How to Make Your Enemy Fall for You: A Sweet Romantic Comedy by Camilla Evergreen

Author:Camilla Evergreen [Evergreen, Camilla]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-07-31T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 18

♥ I’m her editor. I’m allowed to break expectations.

~~~

Twenty years ago

i am a bowt

adrift, aflowt

lost and alown

on this see i cal hom

blu abuv

blu belo

blus all i no

i am a bowt

–Richards, age 5

New home. New school. New people. New places. New tiny scrap of paper forsaken among cubbies and carpet and bright-color toys. I haven’t been able to stop reading the careful words etched across the torn bit of notebook paper in purple crayon since I noticed it.

Richards.

Age five.

My age. My class.

Who?

My gaze skims the slew of children scattered around the room, sticking on no one in particular. They all look the same. Act the same. Someone hits someone. Both kids scream. Both kids cry. They don’t understand what it’s like to be hit by an adult. They don’t know that real pain and fear chokes tears out of you, turns you silent, makes you desperate for invisibility.

They cry because someone will save them.

They cry because they’re safe.

I’m so jealous it makes me angry, but anger isn’t allowed.

My attention traces toward a row of stickers on the wall near the ceiling. Bright bugs run across the strip from one end of the room to the other. Each fuzzy body twists into a familiar letter of the alphabet. Below the alphabet, ants carry numbers from one to twenty. Their cartoon smiles unsettle me.

Is this place safe?

A woman with a bob of light brown hair paces across the floor to the table by the window where I’m sitting. Her smile matches the cartoon ants’, and I force myself not to tense as I meet her caramel brown gaze. She crouches, touches my shoulder, and I don’t flinch despite the bruise hidden beneath my shirt.

“Hi, Desmond. We’re about to start our lesson for today. Are you ready to meet your classmates?”

I watch her for a long moment, and her smile falters some before her brows knit up with a touch of concern.

Turning my attention to the other kids, I ask, “Who’s Richards?”

More confusion filters into her brown eyes as she looks toward the other children. “We don’t have a Richard in this class.”

My hand closes around the notebook paper in my hand.

The teacher’s lips form a circle, then she points at a little girl with a head full of dark curls. “Do you mean Melanie?”

Melanie is nowhere close to the name I asked for. I fix my attention on the woman, wondering if she’s all right, before I look back at the curly-headed girl. She’s not crying or screaming. She’s smiling bright. Her large blue eyes beam as she wraps her arms around one of the kids who is sobbing. Her fingers comb through the other child’s hair, each stroke soothing. Her lips move in murmurs I can’t begin to make out beneath the sobs and the yelling.

One way or another, Melanie calms the other girl until she’s only taking ragged little inhales. Inexplicably, Melanie kisses her forehead and grins; the girl catches Melanie’s smile like a cold.

The teacher explains, “Richards is Melanie’s last name.

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