There’s always been something off about Pearl, something I never let myself look at directly. The way her feelings always seem to arrive at exactly the right moment to redirect aroom. The way everyone steps carefully around her, adjusts, accommodates. I’d always chalked it up to her being sensitive.
Even now. I ask her about The Resilience Project, and instead of answering, she tells me she loves me. The timing is too clean. Her tears are too ready. I don’t believe her for one second.
“Logan, please, I—”
Three days ago I understood my life. My work, my friends, the way everything fit together. Now I’m standing here realizing I’ve been a willing participant in The Pearl Show, and I have no one to blame but myself.
She can see my resolve. My disgust.
“What does any of that have to do with The Resil—”
“Logan?” I hear from behind me, that lovely, low, raspy voice. My heart drops into my stomach. I turn and see the look in her eyes. The hurt. I realize how close Pearl and I are standing, the way she’s still clutching me. I step back, but Rose has already turned and is walking away.
Chapter 21: Rose
“Hey,” Logan calls from behind me.
I stop walking.
“Hey,” I say, and turn around. I aim for casual, shoring up my walls before I look up to face him. He wears an expression I haven’t seen before—not quite guilt, but there’s something hesitant there, like something dark is weighing on him.
I should have known this was coming. The second she pulled him aside. Since the picture. Since she told him she had something important to say. Their history is too deep, and he and I are too new. Too contentious. Volatile, even. So that was it, then.
She told him she loves him. I watched her rise up to kiss him, her hand on his chest… Did he kiss her back? Did he like it? Is he coming to tell me it’s been fun, but I’m nother?
After everything, Logan is going to pick Pearl, and somehow I’m not even—
His arms wrap tight around me. I let out a long, shuddering exhale I didn’t know I was holding.
“Tell me anything. Ask me anything, okay? I won’t lie to you.” His lips are pressed against the side of my head.
“Did you kiss her?” I ask, my voice shaking.
“She tried to kiss me. I stepped back.” He says it quick, unaffected.
“She told me at breakfast that you two were alone in your room yesterday, that you were—”
“She was exaggerating. She stopped by, and I didn’t throw her out on her ass like I wanted to because I had questions for her, but then the rest of our friends showed up. We weren’t hanging out.”
“Well, you guys are friends, it’s not like you can’t hang out with her just because we’re—“
“She’s not my friend. Do you really think I’d stand by her after everything I’ve learned, the way she treats you? Even if I wasn’t halfway in love with you, I couldn’t be around someone like that. I’m still trying to figure out how I didn’t see it sooner.”
He said he’s halfway in love with me, and I'm not sure he even noticed, like it just slipped out. I fight back a smile and say, “She’s good at it. Making people not see it. Nobody ever did, except Easton, and that’s only because she showed him early on.”
I don’t elaborate. Easton and I have spent hours discussing it, deciding together she either has an antisocial or narcissistic personality disorder. Her attachment to certain outcomes, lack of empathy, grandiosity. Two days ago, if I’d tried to say any of that to Logan, he would have shut me down. That’s the thing about people like her, though. They’re charming. They’re very, very good at getting what they want.
“I’m sorry. I really am,” he says. And he means it.
I don’t know what to do with that. “What did she want to talk to you about?” I ask, glancing toward the hallway.
That dark, hesitant expression washes over his face again. There’s something haunting in his eyes. I almost ask if everything is okay, but then they grow soft and worried. Heshakes his head, and the look is gone. He says in an annoyed tone, “She told me she loves me.”
“Ah.”
“You knew?”
“I tried to tell you. You wouldn’t listen.” I look up at him.
