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Story: Having Henley

“You’re not her.” I shake my head, looking at the door, willing it to open so I could be proved right. So I could watch Henley—my Henley—walk through the door. “You look nothing like her.”
“Like who?” she says, looking over her shoulder at the door I’m staring at. “Conner—”
“Henley O’Connell. You’re not her.” This was Declan, teaching me a lesson. Getting back at me. He’s probably holed up in the office, watching me squirm on one of his fucking surveillance cameras and laughing his ass off.
“It’s been eight years since we’ve seen each other,” she says, her tone turning the words into an apology. “I know I owe you an explanation for last night.” She sighs, her fingers reaching up again, this time fingering the pearls around her neck. “I’m sorry—”
“Stop saying that,” I practically come out of my seat, glaring down at her. “What happened to your nose?” Henley broke her nose six times by the time she was fourteen. After the first two times, her mom stopped taking her to Urgent Care to have it set. Her father lost his job, and they didn’t have insurance. The summer she turned seventeen, Henley’s mother left her father, and took Henley with her.
I never saw her again.
She reaches up, lightly trailing her fingers over her perfect nose. “I had it fixed,” she says, looking up at me with those huge brown eyes, wounded and unsure.
And suddenly, I see her.
The real her.
I sit back down slowly, pushed low by the reality of what I’ve done and who I did it to. I look at the clock again.
It’s 12:08 and no one else was coming.