We got through a solid hour of working through the project before Kennedy came home. She sat in the living room, reciting her whole day to Scarlett who “Yeah” and “Mm-ed” her way out of the conversation and then Wren came home, defeated yet happy from skating all day and we called it a night.
I may have gotten little from her side of the Tinzingate situation, but finally putting energy into our project felt good. We finally got a basis for the app, naming it Hard to Tell and working out how it would run realistically.
I’m desperate to get deeper into this, so I invited her over to my house today to continue working on it. It’s a dumb thing to do, allowing a Voss onto the property. But living with the boys is like a frat house. I know she’s been there a hundred times, but I want to impress her for some stupid reason.
I care about what she thinks of me. I care about what everyone thinks of me. The house I share with Miles and Xavier shows nothing of my true character. It’s messy, loud and it smells like BO. But I’m hoping that bringing her here will help me open up to her more and she’ll feel more comfortable to do the same.
It’s exactly 3:15 when she turns up outside the gates to the estate. She drove in her precious Bellezza Nera, and I buzz the monitor to open the gates and let her drive up. I watch through the security cameras as she steps out of her huge car in a red dress and black Louboutin heels.
There is no way she’s that dressed up to come and study with me. Unless she’s trying to impress me too. No, that would be crazy. She wouldn’t need to do anything to impress me.
I wait by the door for her to knock and when she does, I swing it open. I was wrong. The dress isn’t just red, it’s fucking scarlet. Like her name. The silk material is wrapped around every inch and curve of her body, hugging her frame like a corset. The dress falls halfway down her thighs, exposing her long tanned legs. The top part of the dress scoops into a cowl neck, covering most of her chest but leaves enough up to the imagination. She’s a few inches taller in those heels, but I’m taller, still towering over her.
“You gonna let me in or just stare some more?” she asks, peering up at me. Her brown eyes narrow and I can’t think of a dumb enough excuse, so I open the door wider and let her in.
“Do you want a tour?” I gesture towards the large black hallway. She walks behind me, and I look back at her as she admires the minimalist black and white paintings that are hung modestly on the walls.
“Why? So you can show off?” She scrunches her nose at the painting before looking at me, taking a sweep of my outfit. “I’m good.”
That’s fair. I can’t tell if she’s playing one of those games where she pretends she doesn’t care, or if she genuinely is not interested. It would be a waste of time anyway.
I’ve seen pictures of the Voss estate. It’s not bigger than ours, but that doesn’t matter when it seems like there’s is full of love and family and warmth. Real security. The kind of security that actually matters. Here, the sadness practically echoes off the bland walls, showing everyone who enters that there is no real life here.
Well, except for Mila who comes rushing towards me now, all golden fur and chub rubbing between my legs. Scarlett’s still beside me, her eyes scanning the walls and then down to Mila.
“Such a good girl, aren’t you?” I say, scratching her behind the ears. As the words are leaving my mouth, I look up to Scarlett and she’s looking down at me, almost smiling, more at Mila than me, but I take it as a win.
“Are you talking to me or the dog, Branson?” she asks, one of those lined dimples appearing on her cheek. Mila sniffs around her legs and Scarlett crouches a little, scratching her on the head before straightening. So she is a dog person.
I shrug and continue walking down the corridor, saying, “Not sure. Can’t figure out if you’re into the praise thing or not.”
She barks out a laugh. “Hopefully we’ll never know,” she says as she steps in to walk beside me. “What are we doing for the project today?”
“I think we have a good base idea down. Maybe we can start to work on expanding it. Like adding the finer details, you know?”
I bring us into one of the spare offices; a medium sized room with navy walls, an iMac on one of the desks, a black plush sofa against one wall. She took the seat at the desk, using the iMac to write up plans while I lounged on the sofa, using my notebook of ideas we’ve accumulated to form a more concise plan.
There’s not much talking while we work. Some people wouldn’t call it working together, but that’s exactly what we’re doing. We know what tasks we need to complete and she just does what she needs to do, while I do what I need to do. For once, this project seems to be something we actually agree on. I knew she would like my idea, but every time I look up, she’s typing away furiously, completely invested in what she’s doing.
I wonder if this is a good distraction for her. If this is what she needs to take her mind off everything going on with her family. That’s what numbers and spreadsheets do for me; they allow me to keep my mind focused on something that doesn’t contain emotions or words with real meanings. They just make sense together and when they don’t, it’s easy to find a mathematical solution as to how it went wrong. You can’t do that with people.
We’ve not spoken for another long stretch of time until Scarlett sighs loudly, leaning back in the chair as it creaks low beneath her weight. “I’m going to see if I can connect with a software developer. I think this could be a real app.”
“You think so?” I ask, sitting up straighter on the sofa. She nods, her eyes wandering a little. She must be tired. She’s been staring at that screen for almost two hours. Maybe we should take a break.
“Yes. It would help us get more credits too. I doubt anybody else has thought of this,” she explains. “I’ll call someone this weekend.”
“Yeah, that sounds good,” I reply, about to go back to writing but then a thought pops into my head. “Have you got any more leads on the stuff going on with your family?”
She raises one eyebrow, rolling in her lips once before pushing them back out. I know there’s something she isn’t saying and it’s getting harder to mention it casually. We’ve hardly spoken about it since the stakeout, and I don’t want her to think that us doing that was a onetime thing. I’m all in.
She swallows, looking out into the backyard that’s a forest of tall pine trees as she says, “I think I found the guy that was outside the store. I recognised him and I managed to identify an ID badge that matches the description.”
“That’s good news right?” I ask, sensing the hesitancy. From the way she got excited just from thinking about driving to the stakeout shows enough of her character. That excitement isn’t here anymore. Instead, in its place is worry and uncertainty.
“Yeah, I guess,” she says, turning back to me, her brown eyes finally settling on my face. “He owns a restaurant downtown, but I feel like it’s going to be another dead end. I just don’t want to waste my time.”
“Well, you won’t know if you don’t go,” I suggest. She nods, shrugging one shoulder. I thought we agreed to work together on this, but she still seems hesitant. She’s probably trying to dismiss the idea so I add, “I can go with you. I’m not busy.”
“What makes you think I want you to go with me?” she retorts with that annoying as fuck head tilt.
“I think previous events show what a good partner in crime I am,” I say proudly.
She laughs, the sound reverberating through my body. “Do you mean when you almost shit yourself?”
“You’re so fucking dramatic. We were fine,” she replies, still laughing. I shake my head at her, unsure as to when she became such a hurricane, practically begging for danger. “Fine. You can come. Only because I want to hear you scream again.”
“I didn’t scream,” I mutter, but taking it as a win anyway.
We go through another round of comfortable silence, except for the song she chose to play through the computer. ‘In My Life’ by the Beatles plays softly as we both work.
She’s stopped aggressively typing now and is instead sketching out a logo for the app while I work on the boring parts of creating an app. We’ve been working so quietly together, listening to The Beatles and Fleetwood Mac that I don’t even realise it’s raining hard outside until Scarlett gasps, snapping out of her trance.
“I haven’t been keeping track of time. I’m meant to be going to the Greyson Fauvel event today,” she explains, starting to pack away her things. Well that explains why she’s so dressed up.
“Oh yeah? I was going to go to that too.”
“Really?” she asks, taking a look at my outfit which is a pair of black baggy jeans and a white tee.
“Yes. I was invited.” That much is true. Rich boys in the industry send out invitations like their parents have told them to invite everyone to their birthday party. People of our status want the most of us there as possible to slowly build an army of little rich boys doing what they want. I was never going to go. I always get invited to shit like this, but it would be a waste of time. I have no idea why she wants to go there. There’s nothing good for her there. I’m just dying to spend more time doing anything that isn’t being caught up in my head. “I’ll come with you.”
She pauses what she’s doing. “What?”
“Yeah, I was going to go and you drove here so I might as well carpool with you,” I suggest casually. I already convinced her to let me go with her to that restaurant. Maybe I’m pushing it too far.
“And you want to go in my car?”
I make a face. “That’s exactly what carpool means. Why are you making this weird?”
“I’m not making it weird,” she says defensively, pinning her arms across her chest. The defiant look on her face lasts five seconds before she turns to look out the window as the rain pours harder. “It’s just..” She sighs and then adds, “It’s raining.”
She doesn’t look at me as she whispers, “I don’t like driving in the rain. I was going to think of an excuse to leave my car here and get an Uber and now you’ve ruined my plans.”
She’s embarrassed about not being able to drive in this weather, but I don’t know why. I get it. If this is something I have to do for her to chill out, I’ll do it.
* * *
It only took two lightning bolts to strike down for Scarlett to agree to let me drive her car. The rain is relentless. I changed out of my home outfit into black trousers and a white button down and of course, a black tie. I have gotten used to driving her car. It’s comfortable and is doing okay on the road, despite the rain. The Greyson Fauvel event is held at the same place every year, but I’ve never driven there from my dad’s house.
Unlike the drive to the jewellery store, she doesn’t have her leg propped up and is instead sitting with her legs crossed, slightly exposing the tan skin of her thigh. Frankly, it’s distracting.
All I can think about is what she would do if I placed my hand on her thigh? Would she let me? Would she let me slip my hand further and further up until she begs me to give her a release?
I’m doing fine until I take the wrong exit on the freeway, and I have no idea where we’re going anymore. The signal starts to become weak, and the GPS is left blinking in the same spot that we were in twenty minutes ago. Now, we’re on the edge of a forest, rain pouring heavily on the hood of the car as we both stare at the fucked-up GPS.
“Great. Just great,” Scarlett mutters angrily. She turns to me, her cheeks red with anger. “How did you manage to do this? You said you knew where we were going.”
“I did. I just got confused and I… spaced out for a few seconds,” I say, not sure if that’s helping my case.
“You can’t space out while you drive, Branson. It’s, like, rule number one of road safety,” she argues, tugging on the car door and opening it to the windy atmosphere. More rain pushes into the car by the wind, covering the console and hitting me in the face.
“Away from you,” she shouts, slamming the door. I flinch when the sound hits me, watching her strut away in that red dress, practically hypnotising me. I watch for a handful of seconds before opening my door and trying to catch up with her.
Fuck, she’s fast in those heels.
By the time I’m walking closer behind her, she’s rambling about how this is all my fault. For the most part it’s cute; watching her ramble and get flustered as he talks with her hands, stomping around like a child.
“Trust Evan Branson to get us lost in the middle of nowhere as he breaks my GPS. All I want is a fun night out, but someone has to go mess it up again,” she says, turning towards me quickly before continuing to walk deeper into the woods. I pick up the pace and I’m in front of her now, seeing how far she’s willing to go until we get lost again. “And because I’m the stupid one, I let him drive my car.”
I turn to her. Her outfit is drenched, sticking to her and her hair is soaking, her loose curls more defined as it drips onto her dress, looking blacker instead of dark brown and it’s falling crazily on her face.
I grip onto her shoulders as she continues to talk about how I messed everything up, shaking her lightly as raindrops pour down my face.
“Can you stop talking for two seconds and let me think?!”
She blinks at me. “You don’t have to shout at me!”
“I’m not shouting,” I say back. I’m definitely shouting now. “Can you just let me think? Please?”
She stares at me again, her mouth parted as the rain streams down her face. Slowly, she nods, and I turn my back to her, running my hand down my face. Fuck. How did I let this happen? I shouldn’t have let this happen. The woods are thick and muddy, it won’t stop raining and this girl keeps looking at me like she’s three seconds away from ripping my head off.
I turn back to Scarlett with no plan other than to get us back to the car and figure it out from there. She’s not looking at me, her eyes are focused on the ground and from the practised way I can see her shoulders rising and falling, I can tell she’s forcing herself to calm down, a technique I know all too well.
I inch closer towards her, reaching out my hand. “Hey, Scarlett. Look, we can-”
She slaps my hand away. “Don’t ‘Hey, Scarlett’ me, you dimwit!” she mocks as she pushes me in the chest. Hard. “You got us lost.” She pushes me again. “In the middle of fucking nowhere.” She pushes me again. “My shoes are ruined and I’m going to miss the whole event because…” She jabs a finger into my chest. “Of.” Another jab. “You.”
This time I force myself to breathe because she looks like she’s going to cry, and I don’t know what I would do if she cried right now. If I tried to comfort her in any way, she’d probably come straight for my dick.
“Let me carry you,” I say, the words out of my mouth before I can even register it.
“No.”
I sigh. “You’re pissed as it is, and I just want to go. So let me carry you, salvage your shoes and leave so we can get on with our day.”
“You’re right. I am pissed, but I don’t want you to carry me,” she retorts, throwing her hands up. God, she’s so stubborn. She turns back around, heading towards the car finally. I run my hand through my hair, feeling how soaked it is as I follow after her.
I didn’t realise how far out we were until we walked in angry silence for ten minutes and the car was still far away. She’s talking to herself again, sounding like an evil genius. Honestly, I want to laugh, but I don’t see how that will help our situation. I almost fall straight into her when she comes to halt and screeches.
“Jesus. What is it?” I ask, peering over her. She’s kneeling over now, hopping in the mud, holding onto her right ankle. “Hey. What’s wrong?”
“I think I twisted my ankle,” she groans, shaking her ankle out. It was about time. She places it down but the second it touches the muddy grass, she winces.
“You gonna let me carry you now, Angel?” I ask. She looks up at me, rain streaming between her brown eyes and she nods. It’s barely noticeable, but it’s something. I crouch down in front of her, already at peace with the fact my shoes and pants are ruined. “Get on my back.”
She huffs, mumbling about how this is the last thing she wants to do, but slowly, she eases her thighs around me until I can feel her everywhere.
Even though we’re both soaked with rain, her skin is still warm as she wraps her arms around my neck and settles her thighs around my back. We’re definitely crossing some sort of invisible line here, but I need us back in the car and away from these cursed woods.
“You good?” I ask, starting to bring myself up from the ground. She tightens her arms across my neck, linking her hands together.
“Never been better,” she mutters into my neck, and I shiver. As I stand, I instantly grip the underside of her thighs, securing her on to me as best as I can. Her skin is just so…soft. I fucking hate it. Actually, no. I don’t hate it. I just hate the way it makes me feel so out of control of my own body and mind. She’s not even doing anything and it’s messing with me. How is that even possible?
I managed to walk us to the car, trying so hard not to focus on the way that nearly every part of her was touching me. Having her touch me like that was just maddening. Thrilling.
“Do you have wipes or something in here?” I ask when she’s sitting in the passenger seat. The door is open, rain still pouring as she holds her heels in her hand, her right foot crossed over her lap.
I round the other side of the car, searching through her glove box to find some wipes. When I get back to her side of the car, she’s trying to tend to her ankle, twisting it in all different positions. I’m not a doctor, but I’m also not an idiot. It looks swollen, it’s got mud all over it and she isn’t impressed with it either.
I hand her the wipes. “Here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to clean these, and I’ll check out your ankle. Deal?”
She nods, retrieving them and starting to clean off her heels. I’m surprised she didn’t put up more of a fight about it, but I think we’ve got to the point where we’re both too tired to even fight it anymore. I’m going to help her and she’s going to let me.
Her feet aren’t particularly big, but they just feel like they are when they are right in my face. Her toes are painted red, matching her dress and there’s a line around the top of her foot from the imprint of the heel shape.
Gripping onto her ankle lightly, she winces, pausing her scrubbing and I mutter a ‘Sorry’ in response. I don’t know what possessed her to go out in the rain and try and run off from me because all she got out of it was a fucked-up ankle and dirty shoes. I put pressure on the spot I can tell is sore and I pinch one of the wipes from her and clean off her ankle. Cleaning it off has probably made it look worse because now it looks even angrier. I’m still staring at her foot when I hear her shoes landing in the backseat.
The rain has slowed now, and it doesn’t feel like we have to shout just to hear each other. She peers down at me, swatting her hair from her face.
“What’s the verdict? Am I going to survive, Doc?” she asks, yanking her foot from my grip and setting it down in front of her across her lap. I take it as a sign to back up from her, so I stand, leaning on the open car door.
I tut, shaking my head. “No, I think I’m going to have to amputate your leg,” I joke, and she frowns, tilting her head to the side. “You’ll be out of service for a few days.”
“Yep. No strenuous activities for you.”
“No strenuous activities,” she mocks, her voice an octave higher than her usual one.
She nods thoughtfully and I swear I catch the exact second her eyes light up with excitement. “What about sex? Missionary only.”
I shake my head. “Especially not that.”
She sulks. “So, what am I supposed to do? Just sit around all day and wait for it to magically heal?”
“I’m sure you can find other ways to entertain yourself,” I whisper.
I do the dumbest thing I could possibly do and brush her hair behind her ear. It was wet and sticking to her face, driving me insane that she hadn’t removed it. It was only fair for the common good to sort it out before my OCD had a field day. I’ve already touched her enough as it is today, but one more time won’t hurt.
Our gazes lock as she realises what I just did. She tenses at the contact, her eyes going wide for a second. It’s such an unnecessarily intimate move. I drop my hand, clearing my throat.
“We should go,” she whispers. “I don’t want to miss out on anything more than what I’ve already missed.”
I blink at her, pulling back. “You still want to go to that?”
“I didn’t wear this outfit to just sit around at home. You can drop me off at the club and I’ll Uber home and pick up my car tomorrow.”
“Fine, but I’m going to come in with you. I can’t have my project partner breaking her leg. You’ll be even more unbearable to work with,” I say, my pathetic excuse to stay close to her and keep her from getting herself into trouble.
