“Listen,” I say, stopping to turn and face him. “I’m sure you’re a very nice person. And it seems like you actually care about Mr. Rochester. And you’re this massive heartthrob guy that most girls would kill to meet. But he doesn’t need you to protect him from me.”

“Is that what you think I’m doing?”

“I get that I’m a broke nobody, so you think I’m after him for his money.”

“It would be one way to earn a living.”

“Or maybe you think I want to get some story that I can sell to the tabloids. Which is crazy. I mean for one thing, I’ve signed a nondisclosure agreement. For another thing, that’s just mean.”

“It’s mean,” he says, repeating me.

“I wouldn’t do that even if I hadn’t signed an agreement.”

“Maybe I am a little jaded. It’s been a while since I heard someone who wouldn’t do something for money or advancement because it was mean.”

“Both you and Mr. Rochester are jaded,” I tell him, crossing my arms.

“It’s possible I feel guilty about some of the hard partying he did. I hooked him up with that scene. I’m from here.” He nods across the water. “We moved to California together. He lived in San Francisco and I lived in LA, but we’d hang out together most weekends. He worked eighty-hour weeks Monday through Friday and he needed some connection to Maine.”

I’m quiet, hoping he’ll continue. It’s a surprise to me that he knew Beau before he got rich and famous. I suppose that means he knew Beau’s brother, too.

He looks up at the sky. “Then Emily married Rhys. It changed Beau. Hardened him. He got into the party scene. Sex. Drugs. The whole thing.”

“Until Paige. He doesn’t do that now.” I suppose he still has sex, if you count what we did in his study. Which Mateo probably does. I’m not going to mention that part, though.

“I wasn’t trying to protect him from you,” Mateo says, sounding grim. “I was trying to protect you from him. You seem nice. And innocent. You don’t know what kind of man he is, what kinds of secrets he has. You should walk away.”

Part of me wants to ask about the secrets.

That would prove his point, though.

“I hope I’m nice, but I’m not as innocent as you think. I’ve seen bad things in the world.”

Bad things happened when my mother died of an overdose when I was five. I found her on the floor in the kitchen and waited for hours for my dad to come home.

My dad had his heart attack at work.

He kissed me on the forehead one day before school and never came back.

Bad things happened in foster homes for years.