I’m frozen as I watch her drive away—stuck to the ground, stuck inside myself, stuck in her words.
There’s not much time to ponder it all before I notice a glimmer of glass on the sidewalk by my truck. A burst of awareness pushes through as I realize that glassbelongsto my truck.
The window is smashed out, and I stomp to the vehicle, cursing under my breath. I yank open the door, fog puffing from my nose. Fuck sake, I don’t even lock the doors. If anyone wanted to break in and take something, smashing a window was a little unnecessary.
A heavy rock lies on the seat, and I pick it up, turning it over in my hand. There are words written on it in black marker. I squint to decipher the writing, but some of the ink has worn off. It says something like,do you know what your princess has done?
What the hell? Who throws rocks with nasty messages on them through a window?
My heart begins to pump, and I glance up the road again. The same car that drove by while I was talking to Jess putters past again, the woman hunched over the steering wheel looking from house to house. They must be looking for someone’s place—a visitor.
I’m pulled back to the text message I got. It said something very similar. The message and the window. And Jess. The text came in right before she got here. The window around that time judging by the lack of snow in the truck the window wasn’t broken for long.
The moment it pops into my head, a small, disbelieving laugh forces its way out. There’s no way. Jess has zero ability to do something malicious like this. The girl feels incapable of keeping secrets.
But there is someone who does keep secrets. She’s pretty good at hiding them, too. I’ve been turning myself inside out, trying to figure out why Nova refuses to talk to her family and why she’s so goddamn jumpy around her phone. She must be here because she’s in trouble, and as I toss the rock back and forth between my palms, I wonder if trouble just caught up to her.
I jog down the steps back into the house and set the rock on the counter, ignoring Figgy when he arches his back and sprints into Nova’s room. She looks at me quizzically.
“What’s that?”
“Someone smashed my window. I think this was meant for somebody else. There’s a message on it about a princess.” I slide onto the stool again and watch her. There’s a minor blip in her breathing. Her eyes flicker wide, but the movement is so fast that most would miss it. Not me. Because I also move quickly to stifle my inner world. To keep my thoughts and feelings hidden from everyone, I have to stay ahead of them.
“Weird,” she says, grabbing the coffee pot and pouring more in, only holding eye contact for a second at a time. “Angry ex or something?”
“I don’t know, Nova. Is it an angry ex?”
She freezes at my accusing tone, and as she shrugs, it becomes clear that I’m right. “How would I know?” The coffee pot clanks against the counter as she sets it down a little too hard.
This feeling I’ve had all along—that she’s running from something—is validated at this moment. I want to push her, to tell her I know she’s in trouble, and to demand she explain all of it.
But I know she’ll lie to me. I know because it’s what I would do.
And that’s what Nova Forrester and I have in common.
We’re both really fucking great at pretending.