Page 78 of Necessary Cruelty

“Is today a good day or a bad day?”

A grimace curled his lip. “Every day is a bad day.”

Inexplicably, I wanted that smile to come back to his face. I wanted to make him feel better, even though I knew he didn’t deserve it. It was an urge that made no rational sense, but felt as natural as breathing.

“So is that a no on playing tag? I’ll give you a rolling start.”

That surprised a laugh out of him that transformed his face into something so lovely it was heartbreaking. But then the now familiar mask descended back over his features. “You’re funny. But you know, if I tell my step-mother what you said, she’ll fire your dumb mother and then it’s back to the slums for you.”

He was trying to make me angry on purpose, even if I didn’t know why. If I let him accomplish it, this would never happen again.

“Tell her then. And you don’t have to be rude.” My voice was placid with only the barest trace of steel that I liked to imagine ran down my spine, even when I knew no one else could see it. “My family has been here as long as yours has.”

“Longer. The Milbournes were first.”

My head snapped up in surprise. “How do you know that?”

We didn’t go to the Founder’s Day celebrations anymore, and none of the other families had paid us any attention in years. The dusty little elementary school in the Gulch that I attended was different from the fancy one for the kids living in the nicer part of town. Deception only had one high school, so kids from both sides of town mixed there, but not any earlier.

“We’ve met once before, when we were little,” he told me, studying my face as if he tried to reconcile whatever differences he saw. “You don’t remember?”

I would have remembered a boy in a wheelchair. I would have remembered a boy with intense eyes and an angry smile. I would have remembered him.

“You’re thinking about someone else.”

“There aren’t many girls around here that look like you.” His gaze lingered on the riot of curly hair that my mother had struggled and failed to tame, then dropped to the skin of my arms that always tanned deep in the summer, no matter how much sunscreen she slathered on me. “I remember.”

Vague recollections of my last Founder’s Day sifted through my mind, but the memories were hard to recall. It had been years, and anyone I’d met that day existed in a very different world from me.

“No flowers?” An empty vase sat in the middle of the table. I stared at it for a long moment, wondering why someone would lay out a spread like this but neglect to arrange the flowers. My gaze fixed on the porcelain, white with veins of gray running through it like a piece of marble.

“Giselle planted those oleanders. Pick some.”

I followed his gaze to the nearby shrubs that were a riot of color, pretty pinks and deep purples. The flowers were lightly scented, their aroma drifting on the wind in a way I didn’t notice until I paid attention to it.

There was a sort of challenge in his gaze that I didn’t understand. But I decided to rise to the occasion. Literally. Pushing up from the table, I went to the beautiful shrub, so large it was more like a tree. I reached forward to pick one of the blooms, and a shock of pain made me give a surprised gasp.

When I pulled back my hand, there was a streak of red across my palm.

I’d been cut.

“You’ve probably never seen oleander with thorns.” Vin had managed to silently roll his chair behind me, so close that if I reached out he’d be close enough to touch. “There used to be roses here a long time ago. The flowers died, but the thorns are still there. Oleander just grows over them. Our gardeners won’t pick them without shears.” His voice was mocking. “Did I forget to mention that?”

My gaze moved to the laden table with its empty vase and then back to the broken boy who seemed determined to reject me before I could do it to him first.

Without understanding the impulse that drove me, my injured hand gripped the closest stem that wrapped around a thorny branch. My gaze focused on the beautiful flower, even as thorns dug hard into my skin, the pain enough that I never would have tolerated it if I wasn’t trying to prove a point.

Eyes burning and vision blurred, I returned to the table and placed the single flower in the vase. A streak of blood remained on the porcelain as I pulled my hand away.

When I turned back to face him, there were tears in my eyes that I refused to let fall. My gaze returned to his expressionless face as I bunched the fabric of my skirt in my hand to stop the flow of blood.

“There.”

He didn’t say anything as he rolled the chair back to the table. But his gaze lingered on my injured hand as some unknown emotion moved behind his eyes.

When I came back the next day, there were two plates on the table.

Mama brought me to Cortland Manor every day for the rest of the summer.

Usually, Vin and I spent time together in the garden with its deceptively beautiful flowers. Sometimes we talked about things that didn’t really matter, but sometimes we simply sat in companionable silence.

And every day I picked a thorny oleander and placed it in the vase, no matter how much it hurt.

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