If she only knew. “Maybe,” I say, giving her a tight-lipped smile. Why is it that everyone I encounter feels the need to recite a list of my humiliations?
It’s not Jenny’s fault, I remind myself sternly. She means well. And she’s not responsible for the fact that I’m sitting here, wearing her boyfriend’s sweatshirt, fantasizing about what his lips taste like and the way his hands would feel on my body.
I am such a mess.
Jenny glances between us. “I didn’t know you two knew each other.” Is it my imagination, or is there a slight edge to her tone?
“We don’t. Not really.” Donovan waves in my general direction, like I just happened to fall from the sky and land in his passenger seat. “We got assigned to work on a project together at Smashbox. Her car broke down”—he gestures at it, sitting forlornly at the curb—“so Ethan volunteered me to drive her back from the office. But Cooper crashed into us, and, well, you must know the rest. Seems like all of Sapphire Springs knows by now.”
I can’t blame Donovan for making it abundantly clear that he and I don’t have any kind of personal relationship. That he in no waychoseto spend time with me. I’d do the same thing, if my girlfriend found me on the side of the road with another woman, after the Sinsters captured us on video sharing milkshakes and labeled us with cute hashtags. But it still stings.
“I was just leaving,” I say, yanking the car door open. “Again, thanks for the ride.”
Donovan’s eyes follow me as I cross to my Subaru. Probably to make sure I don’t step on broken glass and need a trip to the ER, thereby further compromising his afternoon. I can still feel his gaze as I unlock my door and settle into the driver’s seat. If he doesn’t trust me to walk three feet, how are we possibly supposed to spearhead a project together?
I’m still fuming when Jenny calls, “Bye, Rune! See you tonight, Donovan!” She waves and pulls away, heading in the direction of the shelter. A second later, he gives me one last unreadable glance and pulls away too, leaving me on my own.
Drawing a steadying breath, I pull out my AAA card, put in an online request for assistance, and lean my head back against the seat. “Your battery will start,” I say aloud, leaning into the positive affirmations that Charlotte always tells me to do. “You’ll drive home, have the world’s biggest glass of wine, and forget today ever happened.” Great plan. Except I’ll have to work with the Ice Man every damn day for the next six months, and I’m pretty sure the Sapphire Springs gossip network will never let me live today’s events down.
I tell myself I’m going to have an ordinary night. That the worst has already happened.
But for someone with a gift for predicting the future, I’m sure as heck wrong.
Chapter
Eleven
It takes a while,but the AAA guy finally comes. After a jump, my car starts right up. I drive home, winding through Sapphire Springs’ shaded streets until I arrive at the little cottage where I’ve lived for the past five years. As always, as soon as it comes into view, pride fills me.
The way I grew up—always in trouble for sassing or fighting, bouncing from one foster home to another, then my stint in juvie—I don’t think anyone anticipated I’d wind up owning a place like this. Least of all, me. But in the juvenile detention center, there was an art teacher who noticed the doodles in the notebook I always carried, wheedled me into showing them to her, and then convinced me they were actually good. I earned my GED, then went to community college for a degree in graphic design. Two years later, I had my bachelor’s courtesy of an online program. And then, to my shock, people startedhiringme.
I went from Rune Whitlock, ostracized delinquent, to on-demand graphic designer. I never intended to stay in Sapphire Springs. But after Ethan offered me a full-time gig at Smashbox, the money was too good to pass up. Now, at thirty-two, I havea home of my own, someplace where I finally belong. Where no one can kick me out.
My cottage is cozy, with white split-shake siding. It has a wide porch with a swing and rocking chairs, the ceiling painted sky-blue and ivy twining around the white brick columns. Asters, mums, and lantana bloom in the tiny front yard, ushering in the arrival of fall, and a statue of Cassandra, the patron saint of disbelieved prophets, has pride of place at the center of a burbling fountain. It’s my sanctuary, and as I swing into my driveway, I want nothing more than to shut the door behind me, change into yoga pants, and nurse my wounds over the promised glass of wine.
But as I limp up my walkway, shoes looped over one finger, lugging my purse and laptop bag, I freeze. Because perched in one of my rocking chairs, wearing an outfit that looks like it costs more than I make in a year, her sky-blue Ferragamo bag crouched by her feet like an obedient dog, is someone I never thought I’d see again.
Julia.
“I always wanted to ask you,” my former foster sister says, fidgeting on the edge of my couch, where she waited while I changed out of the ridiculous sweatshirt and my ruined outfit. Valentine curls around her ankles, happy to have a visitor. “How did you know what was going to happen to me? What he was going to try to do?”
The real answer—that I saw the monster hurting her in a vision; that I knew I would do anything at all to stop him—is one she won’t believe. I give it to her anyhow. “I had a premonition.”
Julia gives me the small, shy smile I remember from the eight months we spent living in the monster’s home. I was fifteen and she was twelve. We were opposites in every way: I was outspoken and brash, where she curled into herself, as if trying to make herself invisible; I spent my time in detention and she spent it on the middle school honor roll; I was curvy, with brown hair that had a mind of its own and gray eyes too big for my face, like one of those velvet painting waifs, whereas Julia was a redhead and everything about her was angular, like a fox.
She was sneaky like a fox, too, and quiet. But he saw her, anyway.
“You don’t have to tell me. I just…” She twists her straight, auburn hair around her fingers, a nervous habit I remember from all those years ago. “I never thanked you. And I should’ve. I owe you everything.”
I get to my feet, pacing my living room. All of the familiar, meaningful objects—a jar of sea glass collected over a multitude of trips to Ocracoke Island, a painting of this very cottage hanging over the fireplace—seem suddenly empty, like the set of a play. “You don’t owe me jack,” I tell her. “And I didn’t do it for thanks.”
Julia lets go of her hair and wrings her hands, her eyes filling with tears behind her horn-rimmed glasses. “They put you in that terrible place. And I never once went to see you. Even though I got moved out of Sapphire Springs after that night, I could’ve asked my foster family to take me. They were good people; they would’ve done it. At the very least, I could’ve written. But I didn’t, because I didn’t want to think about what happened. And I—” She hiccups, then meets my eyes. “I am so ashamed.”
She looks so miserable, it tears at my heart. I come to a halt in front of her and sit cross-legged on the floor. Valentine crawls into my lap, and I stroke her soft fur.
“We weren’t exactly friends, Julia. If you’d come to visit, what would we have talked about? The fortieth A you’d gotten that semester, or my fiftieth detention?”
It’s meant to make her laugh, and her mouth does quirk up in a smile. But then it falls into a frown again. “I was someanto you, Rune. I thought I was better than you, because you were always messing around and failing your classes. Everyone said you were a freak.” Her eyes flash to my face, anxious, but I just shrug. This is hardly news to me.
