I nod as I sink onto the sofa and open up the diary.
The page I end up on is one where pages have been ripped out. I trace my fingers along the binding where the remnants of the pages remain.
What did Clover write, but then decide to hide? It seems so out of character for her. She wasn’t the kind of person to erase or take back things. She owned what she did—good and bad. It makes me wonder if the pages still exist but have been hidden somewhere else. Could it be in her wallet that was never found? Could it be buried under these daisies Camilla spoke of?
I fan through the pages until I find where I left off in the diary.
I’m getting tired. Tired of writing my thoughts. Tired of living in my own head. Tired of all the pain. Part of it is my fault for making the choices that I have. I wanted the truth so desperately that I made decisions from which I’m unsure I can recover. I know I did this for a reason—a really fucking good one—but who will I be when I come out of this? Will I be able to erase all the bad things I’ve done? And what about the stuff done to me? All those hands that touched me when I didn’t want them to. The poison I allowed in my veins that my body now craves. And him, the guy I let break me, mold me, whore me out to get what he wants. And I did it to get what I wanted. Or at least to try to get what I wanted.
Sometimes my feelings for him get muddled. It’s so fucked up that I question if perhaps through all of this pretending, if a small part of me cares about him. I even picked daisies for him the other day, and he put them in a vase that he keeps perched on his bedroom dresser.
Maybe he’s not so bad.
Out of the two of them, he’s definitely the lesser of two evils. But he’s still horrible. However, I’m unsure what he’d do if he found out about the other.
I sit back, processing what I just read. Was Clover seeing two guys? Could that have been what happened? Could one of them have found out about the other and killed her?
Or did they find out what she was really doing? She did say that she was starting to get confused about her feelings for one of them. Could she have let something slip out? She did give him daisies, which means he meant something to her.
My gaze travels to the daisies on the dresser. Could this guy have left these outside of the hotel room door? Did he know what they meant to Clover and me? Why does the scene she described with the daisies in a vase on his dresser feel so familiar…
I’m in his room for the first time. It’s full of trophies and awards, nothing too out of the ordinary, except…
He has a vase filled with dried-up daisies.
My heart tugs at the sight of it.
“Who gave you these?” I ask as I stare at the wilting petals.
“Those flowers?” he asks, and I nod. “I don’t know. Some girl … I can’t remember her name. Why?”
“I don’t know …” Tears well in my eyes, but I suck them back. “They’re just … Daisies are pretty flowers.”
“They’re lame, if you ask me. They’re plain as hell.” He pauses. “And those are dead—I should’ve thrown them out a long time ago.”
“Oh my god.” The connection clicks so sharply that I drop the diary.
“What is it?” Ellis asks, his gaze snapping to mine.
I force down the tremulous breath begging to escape my lips. “Clover was with two different men while she was looking into Zoey’s death, and I know who one of them was.” Just thinking about it makes my skin crawl. “It was Jason. Clover was with Jason.”
26
CLOVER
Jason is always a moody guy, but tonight he’s at his worst. Something is bothering him. I can feel it from the moment he pulls up at my house to pick me up.
He honks the horn an annoying number of times to the point where I rush so quickly out the door that I trip and fall down the stairs. The gravel at the bottom scrapes my knees and palms. Jason doesn’t get out of the car to help me. He honks the damn horn again. By the time I slide into the passenger seat, I’m fuming.
“You could’ve helped me,” I snap as I slam the door. I use the flashlight on my phone to examine the wounds on my knees. “Shit, I need band aids.”
“There’s a towel in the backseat,” he says as he shoves the shifter into drive and peels out of the gravel driveway.
I shake my head, my anger simmering. “You know what? I think I’ll stay home tonight.”
“No, you’re not. We need to make an appearance at this party, so clean your fucking hands and knees up and shut your mouth.” He grips the steering wheel as he drives down the road consumed by night.
Every one of my instincts begs to snap at him, to tell him to fuck off, to be the old Clover. But she died the day Zoey did, and the reminder of that, and what I’m trying to do, causes me to keep my lips cinched.
