He meant to balance us out. Every decision carried weight. It was harder to make a change once a course of action had been decided on. He would know best of all. Selling his company, the shit he pulled with Margo’s family…
My trajectory has been set toward Margo since we were children.
It’s too late to stop.
But… she might just be my opposite—and equal—force. If she finds her spine.
I shake my head, water droplets flying. It’s going to be a sleepless night, I can feel it coming like a freight train. The rattle of restlessness will keep me awake for hours. It leaves me with two options: fighting to keep my eyes closed or burning off energy and crashing.
Option two has always been my go-to.
I lace on running shoes and yank on a sweatshirt. Eli’s parents are on the couch in the living room, the television screen flickering blueish light over their faces. They don’t seem to notice me slip past them, out the front door.
As soon as I hit the sidewalk, I run.
There are a million ways to exhaust the body.
A million ways to burn energy.
Running is least satisfying, but it works… Until I find myself standing outside the Jenkins’s house. I faintly register that I’m panting. I’ll have to work on that before lacrosse season starts. If Coach finds out I’ve let myself slack even a little, I’ll be booted from captaincy faster than I can blink.
Her house is dark.
Not that I should’ve expected otherwise, seeing as how it’s the middle of the fucking night.
It doesn’t stop me from scaling the side of her house with practiced movements. I never told her that Liam’s family used to live in this house, and we snuck in and out all the time. It was hard when we were fourteen. Now, not so much.
Her window is still unlocked. I slide it open with one hand, then lift myself up. My entrance is nearly silent. I straighten and glance around the dark room. Her bed is made. Her uniform is crumpled toward the foot of the bed, a pair of running shoes just below it. She took her boots and high-heels with her.
I lie down on the bed, fluffing the pillow under my head. It smells like her shampoo.
She isn’t a girl who wears a lot of perfume. None, except the soap she washes with. I think I like that best. Amelie and Savannah—and any other girl who got close enough for me to notice them—coated themselves in expensive shit like it was a layer of armor.
Not Margo.
She’s true to herself… but she’s hiding.
A wolf in sheep’s clothing.
She forgets that I knew her as a child, too. It isn’t a one-way memory. I catch her looking at me with regret. Maybe longing. And I know it’s because she wishes she could untangle the mess she made. The knots bind us so tightly together, it’s killing us.
Through the walls, one of her foster parents is snoring.
I shift around on the bed, leaving my mark. I have no doubt she’ll notice it when she returns. And make no mistake: she is going to return. The Jenkinses will find her and bring her back, even if it tortures them.
They’re honorable like that.
Why couldn’t Margo have been placed with someone else? A family less forgiving?
I’d call it fate that Margo was put with the Jenkinses, but unfortunately for them, fate operates by a different name: Lydia Asher.
My mother.
I pick myself up off Margo’s bed. I still have a pair of her panties in my dresser. The pair I ripped. But I cast a glance around the room and I can’t help but to think that this place doesn’t feel like her home. She’s inhabited the closet and the bed, a few drawers in the dresser. Beyond that… nothing. No pictures or posters on the wall. The same fucking bedspread that was probably there the day she arrived…
It’s understandable why she doesn’t call it her home.
And after what I did, it’ll feel even less like it.
Keep her off balance.
I’ve been spinning off-kilter for years. It’s justifiable to want the same for her.
How does it feel, Margo?
I run my finger over the top of the dresser, and then I step into the hallway. There’s more risk out here. Robert or Lenora could come out any minute, half-awake and stumbling to the kitchen for a glass of water.
It’s almost pitch-black in here, except the moonlight filtering through the window at the end of the hall. I lean close to one of the frames on the wall.
Robert, Lenora, Josie. One happy family—on the surface. Of course, this photo was before Josie got addicted to drugs and derailed her entire life.
And yet, they’re not the only ones destroyed by Amberly Wolfe.
I lift it off the wall and unclip the back. I intend to take the picture—there are so many on this wall, it’ll take them weeks to notice it gone—but there’s a folded piece of paper in the back of the frame.
Intriguing.
I lift it off the back of the photo and slide it in my pocket. I keep the photo in place. No need to raise undue suspicion. Carefully, I place it back on the wall and cross back to Margo’s room. I slip out her window, closing it behind me, and climb back down to the ground.
Anticipation licks at my skin.
But no: first, the punishment.
I shouldn’t have come to the Jenkins’s house in the first place.
Scrub out the weakness, son.
So I do. I’ll run until I puke, and then I’ll read the note burning a hole in my pocket. And maybe then, I’ll be able to sleep.
Margo
It’s nice to wake up alone. No one staring at me, or glaring. No pressure to go to school—one, because it’s Sunday, and two, because I’m definitely not going back with the video floating around.
And… I know I can’t stay at Ian’s house forever, but it sure is nice to stretch out and bask in the sunlight coming in through the window. I arch my back and do just that—stretch out. Until my hand hits something—someone.
I yelp, scooting to the edge of the bed and rolling over.
I expect Ian. Honestly, I do. Even with the dresser in front of the door, he seems like the type to figure out a way around it.
Amelie leans against the headboard. “God, you sleep like the dead.”
“What are you doing?” I stand, grabbing the sweatshirt from the floor.
“I came to see if you were okay.” She shrugs.
A thought hits me. “Did you…?”
“Spend the night?” She smooths her hands over her leggings. She has dark-gray argyle socks pulled three-quarters up her calves. A cream sweater and necklace with a heart pendant hanging against her collarbone.
She’s picture-perfect, and it’s barely eight o’clock in the morning.
Okay, I guess I did sleep like the dead.
“Ian and I aren’t really a thing,” she says. “And I wasn’t…” She clears her throat. “Didn’t feel like going home. His bed is a nice place to land.”
I grunt. “Great.”
“Anyway, you should’ve put something heavier in front of the door.”
Her gaze goes to the dresser, which has been forcibly moved to the center of the room.
“The fact that the Fletchers put all their furniture on sliders to protect their precious floors doesn’t help,” she adds.
“That’s…” I roll my eyes. It’s a little nerve-racking to have Amelie in my space. I know it isn’t mine, but… Still. “Are you going to tell the Jenkinses I’m here?”