Under His Influence (Love Under Lockdown Book 27) by Jamie Knight (best books to read for young adults txt) 📕

Who knew how things would turn out, being that this was an unprecedented pandemic?

I was really stuck in a dilemma now, about how to best get home.

Why the hell hadn’t I brought my car?

A cab was out of the question, as were the buses. None of them would be running because of the lockdown.

I didn’t have any friend close enough to accept all the weirdness of this situation, at least not without question or judgement.

No, there was only one person I could think of to call in such a situation. I just hoped she was back from back East.

“Hey sis, what’s good?” my sister Stephanie asked as soon as she picked up my call.

“Not much at the moment,” I confessed, trying to sound upbeat about it.

“Oh no, what happened?”

“It’s kind of a long story. Are you back in town?”

“Yeah, for a couple of days now. Where are you?”

“At a friend’s house,” I replied lamely. “Are you sure you want to break the lockdown?”

“Do you really think I give a shit when my baby sister is in trouble?”

I couldn’t really tell Stephanie where I was, due to not knowing, myself, but I remembered seeing a street number on the way in, which had had a gas station near it. I gave her that one small piece of identifying information about my location and apologized that I didn’t know of anything more.

“I’ll find it,” she said. “Just get your ass down there, and I’ll be right there.”

I wanted to thank her, but she’d already hung up. I knew the distance she had to travel to get to me was unknown, so it was best if I got going, anyway.

Stephanie was waiting for me when I arrived, trudging down the hill like I had iron in my pockets. It really was a lot longer than I had first reckoned.

“You look like shit,” she told me.

“Thanks, I feel like it.”

“Let’s get you inside.”

“Okay.”

“When did you get this agreeable?” Stephanie asked, with an acid edge.

“That’s another long story.”

I didn’t feel like going home. It was silly, but I didn’t want to be alone. I was still too shaken up.

There were so many questions running a full-on riot in my mind that I was at risk of getting a headache. Stephanie’s sister-sense must have been running at full power, though, luckily.

She took me to her place, making sure to lock the door behind us. She was on the tenth floor, so I felt perfectly safe.

“You look like you could use a drink,” she told me.

“Actually—”

I almost said, ‘I don’t drink any more,’ but something about the way Stephanie looked at me made me reconsider uttering those words.

Aside from our parents, she was the one I trusted most to know what was best for me. Even better than I did, sometimes.

She had known me my whole life, after all, and I wasn’t always known for making the best decisions. Like when I died my hair pink because I thought it would look cute, or when I went camping alone in the back country, blissfully ignorant about how to bear-proof a campsite.

Both of which pale in comparison to my choice of major. Dad was pretty cool about it, but Mom actually cried, certain I would end up starving on the street. If only she knew about my current circumstances— but of course, I couldn’t tell her. I could only tell Stephanie.

“Okay, spill,” Stephanie said, putting a glass of red wine for each of us on the glass coffee table.

“I’m not really sure where to begin; it’s kind of a twist.”

“The beginning is usually a good idea.”

“Okay, well remember when I was 12?”

“Going back that far, are we?”

Stephanie always did have a knack for cutting through some bullshit. It was a characteristic that was seen as admirable in an adult but that got her sent to the principal’s office a lot as a kid.

“I just meant when I first discovered Suspicious Activity Records.”

“Oh yeah, that label started by that musician you liked.”

“Seth Black, from Autumn Corrosion.”

“I see,” Stephanie said, looking pointedly at my T-shirt.

“Yeah, that’s even more of a coincidence than it looks.”

“Do tell.”

I wanted to, but I was having trouble finding the words, and not just because of embarrassment on account of the sexcapades I’d embarked on with Seth.

“Well, about two weeks ago, I got the opportunity to intern at the record label, and it was great for a while but then, things changed.”

“Oh my God, he didn’t hurt you, did he? Are you still a virgin?”

“No, but he didn’t hurt me. He is really great, or at least I thought he was. That’s where it gets confusing.”

“Take your time, hon,” she said, taking my hand.

“It was really cool at first. I shadowed him during his days at the studio for a week: listening to demos, going to shows, sitting in on recording sessions. I really learned a lot. He was never remotely inappropriate, going out of his way to not even touch me, even accidentally.”

“Okay, I won’t murder him yet.”

“Then the lockdown came, and he said he wanted to keep things going. He invited me stay at his house, so he could mentor me. I want to make it clear: I wanted to go. He is really sexy, and I’ve always had a thing for him. The fact that he might be even slightly interested in me made me giddy. Everything was normal the first day. The morning of the second day, after breakfast, he made a sort of proposal.”

“Not a wedding proposal, I assume.”

“No, but there was a jewelry box,” I said dreamily.

“Did it have that in it?”

Stephanie pointed to the collar, which was still around my neck. That was no doubt the same way that the crazy lady who had waltzed right into Seth’s house had known what was going on between us.

“Yeah,” I admitted.

“I think I’m starting to get the picture.”

There was no judgement in her tone, just concern that I was alright. I hadn’t had time to really check.

“What happened then?” she asked.

“A