Page 54 of Cruel Riches

11

Alexis

“Order for Alexis?”

I made my way to the front of the bakery. It was a nice little place in the center of Arcadia Bay that made the best damn pastries I’d ever tasted. I’d recently started coming here for lunch every day instead of facing the crowded dining halls and cafés at Blackthorne.

A week and a half had passed since the deepfake video of me went viral, and people still stared at me wherever I went on campus. They didn’t do it in a negative way, because everyone knew the video was fake by now, but it still bothered me. Made me feel like an animal in a zoo. It would be a long time until my notoriety died down, though, so for now, I had to accept that people still saw me as that girl. There was simply nothing I could do about it.

I smiled at the new worker behind the bakery counter as she handed me a brown paper bag. “Thanks,” I said.

There was a flicker of recognition in her eyes—no doubt she saw the video like everyone else in town—but she quickly straightened her shoulders and gave me a pleasant smile. “You’re welcome. Enjoy!”

I turned around and almost bumped right into a person. “Sorry,” I mumbled.

I looked up to see who it was, and a heavy feeling appeared in my stomach as I registered the floppy hair, dimples, and brown eyes. It was Harry.

I hadn’t heard anything from him since I asked for his help when the video went out to everyone. I hadn’t bothered trying to contact him again, either. He’d clearly lost all interest.

“Oh. Hi,” I said stiffly.

He looked surprised to see me, and his feet shuffled slightly backward, as if he couldn’t stand to be within spitting distance of me. “Uh… hey,” he muttered.

It was the most awkward moment I’d ever encountered.

Suddenly I was incensed. This guy acted like he liked me and then ghosted me as soon as something bad happened, even though I swore up and down that I was innocent. I didn’t do anything wrong. He did, and he deserved to feel all the awkwardness for being such an asshole.

“You never replied to my last message,” I said in an acid tone, arching a brow.

Harry frowned. “What?”

“My last message,” I repeated. “I’m sure you remember. It wasn’t that long ago.”

“Uhh… sorry, but I don’t think I got a message from you.”

I narrowed my eyes and pulled out my phone. “Really?” I said, scrolling through our text history right in front of him. “You got all my other messages and replied to them just fine. But not that particular one? How strange.”

Harry lifted his palms. “Look, I’m sorry, Alexis, but I really don’t know what’s going on here. I’ve never texted you before.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“No. The last time I spoke to you was at that party a month ago.”

I took a step back, eyes widening. “What?”

“I told you to come and find me at my place if your phone was actually broken, so we could stay in touch. But you never did. I figured you weren’t that interested, and then that guy showed up and told me to stay the hell away from you. So I figured there was something going on between you two.”

A sudden coldness bit at my insides. Of course. It all made sense now.

Harry didn’t give me the phone. He didn’t text me, either.

It was Nate.

He saw me talking to Harry and flirting with him at the stoplight party, so he broke my phone by pushing it into that barrel of wine. Then he gifted me a brand new one the next morning and said it was from Harry.

That was why ‘Harry’ never wanted to meet up. That was why he gave me excuse after excuse while acting like he was still interested in chatting. It was just Nate keeping tabs on me.

Even the incident a couple of weeks ago made sense now; when I thought Harry ignored me after seeing me at the café. He did ignore me, because Nate told him to stay away from me. Nate was right there, too, and he saw the whole awkward exchange. He knew I’d wonder what was going on, so he quickly texted me some bullshit excuse from ‘Harry’ about not seeing me because he wasn’t wearing glasses.

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