Page 105 of Cinderella Is Faking It

For the first time, I looked up. We’d toppled down the steep ditch, the street at least 20 feet above us. An older woman stood at the side of the road, phone by her ear. She waved at me when she saw me looking. I’d take that as a sign that she’d called 911. Except she didn’t stop waving and my gaze followed her pointed fingers to the other car.

Right. We hadn’t just toppled over out of the blue.

The wreckage of a silver car was smoking and creaking several feet away.

My attention fell back to the only woman I never wanted to leave - and who would never let me hear the end of it, if I didn’t leave her right now to see if anyone else needed help. “Last offer, Delilah,” I whispered and laid a careful kiss to her brow, “you don’t die on me, and I check the other car, okay?” A breath rattled through her lungs, just a little stronger than the previous ones. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

My left side shot sharp arrows of pain through my chest, but I’d cracked enough ribs in the ring over the years to push through. The driver’s door of the silver Volvo hung ajar, window gone, and the man behind the wheel let out a low groan from behind a mop of thin brown hair.

His seat belt gave up on first try and I got him out of the vehicle with a single pull, laying him out in the grass. His hair fell back, and my stomach tightened. “I know you.”

“She’s not who you think she is,” he coughed.

“Childs.” His name lurked in the back of my mind alongside the picture Julian had sent me the day before I left for Cape Cod. His face was bruised and swollen now, but I’d dug so deep into this bastard’s entire online presence, I could have picked him out from a lineup with a hood over his face. “Roger Childs.”

“You better hope she’s dead or she’ll ruin your life like she ruined mine.” His breath spluttered as he coughed up droplets of blood.

He won’t bother me anymore.

I still didn’t have details onhowhe’d bothered Del. Childs had been her boss up until a few months ago. He hadn’t even cropped up when we first ran a background check on her, because Del’s records stated that she’d left her job due to mental health issues. No reason to doubt that when you knew about her anxiety…

After I told Julian to dig deeper, he’d found Childs’ life in shambles. Somehow, over the course of a few weeks - the same few weeks in which Del had taken on Cordelia’s name - he’d lost everything.

It didn’t take much to put two and two together.

Someone had simply failed to tell Del that there was nothing more dangerous than a man with nothing left to lose.

“You followed her.” Followed us.

“I did you a fucking favor, man. Her name’s Delilah, not Cordelia. Fucking bitch.”

“A favor,” I mused, cold creeping into my bones. Only a few feet away, Delilah, who stole soap from rich people on principle, who came up with wildly sweeping fantasy tales about friendships to beat the odds, and who had given up her own identity for an agoraphobic heiress without so much as a penny flowing into her accounts - spending her own money on dress alterations instead - was barely breathing. Because of him. “Funny. Doesn’t feel like a favor.”

“I just rammed the passenger side. You’re going to be fine.”

“You know what’s a real shame, Roger?” I pushed myself up to look over the wreckage of his car. Sirens had pulled up on the street, but nobody had made their way down the slope yet.

“To waste such a pretty face on such a prickly girl?” He laughed, choking on the sound. He was severely misreading my alliance here.

“That I ran over here, and I pulled your body from this wreck, and after all that, I wasn’t able to save your life.”

Confusion marred his features, and understanding flashed just as I gripped his thinning hair and his stubbled chin. His neck snapped like a twig in my hands.

I didn’t waste a single second more on him, leaving him in the dirt where he belonged, and dragged myself back to Delilah’s side.

FORTY-TWO

My head was throbbing,and that goddamn song didn’t stop. Beck never listened to music in the morning, and now he had to play that goddamn song. “Can you turn off the music?”

“There’s no music, darling,” a woman replied, and I tried to pry my eyes open, because she wasn’t Beck, and that goddamn song wouldn’t stop. And not a single person named Delilah ever wanted to hear that goddamn song again. My eyes didn’t open though, and I just sank back into the comforting, warm darkness of Beck’s arms around me and his face snuggled into the crook of my neck while he hummed, so cheesy.

“Good song,” I mumbled, tongue heavy.

“Good night,” he whispered back.

FORTY-THREE

“I swear to God-”