Page 112 of The Roommate Lie

Things between Charlie and me are more complicated than that, more depressing, and I frown. Up front, my parents are watching me in the rearview mirror, and one of them whispers to the other. It sounds likeyou can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.

Unfair.

If I could make things work out with Charlie, I would. But you can’t force someone to like you. He didn’t even stick around to say goodbye—he disappeared. How much could he possibly care?

My sisters still don’t notice my bad mood. They’re too excited about the journey ahead. They convinced our parents to let us take the mountain shuttle and the Old Western bus back to Texas together while my parents fly home alone. It’s supposed to be some kind of epic sister bonding trip, but I’m too upset about leaving.

Desperate to distract myself, I open the Ziplock bag from Charlie and the Sharps, digging through some of the fishbowl prompts they made me. So many of my favorite tropes and micro tropes are included, but there’s nothing secret or fated. Nothing that proves maybe he liked me after all.

Then my fingers snag on something different buried deep inside the bag. Something that’s much larger than a scrap of paper.

When I pull it out, it’s a cardboard packet that’s half the size of my palm. It’s been taped shut within an inch of its life,and it takes me forever to pry it open. A small glass Christmas ornament is waiting inside. The most adorable bundle of carrots with their green leafy tops draped to the side.

How that man can make vegetables look cute, I’ll never understand.

The ornament is so delicate and intricate, it takes my breath away. I cradle the carrots in my palm, admiring them, the hope in my chest as fragile as the ornament itself.Did he really make something this perfect for me?

I recognize the ornament right away. At least, I think I do. The colors remind me of the piece he was working on a few nights ago—after my family showed up, and I had that break down in his art shed. He’d been out there for hours working on it, and the fact that he did all that just for me—to surprise me—warms my heart.

Does this mean what I think it means?

A million different feelings bubble in my chest, wonder and awe mixed with so much uncertainty. It takes a second to realize there’s something else in that cardboard pouch: a handwritten note.

Unfolding the paper, I read it out loud to my sisters.

Don’t forget me.

—Blythe

“Stop the car,” we shout in perfect unison. A united front for the first time in months.

Because when a Kilpatrick girl knows, a Kilpatrick girlknows.

Chapter Fifty-Eight

CHARLIE

“Charlie and I are in love.”

I’m sitting in the back seat of Tyler’s car with Lydia and Cookie. We’ve barely reached town limits, but that woman is trying to get us both killed. Right after she says that, Tyler nearly jumps the curb.

“What?”

I aim a frantic look at his sister. I thought we had an understanding, a mutual agreement about being just friends. And I thought she knew I liked Alice—isn’t that why she hunted me down with her brother?

Before I can hyperventilate or jump out of a moving vehicle, she gives me a reassuring glance. Atrust meglance.

It doesn’t help.

I wish I had my phone, so she could text me her plan. Mostly, though, I wish we could call the bus station and tell them not to let Alice leave. But Lydia has called five times already, and it never goes through. We can’t even reach my brother on his cell—we can’t reach anyone.

Tyler stares at me in the rearview mirror. I’m pretty sure he’s plotting my demise. But his sister stays calm, her voice sincere.

“We should’ve told you sooner, but we didn’t know how. We never wanted to hurt you.”

“We had a rule. One rule. Sisters are off-limits. We?—”

“You had a rule,” she says gently. “And we never planned to go against that. We started out as friends with the best intentions, but then…we fell in love.”

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