“Stop,” I say as she grabs the knob to her door. “Why are you upset?”

She glances over her shoulder, her expression frozen, emotion completely gone. “No reason.” Her smile is forced, just like mine is.

The Perfects.

The Perfect smile.

She flashes it so well, so fucking well, I almost feel sick as she closes the door to her room.

I’m shut out.

And I have only myself to blame.

And yet, I still blame her.

Chapter Thirteen

Mary-Belle

You’d think it would be easy to ignore such an asshole.

Maybe it’s because he smells so good or because I remember his warmth, his smile. He’s fully immersed himself in the last month of high school as one of the guys every girl wants to sleep with.

Been there, done that, wish I would have at least kept the t-shirt.

And the guy that every other “bruh” wants to be best friends with, dumbest word ever. If he was popular before, then he’s a god now, and I wish I was joking about that, but he’s basically going to go down as some sort of legend, I’m convinced of it.

I literally saw a girl faint when he winked at her the other day. I wonder what she’d say if she knew that his mouth spent hard time between my thighs.

Inappropriate, but sometimes I just want to scream it.

To scream that at one point in my life, everything was perfect.

I clutch my designer bag in my hand and grab my books from my locker in a vain attempt not to get noticed, but who am I kidding?

I’m officially Ambrose’s technical family.

Everyone notices me.

I could be in full disguise, and I’d still get stopped and asked, “So what is he really like?”

I change my answers depending on my mood, but I always say that he’s nice when he’s anything but nice.

This morning I woke up to find my toothbrush in the toilet with a little sticky note on the seat that said. “Oops.”

He’s hurting.

Lashing out.

He’s being the boy you always read about in books that you know has a heart of gold but refuses to acknowledge it because to acknowledge it means you have to acknowledge the rest of it… the dirty, the ugly, the pain.

Acknowledging his soft side would mean coming to terms with his father’s death and their relationship, and I wonder if that wouldn’t just fracture him so much that he breaks.

I can hurt enough for both of us.

I can take it.

I’ve lived my entire life this way, and he hasn’t, so if that means I’m taking one for the team so that he smiles again—what else can I possibly do? I know I owe him nothing, and yet it feels like I do.

Because for the first time in my life.

Ambrose made me feel safe.

So I do owe him, I really do. The moments were fleeting, I shut my locker, and I tell myself that they were enough. That the one week we had was enough to remind me that the world wasn’t all bad.