The Darkest Secret: A New Adult Romance Novel Read Online Free

hand. For the first time I see her full face. She has wide, high cheekbones that perfectly balance her jaw. Her eyes are deep set and frightened. "Where's Esteban?" she says, with a kind of breathless desperation that makes me afraid for her.
    "He's moving on,” I say. “Got a new job. I’m replacing him."
    Amber closes her eyes like she’s been gut-shot, her hand on her ribs below her breasts. She draws her breath in a long, shuddering gasp and then sinks back onto the tiles. Her feet are still in the water; she’s the one making the ripples. She’s shaking that hard.
    I don’t think. I should have thought twice, but I’m here to protect her, right? I lean over her. For a moment she’s looking right up at me and I see her eyes are blue. She’s incredibly pale, like one of those Goth kids who never opens the drapes.
    "Are you okay?" It was just a touch on the shoulder. That was all. I swear.
    I’ve never heard a woman scream like that before or since. And I’ve heard a lot of screaming women. My female relatives are not what you’d call cool-headed. But the sound that comes out of her is just...panic. Total fucking terror. Like she can barely force the air out of her lungs she’s so frightened.
    She leaps away from me like I’m on fire. I hold my hands up where she can see them. Holy shit. What the hell happened to her?
    She draws in another couple of shuddering breaths, closes her mouth. The effort of breathing through her nose makes her nostrils flare.
    “I’m sorry,” she says, swallowing. “I’m so sorry. I get these...um...it’s...ah....panic attacks.”
    “Oh. Shit. Sorry. Those can be nasty, right?”
    Amber nods. She doesn’t say anything, but she doesn’t need to. Her eyes say No shit, Sherlock .
    “Is there anything I can do?” I ask.
    For a moment she shakes her head, her long hair swaying, but then there’s a different light in her eyes, a kind of calculation, maybe. “This is gonna sound so stupid,” she says, and I realize why I couldn’t place her accent. I was expecting her to sound British like her Dad, but she’s all American. “Could you get me some cigarettes?” she asks.
    Huh. I’m sure I heard somewhere that nicotine increased the heart rate. Last thing you’d need during a panic attack, surely? “Do they...help?” I ask.
    She looks at me in weary desperation for a long moment. “I’m crazy,” she says, like it explains everything from the Big Bang onwards. “Crazy people love cigarettes.”

Chapter Three
    Amber
    I never meant to study in California. When I applied for colleges I was barely grown out of my 'L.A. Sucks' phase. I thought it was a shithole, a whiny enclave of self-regarding morons who pissed away their money on flotation tanks and plastic tits and terrible movies about dogs. My problems were the kind of rich-kid problems that most other people would kill to have, but I was too young and dumb to see that.
    From the age of about twelve I was enrolled in an exclusive private school, where we were allowed to wear our own clothes and curse and cut classes in the interests of 'free expression'. We were encouraged to learn, but only about things that interested us, which meant there were a lot of classes devoted to that one girl's erotic My Chemical Romance fanfiction, or weepy teenage poetry about black-winged angels and unfathomable pain.
    "I know it's not like people like us will ever have to work for a living," Everglade once said during one of these 'sessions' (that's what we called them – ‘classes’ smacked too much of structure) "But do you have to be so committed to turning us into morons?"
    That earned her a positive report for challenging authority, and pissed her off twice as much. Rebellion is no fun when it’s listed as an extra-curricular activity.
    She was one of the reasons why I chose to stay in California. The other was a shady but substantial impression that I might not be able to hack it anywhere else. Everglade got that. Her