Page 140

It fucking burns, this horrible, raw feeling in my chest. I knew he’d do this. I knew he’d cut right through me, if I let him.

And I did.

I stare at the cake as tears flood my eyes, until I can barely see it anymore. I set my tools down.

Then I bury my hands in the cake.

I’ve never smashed a cake before. It’s satisfying and depressing all at once.

But I just want to erase this cake, and this giant mistake, from existence.

Because now I know the truth.

That Harlan Vance cares much more about keeping his secrets than he does about keeping me.

Chapter 24

Harlan

Icome home to find Quinn gone, and her kitchen tidy. I can’t help noticing there’s an entire smashed cake in the trash can that’s been left by the counter, where I last saw her working.

I can’t be sure, but it seems like a lot of her personal things are gone.

Like her pink standing mixer.

The house feels weirdly empty without Quinn here making noise, playing music, her pretty things strewn about. I don’t know when I got used to those things. She’s only here a few times a week, and often I’m not even here when she is.

But when I come home and find her here… There’s nothing better.

I go up to my bedroom.

Every time she stayed the night, she seemed to leave something behind. A lipgloss. A hair brush. A bra.

I was beginning to think it was on purpose.

They’re all gone now.

As I look around the bedroom for any lingering sign of her, finding none, a black shape slinks in the open window, startling me. “Jesus.” I pluck the cat off my windowsill, and not for the first time. “You need to stop climbing on the roof. You’ll get hurt.”

As I carry her downstairs, she purrs in my arms.

I wonder if I should have the landscapers trim back some of the trees, so they don’t reach so close to the house.

“Trust me, you don’t want to get attached,” I tell her as I walk her out into the backyard, and set her down. I never should’ve started feeding her in the first place. “What if you come back one day and no one’s here?” I nudge her toward the bushes. “You’re a hunter, go hunt.”

I go back inside and shut the sliding glass door.

The cat just sits there on the lawn.

I send Quinn a text.Do you want to talk tomorrow?

She doesn’t text me back.

I’ve just come home from school.

I’m standing in the foyer of my family’s house. I’m alone. But I can hear sounds in the distance, coming from upstairs—a door closing. Then the muffled voices of my siblings. My mom.

More than I can hear them… I can feel their sorrow.