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She jerked, spinning to look at the vase on her kitchen counter filled with bright pink roses with the newly wrapped bundle resting beside it. How did he know where she kept them? She rushed from the kitchen into the living room and closed the blinds on her sliding glass doors that led to the balcony. The balcony was visible from the kitchen, so maybe someone else could see it too from farther away.
“I didn’t plan on sending roses today after sending a bouquet two days ago, but I saw you were having a bad day.”
That brought her up short. She stood in the center of her living room, brows pulled low. “What are you talking about?” She didn’t want to give this guy her time; she worked hard to hide her internal mess.
It seemed he agreed, because he said, “You can smile and act for the rest of them, but not for me. I see you. I know you.”
This needed to stop. She wanted to hang up, but after the note left when she threw away the dead flowers, she could only imagine his response if she disrespected him by hanging up the phone.
“You don’t know me.”
He chuckled. “Oh, but I do. I know you want to go home. I know you’re not happy here.” That wasn’t a secret. She’d shared that with others already. It made her angry he insisted he knew her. “I also know the things you hide from others.”
“Oh, real cryptic.” She rolled her eyes. “You’re starting to sound like a try-hard.” In fact, his hubris made her relax. He sounded like a joke. She walked to the loveseat, kicked off her shoes, and sat.
“I wonder what Blaire would think if she knew you resented her.”
Come again?
Charlotte didn’t resent Blaire. She was the sister she never got the chance to have. Sure, she felt jealousy because she wanted things to be different for herself, but she would never hold contempt for her best friend.
After Blaire quit working at the diner and joined Blackthorn Academy, she didn’t keep in touch despite being right there in town. Every time Charlotte left work, she would look up and see the beautiful academy at the top of the hill overlooking the town, and every time she wondered why her friend didn’t call her, or even visit.
Charlotte couldn’t visit Blaire either. Only those who worked for the academy and the students were allowed beyond the tall, black gates separating Blackthorn Academy from the rest of the town.
At her silence, he said, “I know you resent her for getting into Blackthorn Academy and leaving you, forcing you to leave town for college.”
She sat upright and stared straight ahead, her eyebrows meeting.
“Not such a try-hard now, am I?”
She clenched her jaw, forcing herself not to make a snappy comeback.
She looked at the pill bottle on her kitchen counter. The depression she thought she had finally recovered from in her early teens set in again shortly after Blaire left for Blackthorn Academy, but she’d tried to ignore it for the most part over the last year. She had wanted to handle it without pills.
The jerk on the phone wasn’t helping her cope at all.
“Are you there, Cherry?”
The taunt in his tone practically gave away the satisfied grin he wore—even if she had no idea what he looked like.
Her hand fisted on the cushion at her side. No matter how much she reflected on home and the things that happened before she left, she couldn’t avoid the here and now. Her hand tightened on the phone.
“I’m here.”
“I told you. I know you.”
“You’re wrong.”
“Is that so?”
He had no idea what he was talking about.
When she found out about the crazed student that kidnapped Blaire, keeping her away from everyone for a couple of months, followed by all the testing the school required her to complete after the ordeal, Charlotte rationalized the separation as not her friend ghosting her but unfortunate circumstances. Blaire reconnected with her more often after that until Charlotte left for Athens.
“That’s so. I’m happy for her.”
“But you want the same thing. You feel alone. Isolated. Like an outcast.”
