Author's Preface
There was a series of texts from an unknown number on Sevan’s phone when he checked it on the elevator up to Meika’s condo.
818-897-4211: Lara told me you are WORKING DIRECTLY WITH AVIS NOW??
818-897-4211: Stfu!! When the f were you gonna tell me??
818-897-4211: Seriously. SERIOUSLY!! This is what I get for being nice to you????
818-897-4211: This is Jaq btw
Why is she awake right now? Sevan wondered with a glance at the time. And how did she get my phone number? The elevator doors opened, and Sevan put his phone away. He swiped the keycard at the door to Meika’s apartment, then silently entered.
No sign of Farren. No sign of anyone. The only sound in the condo was the soft whirring of the ceiling fan in the living room, the whisper of palm leaves shifting under its breeze.
Sevan moved to the door to the guest bedroom and lowered his hand silently to the doorknob.
And suddenly the fan wasn’t the only noise in the apartment.
It was quiet—barely audible through the door at the end of the hallway: whimpering.
It sounded like a child. An electrifying sensation swept through Sevan’s body—a kind of panicked protectiveness that hadn’t been triggered since the times he woke to Lacey sobbing middle of the night in their mother’s apartment.
He dropped the duffel. One step, then two, he moved closer to the door at the end of the hallway.
Another sound came through the door.
Heart racing in his chest like it was on the verge of imploding, Sevan touched the doorknob to Meika’s bedroom.
TV. Someone’s phone. The sound could be from a video.
Or Meika could be making it.
Sevan turned the doorknob, then froze again.
What if that sound wasn’t distress? What if it was a whimper of a very different nature? Sevan’s eyes moved automatically toward Farren’s door.
They shouldn’t be. They’d better not. That wasn’t the reason Meika had given Sevan his car keys and suggested he leave for a while, was it?
Sevan soundlessly opened the door a tiny crack.
The lights were off, but there was enough light coming from the large window to see that Meika was alone on the bed, and no one else was in the room.
He’s just dreaming, then. And this is not my pony parade, Sevan heard in his head. He took a step backward—a moment before another weak sound came from the bed.
Sevan’s fingers tightened on the doorknob. “Meikhyel.” He could hear Meika breathing—distressed, uneven. “Meika—” He opened the door wider and took a single step into the room.
A tiny blue light flashed through Meika’s loose hair. His face was turned away from Sevan.
Bluetooth. Sevan stepped to the bed and froze. No physical contact. That was the rule. And Sevan had just found evidence of where Lacey was two days ago. He couldn’t leave LA, now. “Meikhyel.”
Nothing, just his continued breathing. Another hushed whimper.
He can’t hear me. Sevan reached out, put a single finger to Meika’s temple, and lightly brushed his hair back. He flicked the Bluetooth earphone out of Meika’s ear.
“Meikhyel.” And before he could retract his hand, Meika’s shot out and struck Sevan across the face. Hard. Far harder than any demented resident at The Adaline had ever hit him.
Sevan was still reeling when Meika grabbed his shirt collar and pulled him back. “ Jebal, ” Meika breathed. “Jebal. ” Whispered so breathlessly, Sevan did not immediately recognize the word.
That was not Mandarin.
A completely different kind of shock wiped Sevan’s mind clean of everything else. Body half frozen, he reached out and touched Meika’s hand on his shirt. His fingers brushed the underside of Meika’s wrist. “M-Museun il iss-eoyo? Gwaenchanha.” And that was the first time Sevan felt it—the texture across Meika’s right wrist where the ink covered. Little bumps. Small, parallel ridges. Scars.
Meika’s eyes went wide. They fixed into Sevan’s through the darkness. The look on Meika’s face left Sevan fully paralyzed. His eyes, his parted lips. A feeling shot through Sevan’s chest that he didn’t know how to react to.
Meika finally blinked, and a tear darted down his face and dripped straight off his chin. “What—What?” He released his grip on Sevan and stared up at him two seconds longer. Hesitantly, his hand lifted to his ear, and he removed the other blinking earphone. He seemed to finally notice the tear track across his own face, and he raised his hand and wiped it. The silver band on his middle finger caught the dull light for a moment.
Sevan touched his own cheek where it was still burning from the slap and took a step back from the bed. He watched as Meika sat up and pressed himself to the headboard. Their eyes met.
“Do you speak Korean?” Sevan whispered.
Those dark eyes searched him for a moment. Meika raised his hand slowly to his forehead. “No. No, I didn’t understand a word of what you said.”
Sevan bit his tongue. At first. And then he didn’t. “You said please. You said ‘please’ in Korean. ‘ Jebal.’ Like you were going to beg for something. You used it with a perfect inflection. Like you grew up hearing, it at the very least. If you didn’t actually grow up speaking it.”
There was a long silence.
“I need an Advil,” Meika whispered. He stood up off the bed and started unsteadily for the door. Like he still wasn’t completely awake, he walked out into the hallway and stopped in front of Farren’s room. He scraped a cascade of hair back away from his face, then raised a fist to the door and knocked on it loudly.
There was movement within the room. A few seconds later, the door opened, and Farren appeared, blinking against the hallway light. “Callisto…?”
“Can I have an Advil?”
“Um…okay.” Farren glanced groggily over his shoulder. “You okay?” He lifted his hand toward Meika’s face, but didn’t touch him. He turned and disappeared into his room.
“Yeah, it’s just a headache.” Meika glanced at the floor. “Hey, can I have two, actually?”
Farren reemerged with a key set. He squinted at Sevan for a few seconds, then started for the living room.
Sevan followed like a shadow behind them. He stopped and watched as they disappeared around the corner to the kitchen.
It was in the locked kitchen cabinet, Sevan gathered by the sounds he was hearing. Advil. They locked up Advil in this home, and Meika had to ask permission for it.
“There’s two,” Farren said.
Meika reappeared from around the corner and started back toward Sevan and the hallway. He had two individually wrapped Advil packets in his fingers.
“Callisto.” Farren caught his shoulder, stepped back out of view for a few seconds, then produced a glass of water.
Sevan watched as Meika tore open the packets and swallowed the little red pills under his bodyguard’s supervision.
So he wouldn’t save them and do something harmful to himself with an acquired collection. Was that the reason? Was Farren aware of the full extent of Meika’s self-destructive tendencies? Was his self-destructive behavior real, purposeful? Was it the real him, underneath this false shell he wore? Like a hermit crab.
“You good?” Farren asked softly.
“Yeah. Yep.” Meika handed back the glass.
But Farren reached out and touched his face before he took the glass. A small caress, sliding dark hair out of Meika’s face. “Were you crying?” Farren’s voice dropped still further in volume. His eyes lifted discreetly toward Sevan, and Sevan quickly looked off in a different direction.
“No. Why? Were you?” Meika smirked, shrugged, then chuckled softly.
Farren said nothing for several seconds. “What were you two doing?” He glanced again in Sevan’s direction.
Meika glanced too. “My stupid ass woke him up first.” Those dark eyes met Sevan’s for a moment. “He was like, ‘what the fuck do you mean, your Advil’s locked up?’ So I figured he probably doesn’t have a cabinet key.”
He lies so easily, Sevan thought faintly. He lies like that to the person he lives with. If there was anything going on between Meika and his bodyguard, it wasn’t built on trust.
Farren said nothing.
“Can he have one, actually?” Meika made a small, casual gesture over his shoulder to Sevan. “A key?”
What for? Sevan immediately wondered. He accidentally met eyes with Farren.
“You’ll have to ask your parents about that,” Farren answered finally. He pushed away from the island counter and herded Meika back toward his bedroom.
His parents? He’s twenty-five. But someone was mandating Meika’s restrictions. And the record label and management company that Farren, the chief enforcer, was contracted with, was owned by Meika’s parents.
Was that the deal? Meika either abides by the rules or gets dropped by the record label his parents own?
“Okay, enough touching,” Meika decided with a flick of his shoulders. He passed an annoyed glance at Farren, then turned it on Sevan before showing himself to his bedroom.
“Montego,” Farren began. He was still squinting, voice rough with sleep.
And Meika turned around like a gunshot had gone off. His dark eyes darted up at his bodyguard, then at Sevan.
“No physical contact, Montego,” Farren said in a deadpan voice. He didn’t seem to have noticed Meika’s reaction. He didn’t see the uncertain eye contact Meika gave Sevan. How his lips moved in silent pronunciation of Sevan’s last name.
He didn’t know, Sevan realized with an itch crawling up his neck. He had any and every chance to gather it, ask, hear someone else calling me by my last name… He looked up distractedly at Farren, then double-took the bodyguard. Shit, does this guy think we hooked up, too? Then: Does he think we hooked up just NOW?
The soft click of a door closing came through the silence, and Sevan glanced over his shoulder to see Meika’s door was shut.
Farren gave Sevan one last look, then turned and disappeared into his bedroom.
Sevan was left staring blindly at his sister’s duffel, lying on the floor where he had dropped it in front of the guest bedroom.