My throat went dry. “It wasn’t?—”
“Subtle? Definitely wasn’t.” Her blue eyes cut over me, worried underneath the teasing edge. “So? Elise again?”
Her name alone was enough to knot my chest. “Something like that,” I muttered.
Before Avery could push, a familiar shadow crossed our path. Jax.
He moved with that easy, cocky swagger—dark hair perpetually mussed, hockey hoodie half-zipped, broad-shouldered confidence that made girls sigh and trip over themselves. His smirk barely tugged at his mouth, but his gaze snapped—on Avery—and stayed two beats too long. Tooobvious. Until he broke contact and kept walking, as though it never happened.
Avery’s inhale hitched. She buried her face in her phone as though the screen suddenly mattered.
I almost smiled. “You two ever going to talk like normal people?”
Her head snapped up, cheeks flushed. “Wedotalk.”
“Sure,” I said dryly. “If you count flirting in the parking lot after the hockey game and then pretending it never happened.”
Color crept higher on her cheeks. “It was nothing.”
“Looked more than nothing to me.”
She blew out a frustrated breath, shaking her head. “Nothing’s gonna change, Mila. Jax being friends with my brother is the real problem. He’ll joke, flirt, and stare at me as if I’m the only girl in the world one second—and then the next, it’s as if I don’t exist. Because God forbid he pisses off his buddy by going after his sister.”
The bitterness in her voice made me stop short. I was annoyed for her. “That’s bullshit. If he wanted you, really wanted you, Chase wouldn’t matter.”
Her laugh came out bitter, disbelieving. “Exactly. But apparently, I’m not worth that kind of trouble to him.”
The words stung more than I wanted to admit. Because wasn’t that what I’d been asking myself about Luke? If I was worth the fallout? If he was willing to risk what it could cost him?
I forced the thought down. “Jax is an idiot,” I muttered.
Her mouth twisted, half a smile, half a grimace. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
The bell blared overhead, cutting the moment short. We split for class, but her words clung to me the rest of the day—settling under my skin, restless. Jax holding back because of Chase. Lukeholding back because of… what? His family. His name. Elise circling. Maybe me.
By the time I got home, the sun had already dipped below the hills and the house was mostly dark, but none of it shook loose the tension knotted in my chest.
I should’ve let it go. The locker scene. Elise. Luke’s annoyingly smug grin. All of it. I should’ve walked past the lunch table and pretended I didn’t care who he talked to or how close he stood when he did it. I should’ve remained cool, mask in place, upper hand intact. But I hadn’t. And now my pride felt bruised, my chest tight, and I couldn’t stop replaying the way he’d looked at me before I stormed off.
Like he’d won something. As though he knew. Which… maybe he did.
Because the worst part wasn’t Elise standing too close, her jet-black hair shining as if some shampoo commercial while she smiled up at him. It wasn’t even that Luke hadn’t looked uncomfortable. No, the worst part was that it bothered me. And the fact that I’d just admitted that to myself? Infuriating.
Maybe that was the inheritance no one talked about—not companies or money, but the same poison that ate at my mom. Secrets, jealousy, survival disguised as strength. And now it was inside me too.
Later, dusk crept in, streaks of orange bleeding into indigo. The days were shrinking, closing in, and it felt like a warning. Winter was coming fast—and with it, more trouble I could already feel pressing at the edges.
The house was mostly dark except for the soft glow of a lamp in the kitchen. My mom had left dinner on the table—salmon and some couscous dotted with herbs. Reheated, sure, but better than her usual toast-and-coffee default.
She was already there, sitting at the table with a glass of white wine half-full, her phone face down beside her plate. Herblouse was a silk cream button-down that I hadn’t seen before, the sleeves rolled up neatly to her elbows. Her hair was twisted into a low chignon that made her look more boardroom than Mom. Her posture was stiff, shoulders locked in tension, jaw tight, as if she’d been holding her breath all day.
Good. She wasn’t in the mood to talk either.
I dropped my backpack by the door and slid into the chair across from her. For a while, we ate in silence. That uneasy quiet we’d perfected since moving back to Blackwood. There had been moments, here and there, when it felt like the old us—the two of us against the world, surviving, even thriving—but the weight of secrets always pulled her away again.
Halfway through my plate, I broke it. “Long day?”
She looked up, startled, as though she’d forgotten I was there. “Mm. Just tired.”
