Harleigh
“Hey, I thought I’d find you up here.” Celeste joined me on the roof terrace, choosing the egg-shaped chair. “How are you feeling?”
“Will you believe me if I say fine?” My brow quirked up, and she chuckled.
“Nope, but I won’t tell if you won’t.”
“God, I love it up here.” A sigh escaped me.
It was the only place where I could breathe. The highest point in the house with an incredible view of Old Darling Hill. The lights of the town twinkled in the distance, like the stars winking above us.
“I think you’d live up here if you could.”
She wasn’t wrong.
The house on the edge of Old Darling Hill was practically palatial with its gated access, long winding driveway, and perfectly tended lawns. It reminded me of a small-scale White House, fronted with pristine alabaster columns and rows and rows of symmetrical windows. It was grand and beautiful and the epitome of the American dream.
But it wasn’t my dream.
Instead, it was a nightmare I’d found myself trapped in. A warped reality where I was supposed to forget about my Darling Row upbringing.
I shut down those thoughts. It never did me any good going back to that time of my life. Those memories.
I wasn’t that girl anymore.
My life was with my father and his wife Sabrina now and their children: my half-sister Celeste and her brother Max. Michael was my guardian, this mansion my prison.
“Are you ready for school on Monday?”
“I don’t think I’ll ever be ready,” I admitted.
Celeste made it easy. Too easy sometimes. I liked her a lot. She was kind and funny and she didn’t take herself too seriously, which was a small miracle given that she was half Michael Rowe and half Sabrina Delacorte. But their icy cold genes had obviously skipped their firstborn, passing Celeste and planting themselves firmly in Max. He was barely sixteen and one of the meanest kids I’d ever met.
And I’d gone to a school full of mean kids before being ripped from my life and implanted here.
“DA isn’t so bad, you’ll see.”
DA: Darling Academy, my new school starting Monday.
Celeste gave me a reassuring smile. “At least I can show you around. And I’m sure Nate will be happy to—”
“I’d rather not talk about Nate Miller.”
He’d been one of the first people to approach me at the mixer last month with his smug smirk and cocky attitude. It was my first ‘appearance’ at one of my father’s events. What a disaster that had been.
“You mean you aren’t fooled by his dashing charm and riveting conversation?” She rolled her eyes playfully. “The guy is a douchebag.”
“Kind of? He tried to feel me up the first time we met.”
“Is that why you stabbed him with the fork?”
“I didn’t stab him… it slipped.”
“Slipped, right.” The corner of her mouth twitched. “You’re so bad, Harleigh.”
I managed a small smile in return. It wasn’t like I went out of my way to be bad. But these people were… so not my people. Celeste was okay. She wasn’t driven by how much money daddy had in the bank or who was wearing the latest designer label. She was normal. Well, as normal as you could be when your parents were filthy rich.
“I wish you were a senior too.” I let out a heavy sigh, staring out at the view. The Rowe estate had a natural perimeter marked by the tree line. I’d spent weeks dreaming of escaping over the fence and making a run for it. Of course, my father’s housekeeper and security guy had been briefed to ‘keep an eye out for me.’
Everyone knew I was a flight risk. That one way or another, I was determined to leave this place. But that was before… Now it was different.
I was different.
At least, that’s what everyone thought. That's what I let everyone believe.
They thought I’d been fixed. That the months and months of pills and therapy and time had cured me.
“We might have a class or two together. I’m taking some AP classes.”
Celeste was smart, like MENSA smart. But she didn’t flaunt it. In fact, she tried everything she could not to draw attention to the fact she was basically a teenage genius.
“I can’t believe we have to wear a uniform,” I said.
“It isn’t so bad. At least you won’t have the headache of deciding what to wear every morning.”
“I guess.” I got up and went to the glass balustrade, running my fingers along the polished chrome handrail. The balmy air kissed my skin as I tilted my face to the night sky.
For as long as I could remember I’d always loved the nighttime. There was something beautiful about when the world went to sleep, and darkness reigned. Even now, I felt more grounded once the sun had set than I did at any other time of the day.
Sabrina called me a night owl, but it was more than that—the strange affinity I had with the dark.
“It’s late. I should probably turn in before Mom comes looking for me. You’ll be okay?”
“I’m fine. Go. I’d hate for Sabrina to catch you up here again.”
“Ignore her. We’re sisters.” Celeste shrugged. “Nothing she does or says is going to change that. I want you here, Harleigh.”
“Thanks.” My smile didn’t reach my eyes. It never did these days.
“See you tomorrow. Good night.”
“Night.”
Celeste went inside, leaving me alone. Sometimes, I didn’t know what I would do without her. She was the only thing that made this—being here in this strange place—bearable. God only knows, it wasn’t being reunited with my father. If you could even call it a reunion. I’d barely seen the man since returning from Albany Hills a month ago.
I exhaled a long breath, gripping the handrail tighter. Sometimes, I sat up here and stared out into the distance, trying to see past the trees and the town, all the way past the reservoir right to Darling Row, the trailer park where I’d grown up.
If this house was the epitome of the American dream, The Row was the place dreams went to die. But it had been more to me than this place ever would be.
It had been home.
And I knew why. It always came back to him.
With Phoenix by my side, it hadn’t felt that bad at all.
Phoenix Wilder.
My best friend. The boy who had owned a piece of my heart since I was old enough to know what giving your heart to a boy meant.
There was a time I’d thought he would be mine. That we’d survive The Row, life, together. But that was the funny thing about dreams… they either came true, or in my case, they went up in flames.
Phoenix Wilder had been everything to me.
Until he wasn’t.
Until he’d left me when I’d needed him most.
And now he was like everything else in my life that had existed before my father brought me here.
Gone.
“Harleigh,” Sabrina’s usual harsh greeting made me bristle, but I swallowed the urge to bite back at her as I joined her in the kitchen.
I’d tried it once, in the early days of being here, and she’d almost cracked enamel, gritting her teeth at me like a caged animal.