both stay at my house in Margate," he said. "Gate, cameras, men on the beach."

"Ventnor," Cillian said. "My house."

"Mine has a gate."

"Mine has me."

Lexie looked at me.

I looked at two crime bosses in a hallway, half dressed, arguing over who got to keep us.

"Term five," I said. "Nobody says mine about a person."

"I said house," Cillian said.

"You meant person. We're getting our own place."

We flew home that afternoon.

Atlantic City in June smelled like sunscreen, fried dough and the inside of a slot machine.

We found the apartment on our second day, by walking the boardwalk with a coffee each.

Two bedrooms over a boarded-up shop, between a fudge place and a palm reader.

The shop had sold saltwater taffy once. Now it had plywood over the windows and a FOR LEASE sign.

The apartment upstairs was cheap because nobody wanted to live over plywood.

Lexie stood on the sidewalk and looked at the shop for a long time.

"Good bones," she said.

We paid the first month and the deposit in cash, out of what was left of my shoebox.

Ciro tried to hand the landlord an envelope.

"Term four," I said, and the landlord gave it back to him without even opening it.

By that night there was a black car parked at one end of our block and a gray one at the other.

Lexie took a coffee down to each of them.

"I'm not picking sides," she said. "I'm picking caffeine."

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