Talk about a mindfuck.
“Almost to town, sweetheart.”
I blinked and realized Nolan was right. While I’d been lost in thought, we’d made our way down the mountain.
“Go to Main,” I said, “then turn right onto Maple.”
“Want to tell me where we’re going?” he asked, following my instructions.
I hesitated. My instinct to keep everything about my life separate from the Bastards wasn’t going to work when one of them was acting as my chauffeur. “I need to see my brother.”
Nolan nodded, like he wasn’t surprised to hear about Matt, which made me wonder how much the Bastards knew about me.
“You know about him,” I said.
“Yeah.”
We started down Main Street and I took in the pedestrians walking from small business to small business. They were mostly locals now — the tourists wouldn’t come until summer — but they were as foreign to me as downtown Blackwell.
Straight to school, straight home.
Those had been my mom’s instructions every day when Matt and I had left for school. Participating in extracurricular activities, hanging out with friends (not that I’d had any) after school, lingering at the old coffee shop that was now Cassie’s Cuppa (owned by a girl I remembered from high school)… well, that was trouble in the making according to my mom.
Too much freedom. Too much room for error. Too many temptations.
“Did you do some kind of… research on me?” I shouldn’t have turned to look at him. Looking at him only made me want him all over again.
And who wouldn’t? His eyes were shielded from the sun with sunglasses that made him look like a movie star, but they didn’t hide the strong slant of his cheekbones, his chiseled jaw.
He navigated the Lotus lazily, one big hand on the bottom of the steering wheel, slouched just enough in the seat to make him look casually sexy, which was probably also down to the strain of his thighs in worn jeans.
I pressed my legs together, cursing my newfound lust. I hated to give my mom an ounce of credit for her evangelism, but in this case lust was definitely a deadly sin.
“The work we do is sensitive,” Nolan said, turning onto Maple. “We needed to know more to have you stay in the house long-term.”
I turned my head to the window. “It’s not supposed to be long-term.”
He reached for my hand. “I know. I’m sorry. We’re trying.”
We hadn’t talked about Mr. Suit since leaving Breakers the night before, but it was pretty obvious we were at a dead end. I kept thinking about Imperium Fratrum, the name of the shell company, hoping it would shake something loose in my head, but so far it was, as the Bastards would say, a no go.
“What else did you find out?” I asked.
He hesitated. “You were admitted to Oak Hill. After you left Blackwell High.”
“I’m not talking about Oak Hill with you,” I said around the lump in my throat.
“Whatever you want, sweetheart.”
“It’s that one.” I pointed at my mom’s house, glad to have a distraction from the conversation. “The blue one with the maroon Toyota in the driveway. But don’t park in front.”
He continued past the house and parked the Lotus around the corner, then reached for the door.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Coming with you.”
“Um, no, you’re not. You’re waiting in the car.”