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“Let’s go,” Daisy whispers, tugging on my wrist with urgency when the bell rings. “What the hell was that?” she says on an exhale as we rush into our last period class.
I shrug, pretending I have no clue what’s up, when in truth I have a fairly good idea as to why Simon looked at me the way he just did. The name Wade was never spoken in my home without a curse word preceding it. Makes sense to assume he’s grown up on a steady diet of hatred for my family in return.
I was just a kid, so this Hatfield and McCoy idiocy is ancient history as far as I’m concerned. Whatever it is that happened, I wasn’t there, I had nothing to do with it. He has no right to hold some stupid grudge against me, or to look at me the way he does. He’s wrong.
He’s wrong about me.
* * *
Simon
I watch her every damn day, and I hate myself for it.
What is she doing here? She lives one town over, the decidedly better of the two that feed into our school district. On top of that, her father owns the only car dealership in Fayette County. She has no business working the ass crack of dawn shift every weekend at the diner.
Probably my imagination, or just my frustration and anger run wild, but it seems like every time I go to unload a delivery, to shovel the sidewalk, or to arrange whatever seasonal goods my boss wants displayed—rock salt at the moment—she picks that exact same time to take a break. She doesn’t smoke, doesn’t check her phone. No, she just steps outside like she’s doing right now, hugging herself and shifting on her feet to keep warm, watching her breath float up as she exhales out into the cold. Not two minutes later, she fixes her gaze back to the ground, smoothes her apron and skirt down over her hips, and heads back inside.
Her mere presence ticks me off. Poor little rich girl. The way she smiles at everyone and makes small talk? It’s fake as shit. I used to grab lunch at the counter during my break, but I don’t anymore.
That’s the kind of place where I belong, not her. The short-tempered cook and those older, world-weary waitresses are my people, but right off the bat she wormed her way in. Not a week later and she was already their little mascot, the one they watched over. I couldn’t stomach it. It’s the same with the customers. Rushing in from the cold, they greet her with a smile. I can see her through the plate glass window of the restaurant, pausing to laugh and joke with the regulars, or stopping to fawn over the babies in their high chairs. When it’s still dark outside, the bright lights in the diner make it easy to see her every move, the expression on her face so clear it’s as if I’m standing right beside her. And I can see their faces too. She thinks she’s special but she’s not. I’ve witnessed middle-aged men smiling at her in a fatherly way, only to ogle her ass like it’s a medium rare porterhouse the second her back is turned.
What burns me most, though, is the little ritual she’s established now that the frigid February weather has settled in. I start my workday early, but not as early as she does. I pull up outside the hardware store at six-thirty, and that’s when I see her, stealing outside with a to-go cup in one hand, a paper bag in the other. Breakfast for Rudy Wallace. The guy looks like he’s pushing a bad version of fifty with his stooped posture, missing teeth and roughened skin, but I know for a fact he’s not even ten years older than me. Nothing but a loser junkie who—because ofher—has recently made a habit of trolling this street. I want to knock the last of his remaining teeth down his throat for it, for forging some kind of twisted relationship with her.
Does it make her feel better? To be charitable to people like Wallace, or to work when she clearly doesn’t need to? When she has everything just…handed to her? She’s a puzzle I can’t figure out, and at the same time, even sparing her a second thought makes me want to punch myself in the face. Why do I even give a shit?
Sometimes I catch sight of her walking across the parking lot at the end of her shift. Her head is usually cast down. She looks at the pebbles, kicking a few as she makes her way towards her car, never in a rush. And that car—a little compact thing, but shiny and new. I want to look away, but my eyes always zero in on the Mason Motors logo. It feels like a kick to my gut every time.
She carries that name, and for that alone I can hate her.
Chapter Two
Charlotte
“Eyes on the road, gorgeous.”
The wooly mammoth-sized jerk and his buddies have the nerve to laugh as I crouch down to pick my stuff up off the floor.
I hate Mondays.
No, usually I look forward to returning to school after the weekend, but this morning I’m dragging ass. I look up when I can still hear them cackling from a good twenty feet away.
Simon and three football players are stopped in front of Sienna’s locker. Sienna is the captain of my dance team. She’s kind, she’s beautiful and she’s a great dancer. I’m pretty sure the entire student body has a crush on her. Sienna shoots me a sympathetic smile before knocking one of the guys on the shoulder hard. He stops laughing, looks over at me still down on the ground and gives me a head nod. It’s a lame substitute for an apology, but it’s all I’m going to get. Sienna bestows an approving smile on her loyal subject and he beams back at her like a damn puppy. I wish I wielded that kind of power. Then she turns to Simon, but his attention is elsewhere. Ugh, his eyes are fixed on me. Hard eyes. My hands shake as I finish gathering my belongings. He rattles me. What’s worse is he knows it and uses it against me.
The way he rakes his eyes over me and then shakes his head is becoming familiar. It’s as if I’m being appraised, and the sum total of who I am is deemed severely lacking. The fact that I willingly risked running into him yesterday is testament to how desperate I was.
Making my way into enemy territory, I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw a different clerk at the register, a woman. I wandered around for a few minutes before going back up front to ask for help. Just my luck, it was Simon putting a fresh roll of tape into the cash register.
“Can I help you with something?” he asked as he clipped the roll into place. The smile died on his lips when he looked up to see me standing there. I wasn’t smiling either. My nerves were on edge, I hadn’t gotten more than two hours sleep the night before, and I didn’t want help or anything else from Simon Wade.
“I need a lock, like a chain.” My words were clumsy as I motioned with my hands to describe the item I was looking for.
He cleared his throat. “Something with a key? A deadbolt?”
“No.” I shook my head, looking away. “Simple. Something I can install by myself, I guess.”
He didn’t say anything for a moment. When I looked back up, he asked, “You need to put this on a door?”
He studied me, waiting on my response, but the words were trapped in my throat. I felt as if he could see right through me, as if he knew exactly where I needed to install a lock and why. Eyes narrowed, two deep lines etched between his brows, just waiting for me to confirm what he already knew.
