Chapter 9
nine
Ever since Imogen started dating Cole six months ago, she started spending most of her time hanging out with him at his aunt’s cafe while he was working.
I was thrilled about this, because I was the one who’d started pushing her to come to The Corner Cafe in the first place and she’d argued with me about it for weeks, which I’d later learned was because she was trying to avoid him before they got together.
Now that she was happy to be here, Cole started picking us up after school on the days that we didn’t have any extracurriculars so we could hang out at the shop while he was working.
On Tuesday afternoon, we took up camp on one of the couches in the shop, with textbooks and notes spread on the table in front of us as we both worked on our final projects for history class.
Imogen was sitting there while Cole leaned over her shoulder, pointing out errors in her paper (though based on her giggling, I had to assume he was making other comments too), while I went up to the counter to get us some drinks.
The cafe was swarming, operating at absolute peak capacity.
Mid-afternoon post-school rush meant blue-and-silver Parkhurst Prep blazers were crammed into mismatched leather armchairs alongside red-and-gold Crofton Academy varsity jackets.
The music overhead—some bass-heavy indie pop track—thudded rhythmically through the space, vibrating off the exposed brick walls and rattling the framed vintage coffee prints hanging near the restrooms. Steam hissed violently from the double-headed espresso machine behind the counter as three frantic baristas shouted out names over the deafening roar of forty different high school conversations.
The sound hit like a solid wall of sound the moment I turned away from the pick-up counter, balancing two oversized paper cups—one Heartbreaker for me, one Study Breakdown for Imogen—and praying I made it across the polished concrete floor without spilling mocha onto my white canvas sneakers.
I took three careful steps past the counter, my eyes glued to the plastic sip-lids, and walked directly, forcefully into a solid wall of chest.
My hot mocha sloshed dangerously over the lid, hot foam scalding my thumb, and I stumbled backward with a sharp, involuntary gasp, my grip on the paper sleeves tightening in blind panic.
“Watch where you’re—“ I snapped, my head snapping up as I prepared to unload on whatever unobservant idiot had just blocked the main thoroughfare. The words died instantly in my throat.
Of course. Because the universe had an utterly twisted sense of humor, it was Rhys Montgomery.
He stood there looking totally unbothered, wearing his crimson Crofton track jacket with the high collar popped just enough to reveal the sharp line of his jaw.
Before I could fall backward onto the hard floor, his hand shot out, his fingers wrapping firmly around my upper arm to steady me.
His grip was warm, solid, and lingered for a fraction of a second longer than human decency required before he slowly let go.
“Careful, Parkhurst,” Rhys said, his voice carrying tha lazy cadence that instantly set every single nerve ending in my body on high alert. “If you wanted to throw yourself at me, you could have just asked. You didn’t need to risk third-degree burns to get my attention.”
“I was walking. You were the one who got in my way like you were asking to get burned by coffee,” I fired back, pulling my arm away defensively and checking my cup for structural damage.
“Cute of you to call that,” he nodded at the cup in my hand, which did appear to be more foam than coffee at the moment, “coffee.”
“Yeah, you drink coffee as dark as your soul. I get it.” I tried to take another step, but he mimicked the movement, standing directly in my path. I pinned him with a glare. “Do you practice being an obstacle, or does being in everyone’s way just come naturally to you?”
“It’s an innate talent, actually.” His lips twitched into that familiar smirk, his green eyes glinting with pure, unadulterated amusement. He lowered his voice, leaning down just an inch so his breath brushed the shell of my ear. “Did you miss me today?”
Before I could tell him precisely where he could shove his afternoon, a sharp, commanding voice cut through the cafe noise beside us like a cold razor blade.
“Step back, Montgomery.”
Imogen materialized at my shoulder like a lethal bodyguard, her sharp gaze locking onto Rhys with hostility.
She didn’t know a single detail about our closet kiss at the party or the workout session at his high-end gym.
To my twin sister, Rhys was simply the arrogant Crofton captain who spent his weekends attempting to slide-tackle our older brother into an early grave.
“Are you bothering my sister?” Imogen demanded, stepping into the narrow gap between us, her arms crossed tight over her Parkhurst blazer as she tilted her chin up.
Rhys turned his eyes to her, unhurried, his smirk broadening by a subtle fraction. “Bothering? I just saved her from drowning in a five-dollar raspberry mocha. If anything, she owes me a formal thank-you note.”
“She doesn’t owe you a breath,” Imogen said cleanly, stepping directly in front of me like a protective shield. “Move along back to your side of the room before I report you to the manager for being a public nuisance.”
“Ouch.” Rhys placed a long-fingered hand over his heart, looking deeply, performatively wounded.
“The sisterly devotion is truly touching. Good to see the open hostility runs deep in the Montgomery-hating bloodline.” He flicked his green eyes past Imogen’s shoulder to lock onto mine, his gaze dropping to my lips for a lingering beat—a silent, wicked reminder of the fake-dating role we were supposed to be playing—before looking back at my twin.
“Keep holding her leash, Imogen. She looks like she’s about to bite. ”
“I will bite,” I warned him, stepping out from behind Imogen’s shoulder so I could stare him down properly. “Go away, Rhys. Don’t you have a track team to intimidate or a mirror to stare into?”
“I’m moving, I’m moving,” he said mildly, holding his hands up in mock surrender as he began stepping backward toward a high-top table near the front window, where a couple of guys from the Crofton lacrosse team were sitting.
“Try not to spill on yourself, Ainsley. I won’t be around to catch you next time. ”
“Thank god,” I called back.
“I hate him,” Imogen muttered under her breath, watching his retreating back with narrow, lethal eyes before turning to grab her Study Breakdown from my hand. “Honestly, Ainsley. Why does he even exist?”
“That is a philosophical question I ask myself every single day,” I breathed, my heart hammering against my ribs at a terrifying rate—partly from the sharp verbal sparring, but mostly from the soul-crushing terror of my twin sister standing two feet away while my secret fake boyfriend smirked at me like we shared a dirty secret.
“Come on, let’s get back to our seats before somebody steals them. ”
We headed back for the couch, squeezed tightly between a massive, drooping Monstera plant and a rickety wooden table where three girls were loudly discussing the worst dates they’d been on.
Cole was gone now and when I glanced at the counter again, I saw him at the register, dressed in his usual uniform of a Northern High shirt with the sleeves rolled up and his dark brown hair flopping over his eyes.
Imogen had a picture of him that looked basically identical to that on her desk and I was pretty sure she kissed it goodnight daily.
I sat down cross-legged while Imogen immediately pulled off the plastic lid of her drink and took a massive, greedy sip of the whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles.
“Whipped cream fixes almost everything,” she declared, wiping a tiny speck of white cream off her upper lip with the back of her wrist. She pulled a thick paper folder from her leather satchel, but instead of opening her homework, she paused.
She stared down at the cardstock cover, her usual sharp, focused expression shifting into something heavy and visibly exhausted in a matter of seconds.
Then grabbed a thick paper folder from her satchel, flipped open a battered binder, and clicked her mechanical pencil with a sharp, aggressive rhythm.
For three solid minutes, she stared down at her biology notes, her hand moving in rapid, tense strokes as if she could simply force herself to concentrate through sheer willpower.
Then her pencil stopped mid-word. The lead snapped against the paper with a tiny, sharp crack. Imogen didn’t fix the lead. She set the pencil down, rested her elbows on her knees, and rubbed her face with both hands, letting out a long, heavy exhale that sounded completely exhausted.
“I can’t stop thinking about the baby shower,” she said quietly.
I paused, my heart doing a strange, tight twist in my chest. We hadn’t talked about it seriously since Saturday morning when the envelope first arrived and we’d all made fun of it.
Like I’d told Nora and Clementine, I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to go.
Then everything with Rhys had happened, and it had more or less fallen from my mind, but now, all the emotions of it were hitting me full force again.
Laughing about it had been easy. Facing the reality of it coming up was something entirely different.
“What about it?” I asked, setting my cup down.
“Just... the fact that it’s actually happening “ Imogen muttered, staring aimlessly at the scratched wood between our drinks. “Dad texted me during lunch today.”