Page 53 of The Moment I Knew

He slowly turned back, a curious look on his face. “What?”

“I told you about my dad,” I said. “I answered your question. So now you have to answer one of mine.”

The corner of his mouth quirked up. He took a step toward me and I had to resist the urge to take a step away.

“And what question is that?” he asked, his voice low and dangerous. It made my heart thump in my chest, and I told myself that was only because I’d seen him beat someone up less than an hour ago. My body was only reacting to the sense of danger that it felt about him, not anything else.

I didn’t actually have a plan of what to ask, so I asked the first question that came to mind: “Did you really go to juvie?”

Cole almost looked like he was going to laugh. “No. I didn’t.”

A week ago, I would have questioned whether he was telling me the truth. After all, anybody who had been to juvie probably wasn’t going around announcing it and was probably a good liar anyway. But now, as I looked at him, I got the overwhelming sense that he was telling the truth. Cole was many things, but he wasn’t a liar.

“Then what really happened?” I asked. “At your old school, I mean. Did you actually get in a fight? Were you really expelled like everyone says?”

Cole stepped forward again, this time coming up so close that I could smell his cologne. The scent was so intoxicating that it almost made me feel like I needed to hold my breath to be able to focus and not get overwhelmed by it all.

His hand came up, brushing against my cheek. And now it wasn’t even that I was holding my breath but that it was trapped in my lungs completely, every nerve in my body instead focusing instead on his touch. His eyes follow the path of his fingers. When they flick back to mine, I think he’s going to kiss me. I think I want him to. No, I know I want him to.

“Maybe one day I’ll give you that answer,” he murmured. The whispers made me shiver. Then, as if it was always what he’d intended, he tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear and stepped away. I immediately felt colder without him in front of me. “Goodnight, Princess.”

He backed up one step, two. His eyes stay locked on mine until he gets five steps away, then he turned on his heel and sauntered off. I watched him until he rounded the corner to where he parked, and only once he was out of sight did the breath return to my lungs again.

seventeen

The waffle iron screamed like it was being murdered, which felt dramatic but typical for our kitchen at ten a.m. on a Sunday morning. Mum stood at the counter in her slippers and yesterday’s hoodie, wielding a whisk like a weapon. Batter dotted her sleeves, the counter, and somehow the fridge door. She was moving fast, flipping waffles, checking the toaster, reaching for plates, muttering to herself like she was diffusing a bomb.

“Okay,” she said. “Okay. We’re fine. No one touch anything.”

Sebastian, naturally, took that chance to sprint through the kitchen with a soccer ball at his feet. He didn’t even look at us. He just weaved around the table, tapped the ball off the cabinet, caught it with his foot, and laughed to himself like he was already on the field with a crowd chanting his name.

“Sebastian!” Mum yelled. “I told you to keep that outside!”

“It’s freezing out there!” he argued. The ball smacked into the doorframe. Sebastian winced, then shrugged like walls were easily replaceable.

Across the table, Lavender sat with her legs tucked neatly under her, flipping through a magazine like she was on a deadline. She kept glancing between the pages and her phone, brow furrowed, lips pursed in concentration.

“No,” she murmured. Flip. “No.” Flip. “Oh, wait.”

“What are you even looking for?” Mum asked, sliding a waffle onto a plate and pushing it toward me. I grabbed it immediately. Survival instinct.

“I need a new dress for the party. Dean’s seen me in everything already.”

Ainsley, who was also searching for a dress at breakfast, leaned halfway across the table and into my space, shoving her phone in my face before I could take a bite.

“Okay, but this dress,” Ainsley said. “Tell me this isn’t perfect!”

She’d woken up this morning in a complete panic over the fact that we didn’t have our dresses for our birthday party next week. I understood the concern but I also wouldn’t have minded talking about it when my hands weren’t covered in maple syrup.

I squinted at the screen. Pink. Short. Sparkly. It was too summery for my taste since our birthday was at the beginning of December, but right now, I couldn’t care less about what dress I was going to wear when I felt like my stomach was trying to eat itself.

I pushed the phone away. “I’m trying to eat here.”

Ainsley rolled her eyes. “Multitask.”

As I ate, she leaned even further forward so she could see the screen while it was facing me. She started swiping through her Pinterest board. “Okay, but what about this one? This one is more me, but this one”—swipe—“is more us.”

Sebastian sprinted past again, ball bouncing dangerously close to Mum’s ankles.