But the voice in my head won’t shut up.
I grab paper towels and wipe down the counter before tossing away the evidence of my breakdown before Mom wakes up and asks questions.
When the kitchen is clean again, I grab Owen’s phone and pad back to my room, closing the door quietly behind me.
The ring box is still on my bed where I left it. I toss his phone next to it and lay down facing the opposite direction, pulling the blanket up to my chin.
Soon, I’ll have to stand next to Ella and the rest of the Aldrich’s while I say goodbye to my best friend, to the man I loved, even if it wasn’t in the way he deserved.
I’ll need to pretend to have my shit together when I know I won’t let this go. Not until I talk to Ella. To find out what they were hiding from us.
Whatever it is, it was bad enough that Ella wanted to come clean and Owen wanted it buried. Even if it meant marrying me with lies between us.
Chapter 17
Sawyer
It’s been a day. Mom and I packed up the cabin to head back to Ashford tomorrow. Back to real life. I’m not ready but I guess, the universe doesn’t care.
Owen’s phone is in my hand. The texts between him and Ella open again. I’ve reread them at least a dozen times since I found them yesterday.
We need to tell her… Tell both of them.
I don’t mean to fall asleep.
One minute I’m staring at the ceiling, running the texts through my head again, and the next I’m thirteen years old, sitting at the island in the Aldrich kitchen with a cut up apple and my laptop open to an essay I needed to finish.
Owen disappearedupstairs to shower twenty minutes ago. Thank God. He came off the lacrosse field smelling like a barnyard animal baking in the sun. Even Victoria wrinkled her nose and sprayed perfume in her car when she picked us up from school.
We were supposed to be working on our essays together. They’re due tomorrow, on the American Revolution. I had exactly one sentence written, and it wasn’t even a good one. He claimed he could help, that he was almost done with his. We’ll see.
The back door opened and Knox came in. He was wearing gym shorts and his Ashford High T-shirt, sticking to his body from sweat, lacrosse stick propped over one shoulder. I took a minute to appreciate him before he noticed me. It’s still hard to believe that Knox somehow became hot this year.
I mean he’d always been cute, but maybe I was just too young to notice.
He dropped his bag and stick by the door with a thud that rattled the cabinet next to it, opened the fridge, and stood there drinking orange juice straight from the carton.
“That’s disgusting,” I said without looking up.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Nobody asked you, Thorne.”
I scoffed and flipped open to a random chapter in my history textbook. Anything to keep my eyes occupied.
He put the carton back and shut the fridge, and I felt him register me properly for the first time since walking in. “What are you doing?”
“We’ve gotta finish an essay.”
“Where is he?”
“Shower. He smelled like death.”
Knox almost laughed and I couldn’t help but feel good about that. He came around the island and leaned over my shoulder to look at my screen. He was close enough that I could smell grass and sweat and a hint of his deodorant. Most definitely not like a barn animal…not at all.
“Causes of the American Revolution,” he read. “You’ve written like, five words.”
I flip a page in the textbook. “It’s coming along. I’m building momentum.”
“That’s not what momentum looks like.”
