I want to knowwhy.
“Arthur Alvarado, right?” Pandora looks up at me with a sly expression. “How did he die?”
“In… It was a work accident,” I say. “My mom has never wanted to talk about it, so I don’t know the details. But I know it has nothing to do with Blaze.”
“Hmm. I guess that’s the truth.” Pandora looks down at her phone again. ”’Dear Ms. Alvarado. I’m sorry for your loss. Arthur was a great friend, and he will be missed. The tragedy of his death weighs on me. I know money can never replace him, but I’m willing to ensure Asch’s future, in honor of Arthur. Regards, George Bouchard.’”
“No,” I say. “That’s not…”
My father had died when I was twelve, right before I’d been sent to the private school I’d met Blaze at. A scholarship, my mother had told me. She’d been so proud.
She couldn’t have faked that. I’d seen the letter.
More than that, she wouldn’t have lied to me like that.
But certain things are starting to make sense, and…
The knife twists in my gut. Were Blaze and I ever really friends at all? Or was that just another illusion?
“You’re lying,” I tell her, getting up from the chair and storming over to her so I can grab the phone from her. She lets me take it without a fight, and I almost hate her for how easily she lets me have it.
I’m looking at a screenshot of an email, dated eight years ago.
“This was faked,” I say, gripping the phone tight.
“Check the next pic,” Pandora responds.
I shake my head and tap to the next image. This time it’s a letter from the private school, confirming payment—addressed to both my mother and George Bouchard. I tap over to the next one, with similar details about my high school, and then Dyschord University.
Then I get to the email from my mother to George Bouchard. It’s dated a day before the email from George Bouchard she’d read to me.
With Arthur gone, I’m going to have a hard time keeping things afloat. I don’t need anything for myself, but Arthur has a son. Asch needs a good education so he doesn’t need to follow in his father’s footsteps.
I swallow hard.
She’s been lying to me.
So has Blaze. There’s no way he didn’t know about this.
How long has he been letting me humiliate myself, thinking I’ve earned everything I’ve gotten? The scholarship, the stipend, all of it?
I didn’t do anything except exist.
“Why are you showing me this?” I demand, resisting the urge to throw her fucking phone against the wall. “They did good things for me? So what? This is supposed to make me hate Blaze?”
Except it does.
The fact that he’s been in on the joke all along makes me resent him so deeply that I can’t even make sense of it.
Because that’s all it’s been to them: a joke.
“I thought you deserved to know,” Pandora says. She gets up on her knees and plucks her phone out of my hand. “I mean, itisnice of them. They were really looking out for you. Huh, does all this make George Bouchard your sugar daddy?”
“Don’t,” I snap at her. I can taste the bile threatening to rise up as my entire world is shaken and shattered, and the worst part is that I can already hear Blaze telling me it’s not a big deal. That it’s fine. That it’s just money, that it doesn’t matter.
But it does.
It matters so much.
