“I’m going to fucking hit you.” It was a very real threat, and I would have if the fucker wasn’t so quick, darting off the couch before I reached him.
The prick chuckled.
4
MALLORY
The weeks flew by as July faded into August, and the cottage slowly started looking like it might pass for a home. Mom and I spent days sourcing furniture and décor from thrift shops, antique stores, estate sales, and local marketplaces.
Elmwood was a treasure trove, full of discoveries to be found. It was one of the things I loved about buying secondhand, the imagining of where a piece or painting might have been, what it had survived. It gave us an excuse to explore Elmwood, learn our way around the town, and see what it had to offer.
Mom’s job, her actual job, not the side gig where she hacked up bodies, gave us a decent life. We were far from rich, but it paid the bills while also giving her the freedom to decide when she put in the hours. She ran her own boutique branding studio, designing logos, social media kits, and website layouts for startups, influencers, and small businesses. She’d always been creative in more than one way.
We also drove by Elmwood Public High School, where I would be starting my senior year next week. The idea of a new school evoked mixed feelings within me.
On one hand, I was excited. The possibility of making friends. Walking with a class to get my diploma. Maybe actually attending a dance.
On the other hand, I was terrified. I wasn’t good at fitting in. Never had been. I’d perfected the art of being invisible when necessary or intimidating enough to be left alone when invisibility failed.
I wanted this time to be different.Iwanted to be different. A new person.
Normal.
The problem was, I wasn’t sure I knew how to benormal.
Not when your mother taught you body disposal before driver’s ed. Not when you could recognize the smell of industrial cleaner at twenty paces and knew exactly what it was covering up. Not when “family dinner” sometimes got interrupted by emergency trunk disposal runs.
But I hadn’t exactly made an ideal first impression. If Maddox Corvo was as popular as his online presence suggested, then who knew what I would be walking into my first day of school.
I doubted he was giving me a second thought, and hopefully, I’d just be the new girl with no preconceived notions.
Now, if I could just get my brain to stop reliving those few minutes in the coffee shop as if they held meaning. His name had taken up residence in my head without asking permission, playing on repeat, and I couldn’t turn it off. I convinced myself I wasn’t going back to the coffee shop for him. It was the matcha I craved, and yet, I found myself walking the same path downtown to Daily Dose.
Maybe it was the way the sunlight hit the same corner table at the same time every morning, nine-thirty on the dot. I told myself routines were healthy. Grounding. Walking downtown with my headphones got my body moving. This was just mesettling into Elmwood the way normal people settled into new places.
But if I was being honest, and I usually wasn’t, even with myself, I wanted to see Maddox Corvo again.
I went back to the café more than a few times. More than I’d admit to my mom, who’d stopped asking where I was going every morning and started just handing me cash with a knowing look I chose to ignore.
Not that it mattered.
He was never there, at least not when I went.
But Paisley was.
She worked most morning shifts and had a different hair color every week. Last week it was purple, but this week it was teal with pink tips. Her brown eyes were always warm and friendly when she saw me, and after my second visit, she remembered my order.
Like the days before, I took my strawberry matcha and sat down, busying myself with journaling or scrolling mindlessly on my phone, all under the pretense of not hoping or waiting for him to walk in.
The chair across from mine scraped over the floor, and a body dropped into the seat. I glanced up, surprised to see Paisley. Her eyes regarded me with complex intrigue. “He’s not here,” she said, taking a sip of the Coke in her hands. Pop seemed to be her choice of caffeine. She drank it throughout the shift behind the counter. We’d shared friendly small talk over the last two weeks, but this was the first time she’d sat with me.
I looked up from my phone, where I’d been scrolling through nothing. “Who?” I played dumb and felt like a fool immediately. Had I been that transparent? Obviously, I had been, or she was more observant than I gave her credit.
“I notice things. Like you looking for someone each time you come in.”
Heat crawled up my neck.
“And how Maddox Corvo,” she continued, “hasn’t been back since the day he met you.”
