Diamond bright, how you sparkle
Rich indulgence you spread delight
Diamond bright, how they clamor
To plunder your unguarded treasure
Those parasites
Those thieves of light
Those borrowers of others’ dreams
They’ll claw and smother until you’re just another
rock
Oh god. Emotion burns hot behind my eyes. This can’t be the same girl who endlessly smiles for cameras. Who fills stadiums, radio booths, and magazine covers with her beauty. The girl who plays her part so well, even she can’t see the façade. No, this is the girl in the mirror. I finally found her, and it kills me that she hasn’t. My fingers shake as I turn back to the opening page.
She stares at No One in the mirror…
I glance up at the click of the bathroom door and catch my breath when I see Genevieve. Maybe on the surface she looks the same as when she stormed off, but she looks completely different to me now. Her gaze is deeper, her eyes rounder and sadder than before, now that I know what’s hiding behind her fake smile. She steps out from the bathroom and freezes when she sees me. The notebook lies open on my thighs, and I make no attempt to cover up my snooping. She needs to know someone sees her, that I’m committed to finding the girl in the mirror. Our gazes lock and her cheeks pale before reddening in angry blotches.
“What are you doing?” she hisses, eyes narrowed and heated. She resembles a threatened animal more than anything, a look I know well from many years navigating sisters. And like any confrontation with them, I respond calmly and directly.
“The notebook was open on your stand. Is this your poetry?”
“That’s none of your business!” She stalks forward and snatches it from my hands. Snapping the book shut, she practically throws it in the drawer of her nightstand.
“It’s really good,” I say gently.
“You had no right to read that!”
Maybe not, but that’s not why she’s upset. “I’m sorry I saw something you didn’t want me to see, but I’m not sorry I read it. It’s—”
“It’s none of your business, like I said. You should go, Oliver.” Her tone is back to steady and cold. I hate that she tucked away her emotions again. I hate that I’m the latest “crisis” she needs to manage.
“No.” I say, crossing my arms and meeting her gaze.
Her eyes widen in shock. “That wasn’t a request.”
“No, it was a suggestion. One that I’m choosing not to accept. I’m not running.”
“You invaded my privacy!”
“You invited me into your bedroom.”
“For privacy! Because…” She must hear herself, but instead of backing down, she digs in further. Wow, she’s committed, I’ll give her that.
“Do you even know why you’re upset right now?”
“I’m not upset,” she says, and it would be easy to believe her. How often does that work on everyone else? Always? Because she’s right. Her face isn’t upset; her voice is a smooth siren song. But the fingers hidden in her crossed arms dig into her skin. Her lips tremble with the subtlest tick. No one would notice. No one except me who’s become dialed in to every one of her frequencies. She’s become the puck. My focus, my drive, an instinctual force I sense even when I lose visual. She braces in front of me, and I’m back on the ice, locked in on a breakaway heading toward me at full speed. I read her every movement, feel what I can’t see.
“I want to meet her.”
She stiffens. “Who?”
“No One. The girl in the mirror. I want to meet her.”
She shakes her head. “She doesn’t exist. That’s the point.”
“She does. That’s the point.”
“Get out, Oliver.”
“No.”
“Get out!”
“I don’t run from a fight.”
“Don’t make me call security!” She picks up her phone, and I stare at her trembling hand. Her finger rests on a button, her eyes saturated with fear and pain. My stomach clenches as I study her. I don’t run from a fight, but I also don’t leave women scared and shaking in their own bedrooms. I feel sick as I force myself up from the bed and hold up my hands.
“Okay. I’ll go,” I say softly.
She doesn’t move as I back toward the door, everything in me screaming not to leave her like this. To fix it. But my puck is sailing over my head, so far out of reach that all I can do is watch it clear the glass and tangle in the netting. How long will it be trapped there?
I grip the door on my way out, hesitating against one last truth I can’t let go. If I never see her again, she needs to know. I turn my head and watch her for several seconds. So beautiful. So shut off from everyone else—herself most of all.
“I think I could have loved her,” I say quietly.
A sheen spreads over her eyes. “Who?”
“The girl in the mirror.”
And I leave.
CHAPTER 6
He speaks without words, laughs without caution
Strange in the way he brings color to gray
He’s a danger to himself
How he stands in to help
Facing storms meant to keep him at bay
If I let him suffer as my buffer
If I open the vault no one sees
Who will be waiting in the wake of courageous
When he finally believes
The vault is empty?
GENEVIEVE
I can’t breathe after Oliver leaves. Even if I’d wanted to call him back, I end up on the bed, trying to pull in air at a reasonable clip. An anxiety attack, sure, I’ve had them before. Often lately, and I have plenty of strategies to deal with them. After getting myself back to functional, I pop a pill and cuddle against a body pillow to wait for it to take effect. I still have twenty minutes to get my crap together before we have to leave for the meeting. Twenty minutes to make sense of what just happened and bury it.
Oliver saw my poetry. Another soul brushed mine, and I’m not okay. No one’s seen that part of me, not even Hadley who tapped on my
