CHAPTER ONE

Runaway Girl

“I’m not sure if I should pity you or envy you,” Trinity said thoughtfully as we spied on the alumni garden party. From the balcony above, she eyed Christian's impeccable shoulders and smacked her tongue stud on her front teeth. “Remind me. Is it a good thing Christian Henderson is your dad?”

I sighed. “He's my legal guardian. That doesn't make him my father.”

“He may as well be for all the fun you can have with him. How long have you been living with him?”

I corrected her. I hadn't lived with him at all.

Leaning over the railing, I fixed my eyes on Christian. As I looked at his face, his mysterious face, I felt my resolve harden. My time with him was almost up. Once I turned eighteen and graduated from high school, he would cut me loose. I was almost finished grade eleven and the reality that I had to drastically change our relationship loomed over me.

It was time to stop doing what he asked. That, in itself, was going to be difficult. I took immense pleasure in doing exactly what he suggested. I took the classes he suggested, wore the clothes he thought looked best on me, reread his messages, and thought constantly of what would please him. The problem was, if I kept playing by his rules, he would keep me firmly within the boundaries he found the most comfortable.

Those boundaries did not please me.

I looked down on him working the crowd and thought of who he was and what I had learned during the past three years.

What did he look like? His hair was a wavy, tawny shade of blond. He kept quite shaggy until he swept it off his brow with mousse to expose his perfect widow’s peak. He could come off as boyish until his forehead was exposed, and then he looked like a man who could be suave or ruthless as the situation dictated. His eyes were hazel but never seemed exactly the same color as the time before. It was like his eyes didn’t know if they were green or brown or gray. Color didn't matter. They were his eyes and they could be any color as far as I cared. To me, he was made of perfect shapes: like the triangle of his collarbone, the lump of his Adam’s apple in his throat, the angle of his widow's peak, and the squareness of the back of his hand.

If his mood was right, I didn't even see the shapes. He had wonderful eyes for making me excited. Whenever he spoke, he made me feel like he was letting me into a world where only the two of us existed, promising a delicious closeness between the two of us.

Except it didn't last. He always went away.

The longest he had ever stayed with me for a vacation had been the time I was recovering from my final surgery. After that, the holidays were a week at the most. When we were vacationing, I was in paradise, but the time always passed quickly. Soon I was sent back to school, or summer camp, or something intended to enrich my life and keep me away from him.

Christian never hesitated to send me away.

I had to be protected. From what? You would think he was a playboy with mountains of women that had to be hidden from me. I knew he dated from time to time, but those fleeting relationships weren't what kept him from me. His work? He had long since moved along from his desk job in Edmonton. He was a director in charge of international marketing for a communication company in England. He liked his work and he was good at it, but that wasn't the clincher either. The problem was that it wasn't his only job.

The fact was, Christian Henderson wasn't his real name.

At the garden party, I watched him shake hands with my English professor. The façade that covered Christian’s face was perfect, like everything about him. It was a hair off the forehead night, where the crispness of his shirt paired with the white flash of his smile oozed wealth, education and worldly wisdom. His signature brand of luxury marked him as the best-dressed man in the room, even if he wasn't wearing the most expensive suit. It was the way he walked, the way he presented himself, and the way he gave away his attention. No one could buy or replicate his style because it wasn’t real. As I watched him, I didn’t see the flawless gentlemen everyone else saw. I only saw the conman who knew how to leave a good impression and wondered what I would exchange for half an hour of the kind of attention he gave others. He never looked at me like he wanted to fool me, charm me, or seduce me.

He was a liar and a gentleman. Everything he was doing, saying, was for my benefit. He had nothing to gain by sweet-talking the faculty. Even if he was a liar, I believed my father would not have been disappointed in his choice, but he was not Christian Henderson.

If he was not Christian Henderson, who was he? What was his real job?

I wished I knew.

Once, when I was staying at a hotel with him in New York, he accepted a phone call for Damen Cross. He didn’t realize until after he hung up that I overheard his conversation. I was fifteen then, and suspicious, so I read a few of his messages on his laptop. He had a unique operating system and unfamiliar programs. I found a request for him to go to Israel.

He was furious when he caught me. I was terrified when he slammed the laptop shut. For a split second, I thought he was going to hit me. He didn’t, but he sent me back to the boarding school that evening. Before he sent me away, he gave me an incredibly father-like lecture on snooping. I wouldn’t treat my father’s things that way, would I? I had no idea. I had no father.

On the plane, I was furious. Christian wasn’t my father and his imitation of him made me sick to my stomach. The thing was, he felt like he had to put me in a box where his ‘other lives’ didn’t affect me. There was no need for the partition. It didn’t matter to me what Christian had done or was currently doing in his double, or triple, life. Whatever power he had, he had used it to save my life. I knew the sacrifice had been too much. Though he did everything he could to stop his discomfort from showing, something was bothering him that had not bothered him before my operation. Maybe he owed money. Maybe he was running from someone. Whatever was happening, at fifteen years old, I didn’t know how to react.

The next time I heard from him, he sent me a letter, postmarked Liberia. I didn’t write him back, because I wasn’t sure how to proceed. I needed to know the truth about the way he lived his life, but he wouldn’t tell me. I didn’t see him again until Christmas when he took me to Paris and showered me with presents. He acted like himself and even apologized for being so angry in New York. I was probably just trying to check my social media? That was the moment I learned that in order to stay with him, I needed to refrain from asking questions, or lifting one finger to find out the truth. I loved him unconditionally and I needed to give him the freedom to handle whatever he had to handle without my interference. I cried like a baby to have him back… even if he lied to me constantly.

Since then, I learned to be discreet when I heard him referred to by another name. I let him think I hadn’t heard. It was easy. He wanted to believe I was ignorant. Both of us knew the truth would separate us. I had to play dumb if I wanted to stay with him.

So far, I’d heard him referred to as Christian Henderson, Damen Cross, Riley Fulks, and William Farris.

Trinity interrupted my thoughts. “Look,” she said, “my parents just walked in.”

“They look pissed.”

“They are.”

I glanced at her. “Are you getting expelled this time?”

“Probably not. It looks like dad came carrying his extra-heavy checkbook. See the bulge in his pocket? He’s gonna pay them off.”

“Didn’t he already pay for the gazebo in the park?”

“And the stone gardens,” Trinity admitted. “Those knuckleheads just don’t get the message. I don’t want to go to school here. I’ve said it a million times, but they’d rather go on holiday in the Mediterranean ten months of the year than play house with me. Why aren’t they worried about me going astray? I could get addicted to meth or crack, get an STI, or get an abortion. Pissy parents!”

“I still think you’re lucky. At least, they’re not dead,” I said absently, my conversation playing on repeat. I was on repeat because I was thinking about what I needed to do to get Christian’s attention. “Trinity, what do you think a girl would have to do to get booted out of this school on her first try?”

“What?”

“I have never been to the disciplinary office. What do you think I’d have to do to get expelled—no negotiation—first try?”

“Well,” Trinity said, rubbing her hands together. “The difficulty is hitting that magic number between really annoying the school board and involving the police. You could get thrown out if you made a bomb threat or set a fire in one of the chemistry labs, but do you really want to toy with getting a criminal record? Those old bats on the school board have dealt with so many wild ones that hardly any scam turns their heads. Believe me, I know.” She paused and looked at me with shrewd eyes. “But Beth-baby, if you wanted to get Christian’s attention by acting up, shouldn’t you have started already? We only have one year of high school left.”

“Yeah. It’s just that for some reason I always thought that once I graduated I’d get to live with him. Tonight, I realized that’s never going to happen. Once I finish here, he’ll ship me off to a university and phase me out of his life. I’m never going to get to spend any time with him.”

Trinity nodded. “I understand. There isn’t a girl in this school who doesn’t faint every time he picks you up. You should have called in a bomb threat when you were fourteen. They would have gone way easier on you.”

I rolled my eyes. “That’s the best advice you have?”

“No,” she said, grabbing my arm. “You could do the very first prank I ever pulled.”

I thought back. “That naked picture you painted of the chairman of the board? No, thanks! I don’t know how you kept your gag reflex down.”

It stung when she flicked my ear. “No, idiot. That was my first prank in high school. I’m talking about my very first, please-pay-attention-to-me, act of defiance. I pulled it so many times, my parents stopped reacting, but the first time I did it they were wetting themselves and I bet Christian would, too.”

“What?” I asked curiously.

“I ran away from school.”

“Now, that’s an idea,” I said nodding.

“Do you have money? How far away could you get?”

“I have money,” I hedged.

After I woke up healed in Mexico, consequences started mattering again, and the truth about my parents’ finances came forward. They were oceans deep in debt. After everyone was paid in full, there was a little money for me, but it was nowhere near the amount I would have needed if I was going to live in the luxury they had provided for me. Christian put that money away, and I wasn’t to touch it until I was an adult, but it was peanuts compared to the money he spent on me regularly. All the same, I did have Christian’s money in the form of a credit card. If I used it to pay for flights and accommodations, he would undoubtedly be able to trace me in a jiffy, but the idea wasn’t to run away to a place where he couldn’t find me. The idea was to run away to a place where he would come after me.

“You could give it a try.” Trinity winked and started down the stairs that would lead her to the reception. We were students and weren’t exactly invited, but Trinity didn’t let that bother her. She wasn’t going to miss the chance to see her parents, no matter the consequences.