“Not glaring. Just…staring. It’s all about intent.”
“Well, you intend for it to give you back the baby it stole from you. Or something similarly evil,” she finishes at my raised eyebrow.
I switch legs and directions, bending over my knee.
He erased our messages.
The conversations starting that first night outside Velvet when he appeared out of nowhere and stole my breath.
The thinly veiled exchanges while we tried to keep our attraction under control.
Then the heat that blossomed after Fall Ball when we stopped denying that he was the man whose face I saw every time I closed my eyes, the man whose touch I dreamed about.
They’re all gone, and a part of me is gone with them.
I should erase him from my memories and go back to only being worried about labs and grades and extracurriculars and friends.
After this past weekend in New York, I didn’t think I could feel worse.
Except the look on Sawyer’s face when he pointed out that I was closer to his dad than I let on wasn’t only accusatory, but betrayed.
Maybe I downplayed my interactions with Lancaster because Sawyer knew a different man than I did.
“When you heard the rumor, how long did it take you to decide it was true?”
I want to believe him, because that would make it possible that what we found in stolen moments between classes, in the margins of our life, in the places we were never supposed to meet, was real. That in my flaws and insecurities, he saw not only possibility, but treasure.
A tiny piece of my bruised heart clings to that possibility. I want to be that—real. Ready for the world.
The way he asked the question, as if he’s hiding something still, haunts me.
Not that it matters.
He deleted our messages, our entire history, like it meant nothing. He doesn’t trust me to keep our secret. He wants to tie up every loose end.
Kat comes out of the bathroom, a hot pink towel wrapped around her. “I have something to help, hang on. I’m working on some new crafts.” She starts toward the kitchen, where there’s now an entire cooling drawer for sex toys.
“Thanks, but I don’t need a distraction. I’m already heading home tonight.”
“Since when?”
“Since I realized I left some textbooks there I need for when school starts up again next week.”
My phone vibrates on the table.
“You can’t stop answering phones,” Jules contends. “It’s going to be a long, difficult life.”
So I reach for it.
“Olivia Barclay please,” the woman says.
“This is her,” I say.
“We’ve been trying to reach you but evidently had the wrong contact information. I’m not sure if you’re aware, but Albert Lancaster passed a month ago. And he included you in his will.”
I press a hand to the vein in my forehead. “You’re joking.”
“Not a joke.”
My hand tightens on the phone, my gaze flying to my roommates.
What? Kat mouths.
“I can’t do this right now. I’m sorry,” I say, wrapping my sweater around me as I pace the room.
“But—”
I hang up.
“What the hell was that?” Kat asks.
I round to the couch. “Lancaster left me something in his will. I don’t know what it is.” I picture the shelves of books lining his office. Maybe he wanted me to have some of the volumes he liked pointing to.
“I had a great aunt I never met leave me money,” Jules goes on. “It was weird, but she survived a stroke and two husbands and eventually died loaded at ninety-seven surrounded by chihuahuas. I’m not gonna tell her what to do after she’s dead.”
Kat leans in. “If it’s his collection of mothballs, you say a nice prayer for him and toss them in the trash. If it’s something good… there are no strings attached.”
“But there are strings,” I say, flopping onto the couch. “Sawyer won’t understand.”
Right after I insisted to him we weren’t close, it turns out his dad left me something. He’ll take it as confirmation that I lied about my relationship with his dad.
I drop the phone on the floor beside me and Jules appears over me, arms folded.
“But if your hot-for-teacher thing is done, why does it matter what he thinks?”
The thought of staring at him three hours a week in class starting Monday, knowing I’ll never touch him or kiss him or have him call me Cherry in that tight rasp, is a fresh hell.
“You’re right. He doesn’t care about me. I was a girl he couldn’t have, and a convenient way to get off.”
Kat chuckles, and I cut her a look. “What’s funny?”
“You’re the least convenient way for him to get off.” Kat gets that psychologist look in her eyes. “He’s gotten a taste of you, and now he’s hungry. He’s decided he can’t get that anywhere else.”
It’s hard to imagine me as some seductress, but if it is true and I’m a habit Sawyer can’t kick...
I bounce off the couch and straighten my clothes. “Then I hope he starves.”
The leaves are turning, but as I drive home to New York, they’re a blur of red and gold I can’t process.
I glance at the texts to my sister.
Liv: How’s your week going? Didn’t see you in the social posts from the first pep rally of the year.
Emma: That’s because I wasn’t there.
Liv: ??
There’s been no other answer since, and I’m worried about her. She has friends, but no one to look out for her where Mom and Dad are concerned. Emma’s cheer captain won’t be happy about her skipping the pep rally, and Mom won’t be either.
When I get to the townhouse, I breathe in the familiar scent. “Hello?” I call, starting to set my bag on the floor before the habit kicks in that we don’t leave things on the floor.
“Olivia. There you are.” My dad stalks into the hall, pointing to his tie. “I hate these things and your mother always does them too tight.”
I drop the bag long enough to help him with his tie. “What’s going on?”
“It’s the annual fundraiser for youth services. My firm is a big supporter.”
My heart lifts a little. The business must be doing better than it was.
“Your sister’s date canceled at the last minute. She had better be ready in half an hour.” My mom breezes in, wearing an elegant black sheath dress and fixing on diamond earrings. “It’s bad enough we have an extra ticket.”
“It might be two extra tickets,” my father murmurs.
I finish making the perfect knot and brush past him. My sister’s door is shut but there is a pile of fabric in front of it on the floor.
I pick it up to find a shredded skirt, and a top with our high school’s team emblazoned on the front.
Still holding the fabric, I knock once on the door before turning the handle.
The room is almost as familiar as my own. All my sister’s favorite artsy things around, photos of her with friends, ones with me. One from camp with her covered in paint, which Mom hates. But the grinning girl in those pictures is nowhere in sight.