Dead Ringer

31

Ciar and Tilda. I couldn't wrap my head around it as I drove back to my apartment. Of course, he hadn't confirmed anything. But if I worked off that assumption, everything still made sense.

How easily he recognized her things. The steel behind his eyes when he tried to joke about getting stood up for his brother. The way he seemed to hate me before he even got a chance to know me. They were all the wounded actions of someone who had been scorned by a face that looked exactly like mine.

And she had settled on his brother instead.

What had he told me that night at Upper Mystic Lake? "You love her, I get that. It doesn't mean you should let her destroy you."

It was from experience. All of that was advice he wished he could go back and give his past self.

Sighing, I turned onto my street. I didn't even need the GPS anymore, and it spoke to just how often I'd ended up at that damn garage. Hopefully, for both of our sakes, this was the last time I ever set foot there.

You should leave.

As I pulled into my driveway, I passed a black SUV parked along the curb and sighed again. It was so easy to escape into Donovan's little bubbles of fantasy and forget the real reason I was here. But Clarissa always managed to show up and remind me.

She stood at my door, arms folded and lips pressed so thin they almost disappeared into her pinched face. She radiated anger, and rather than make excuses I knew she'd pounce on the second I spoke, I waited for her to make the first move as I unlocked the door.

"Nice of you to return from playing house in the woods," she snarked as I stepped inside. She followed an inch behind, her heels clicking menacingly on the crappy wood floor as I put down my things.

She obviously wasn't done, so I straightened and waited.

"My device went offline yesterday afternoon. Afternoon! It's one o'clock now and I haven't heard one word from you since then. You could have been dead for all I knew!"

I blinked. "Are you going to pretend like you weren't watching that cabin like a hawk? You knew I was alive."

"Alive!" She threw her hands up. "I didn't know if you were under duress when you walked out to that car! I didn't know if he had a gun on you the whole drive back! I didn't know if you'd been found out and confessed everything to him so he'd let you live!"

This wasn't the Clarissa I knew. Wild eyes, hair starting to frizz at the ends, shirt untucked. The definition of uncollected.

"What was I supposed to do? Walk outside to your stakeout and have a casual conversation?"

"You have a phone." She yanked it out of my pocket, flapping it in my face, and then threw it at me. I barely caught it. "You can text. Surely you had a moment alone in the bathroom or something."

Yes. I spent it having a mental breakdown. He found me cackling at my own reflection like a madwoman.

Yeah, I wasn't about to say that.

Her eyes flicked over me from head to toe, and she sighed. "What has he done to you?"

I squared my shoulders, heat bubbling in my gut. "Nothing."

Everything, possibly. I don't even remember.

I tried to stop the blush creeping into my cheeks, but it was determined. Clarissa caught it, her already abused lips stretching thinner.

"You—!" She grabbed me by the shoulders, studying me with her face far too close to mine. "You didn't," she whispered.

I stayed silent, lifting my chin.