“I understand. Please… don’t make a thing out of this. He already apologized.”
My teeth ground together so hard my jaw hurt. “Yeah, whatever. I’ll see you later.” I stalked down the hall to my room at the back of the trailer. The same room I’d grown up in. Same peeling gray walls and mildew encrusted window. The view at least was better than some trailers, overlooking the edge of the trees leading down to the reservoir.
I grabbed a black hoodie off the back of my chair and a packet of gum off the desk and got the fuck out of there before Joe returned.
And I did something really fucking stupid.
Maybe even more stupid than what I was about to do.
If The Row made my chest constrict as if I was being crushed under a concrete block, being in Old Darling Hill made my skin feel stretched too tightly over my bones. My car, even though I tried to keep her clean and tidy, stood out against the pristine vehicles lining the streets and parked in big sweeping driveways.
I felt like an exhibit in a zoo as I cruised toward the other side of the neighborhood, the strange glances and pursed lips brushing up against me like shards of glass. People knew I didn’t belong here. Whether it was my car, my black hoodie, or inked skin, they took one look at me and branded me an outsider.
It bothered me more than it should, and the reason for that was one I didn’t want to admit to myself. One that was looming ahead as I drove toward the gated estate, taking a left turn down a dirt road that ran perpendicular to the fenced perimeter.
I’d been here before. More times than I was proud of. I knew if I drove a little further, there was a hole in the privet that gave me a clear view of the house and the driveway.
The house she lived in now.
I parked and ran my hands around my steering wheel, trying to ground myself. The first time I’d come here, I’d almost puked over myself. Not my finest moment but realizing I had lost Birdie to… to this was like a punch to the gut. Of course she’d chosen this place over The Row.
What normal person wouldn’t?
Except I never ever considered her as normal. She was… Fuck, it didn’t matter.
It was done.
We were done.
I needed to get that through my thick skull.
And yet—
Movement caught my eye through the privet and a flashy sports car rolled to a stop outside the house, followed by a Range Rover. A girl climbed out, the daughter if my research was correct. There was a son too. He was sixteen and his sister was a junior. And then there was Birdie.
Harleigh Wren Maguire.
The girl I’d always imagined would be by my side one way or another.
The guy climbing out of the sports car; him, I didn’t recognize. There was something about the way his eyes followed Harleigh, tracking her as she walked up to the house. My fingers went white as I clutched the steering wheel tightly as if it were the dude’s neck. She looked good despite the fucking awful blue and gray uniform they made the kids at Darling Academy wear. But seeing her like that, dressed up as one of them, standing on the steps of the huge fucking mansion, I wanted to roar at the world.
Harleigh wasn’t one of them. She wasn’t. But my eyes weren’t deceiving me. She was standing right fucking there. The same girl I’d always known and yet different somehow. I needed to get closer, to see her eyes. Her expressions. To hear her voice. It wasn’t something I wanted to do. It was something I needed to do. Like breathing air or drinking water.
Without it, I wouldn’t be able to rest.
To survive.
I wouldn’t be able to move the fuck on.
But I couldn’t exactly scale the fence and stroll up to them and ask for five minutes of her time. If she saw me. If they saw me…
No, I’d have to be patient. Bide my time and wait for the right moment.
They disappeared into the house and disappointment curled in my stomach, my mind running wild with scenarios about the guy. Who was he? How did he know Birdie? How well did he know her?
Anger bubbled in my chest, burning me up on the inside. I’d always thought of her as mine. Even when I hadn’t been old enough to realize what that word meant, the connotations it held.
Mine.
Mine. Mine. Mine.
Except she wasn’t mine now.
Maybe she never had been.