“Hey, Mia, can you take me to the pharmacy to get my meds?” a smooth, quiet voice asked from the doorway. I turned only to shriek in surprise, jumping up and wrapping Charlotte, Mia’s younger sister and my college friend, in a hug.
“Charlotte! What are you doing here?” I exclaimed, hugging her tightly.
She was so thin that it felt like holding bones. I pulled back, worried, my eyes darting between her and her sister’s tight smile.
“Charlotte has decided to drop out of school,” Mia said through clenched teeth. “And since she refuses to tell our parents about her decision—because she knows it’s a stupid one—guess who has a roommate? That’s right! Me! Only instead of a normal roommate, this one sleeps on my couch, eats all my food, and doesn’t pay rent.”
“And she doesn’t complain about it at all,” Charlotte said dryly, her eyes almost rolling.
Unlike her older sister, Charlotte was the definition of a closed book. She never smiled when she danced, never betrayed her emotions on her face, never let anyone know what she was feeling. Where Mia was a raging waterfall—full of mist and rainbows and splashes in your face—Charlotte was a river, one whose depths were invisible, not realizing it was deep until you were drowning in the current.
I loved her, but sometimes she worried me.
But I knew that Charlotte would talk about things whenever she was ready. And I would be there for her through it all, no matter what.
Charlotte looked around the room with her pale gray eyes, her expression unchanged. She pushed a strand of long, black hair out of her face and said, “I’m deferring my enrollment. I’m not dropping out. I just need some space for a while.”
“What are you going to do?” I asked, trying to keep my voice supportive.
She shrugged before walking out of the bathroom. Mia and I watched her go, both of us wearing identical frowns. “Is she all right?” I whispered as soon as I was certain she was out of earshot.
“I don’t know. Probably not,” Mia said. Her gray eyes, identical to her sister’s, failed to contain her worry. “You know what the university director has said. Charlotte is the best dancer the program haseverhad… a program that is over a century old. Charlotte used to love dancing. It was the only thing we could ever get her to talk about. But now, she’s here, sleeping on my couch and only speaking when she needs something. So, no, I don’t think she’s okay, but if I know my sister, it’s best to let her come to us. If we push her too hard right now, she’ll completely shut down. Whatever it is, she’ll tell us when she’s ready. I hope.”
My frown deepened. I supposed Charlotte’s story was one for another day, though I would keep her tucked in the back of my mind until then.
Mia plastered a fake smile on her face. I knew because I wore the same one often. “No more talk of upsetting stuff. Sit back down. I need to get you ready for war.”
I playedwith the hem of my pink skirt as I sat down on the leather sofa in my brother’s living room. The air smelled like polished wood, and the scent had taken up a permanent residence in my nose. It was so cold and sterile that I kept wrinkling my nose, wishing he would light a candle or something. But that would make the room cozy, and Jules’s house was anything but that.
The smell of wood, the feeling of it pressing around me, was familiar. This was the home I grew up in until my parents passed it to Jules to enjoy being empty nesters around the world. Mahogany carvings lined the walls and ceiling, reminding me of a jail cell. This place was suffocating. It was never my home, never someplace I wanted to go. All it did was remind me of being alone.
That wasn’t to say my brother hadn’t tried to make it nicer. He’d attempted to liven up the place with mismatched throw pillows and redid my bedroom to make it pink, even going as far as to string bows along the canopy bed and hang twinkling string lights from the ceilings.
But it felt like putting makeup on a monster. There was something dark beneath the bones of this house. Something that made my skin crawl.
Maybe that was just the echoes of my childhood making me nervous.
My brother handed me a fluffy pink blanket, and I used it to cover my goosebump-riddled legs. He cocked a brow. “You didn’t have to wear a dress to dinner. It’s just going to be us. Elsie couldn’t make it.”
Which was true, but I’d wanted to look cute for Alek. The pink sweater dress was fairly cozy, with little bows on the bell sleeves to match the one Mia put in my hair and the kitten heels that hung off my feet. It was nicer than I normally looked to see Jules, but I didn’t feel too out of place since he still wore a green button-down from work, the sleeves rolled up to his forearms to reveal a tattoo of three interconnected Celtic knots that he got when he was sixteen.
“Speaking of that,” I began, my voice trembling, and my face already contorting into a wince. “I have something to tell you…”
Jules whipped to face me, eyes turning black. He clenched his jaw as he yanked me up from the couch and began to inspect me for injuries. “What’s wrong? Did someone try to hurt you? Is there someone I need to take care of?”
I pushed his hands off. Well, I tried to. Jules still kept a tight grip on my bicep, and I was too weak to actually push him off. But he did take a step back after I said, “No. Nothing like that.”
“Well, what is it, Evangeline?”
I frowned because he was using my full name. He was being serious. More than he normally was, at least.
“There’s someone I wanted to come to dinner tonight.”
If I thought Jules’s expression was dark before, it wasmurderousnow. Behind his dark eyes, there was a thunderstorm. I worried he would break his jaw with how hard he was clenching it.
“Evangeline Vale. You'd better say that this ‘someone’ is a new girl you met at the ballet.”
I bit my lip before shaking my head with the look of a sullen child who had been scolded.
