Forbidden Vines

Chapter Four: The Number

"Sophia." Sebastian's voice drops, all the flatness gone out of it. "Give me the phone."

"It's nothing."

"You went white." He holds his hand out, palm up, steady in a way that makes it worse somehow. "Now."

I should say no. I know I should say no. My hands do it anyway, unlock the screen, hold it out to him like it weighs nothing, like it isn't the thing that just knocked the air out of my whole chest.

He reads it once. Doesn't react. Reads it again, slower, like he's checking he understood it right the first time.

"Who is this."

"I don't know."

"Sophia."

"I don't know his name, if that's what you're asking. I know what he is."

Something goes very still in his face. "What he is."

I look past him, at the vines, at the gray light coming up over the hill like it doesn't know anything bad is happening down here. Easier than looking at him.

"My dad borrowed money from people he shouldn't have borrowed money from," I say. "A long time ago. He put me down as collateral. I was thirteen."

Sebastian doesn't say anything. I make myself keep going before I lose the nerve.

"He never paid it back. He disappeared instead. Left me and my mom to deal with what he left behind." My voice does the thing where it goes flat and fast, the way it does when I'm trying to get through something before it can catch up to me. "They came to the apartment once. I don't really talk about the rest. My mom moved us three times in two years. I thought we'd finally lost them for good."

"And now they've found you again."

"Looks like it."

He scrolls up on the phone, and I watch his jaw tighten at whatever else is up there. I don't ask what. I already know, more or less. It's never just one message.

"How much," he says.

"What?"

"The loan. How much did he owe."

"Why does that matter?"

"Because that's the part I can fix." He says it like it's obvious, done with the rest of the conversation already. "How much."

I tell him. It comes out smaller than it should, considering what it's cost me for six years.

He doesn't flinch. Doesn't say anything comforting, doesn't reach for my hand, doesn't do any of the things I would've expected if I'd let myself expect anything at all. He just looks at the number on the screen like it's a fact he's filing away somewhere.

"You're not going to reply to this," he says. "Not now, not later, not if he sends fifty more. You block the number after I've read everything on here, and you tell me the second another one comes in from somewhere else. Understood?"

"You don't get to just."

"Understood?"

I hate that I nod. I hate it more that some small, exhausted part of me is relieved somebody else is making the decision, because I've been the only one making decisions for six years and I'm so tired I could lie down in the dirt between the vines and not get back up.

"Why do you even care," I say, because I need to know, because it doesn't fit with anything he's shown me since I got here. "Two days ago you told me not to touch anything I can't afford to replace. Now you're taking my phone and asking about loan amounts like you're my accountant."

"I don't care." He says it flat, no heat in it, which somehow lands worse than if he'd been cruel about it. "This isn't about you."

"Could've fooled me, again."

"If men like that show up here, that's not your problem anymore." He hands the phone back, and I take it because there's nothing else to do with my hand. "It's this house's problem. The harvest. The buyers. My father's name. I'd rather deal with a number than deal with that."

"Right." I fold my arms, mostly to keep them from shaking. "Cold. Very consistent of you."

"I told you the first night. It's not personal."

"You keep saying that like it's supposed to make me feel better."

"It's not supposed to make you feel anything." Something moves behind his eyes when he says it, quick, there and gone, the same flicker I keep catching and losing before I can name it. For half a second I think he's going to say something else. Whatever it is, he swallows it back down. "It's supposed to be true."

Rosa calls something across the yard about the second row, and the moment breaks apart before I can push at whatever he just almost let show.

"Harvest," he says, already turning, voice back to flat. "We're behind."

"You're just going to walk off. After that."

"What else is there to say?"

I don't have an answer for him, not one I'm willing to hand over on top of everything else he's already taken from me this morning. So I follow him down the row instead, boots sinking into wet dirt, phone burning a hole in my back pocket like it knows something I don't.

He doesn't look back at me once, not through the whole first row, not when Rosa hands me a pair of shears I don't know how to use, not when my hands are shaking too hard to make the first cut clean.

But he's close enough the whole morning that he never actually needs to look.