One of Those Faces (79)

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT


The phone rang once. Then twice.

“Hello?” Danny answered, his voice thick.

Hearing his voice filled me with shame. About what exactly was a mystery. There were too many reasons to choose from. “Hey, it’s Harper,” I said.

“Huh? Is everything okay?” His voice was thick.

No. I swallowed. “Can I come over?”

He was silent.

“I know it’s late—”

“Yeah, of course,” he interrupted. “I’ll text you the address. Let me know when you get here, and I’ll buzz you in.”



I paced in front of the elevator in Danny’s building before finally riding up to the fourth floor, my heart pounding loudly against my ribs.

When I made it to his door, I sent him a text. Within seconds, he opened the door, his eyes narrowed against the light in the hallway.

“Come in,” he said in a lowered voice. “My roommates are asleep.”

I stepped in behind him into the dark apartment and followed him into the farthest room. He flicked on the light and softly closed the door behind me. The items in his apartment were exactly the same as his room in Evanston, but the order had changed. And there was even more paper littering his desk.

“Danny, I’m sorry about this. I woke you up, didn’t I?”

He looked me up and down. “No, it’s fine. What’s going on? Are you all right?”

I leaned against the bookcase facing toward him. “Iann and I broke up,” I said, my stomach dropping. “I couldn’t go back to my old apartment alone right now, but this was stupid. I’m sorry.”

He shook his head. “No, I’m glad you called. But . . . well, sorry about Iann.” His face didn’t betray anything. “What happened?”

I sat on the edge of the bed and clasped my hands together. “I found . . . something.”

“What?” He sat backward on his desk chair, facing me.

It would sound ridiculous to him. I’d never spoken about Issi with him either. “He was only interested in me because I look like his dead girlfriend.”

He blinked. “Okay . . . wait, what?”

The heat flooded to my cheeks again. “You think it’s insane to break up over that, right? It isn’t that big of a problem?”

He rubbed his eyes. “I think it is. But I want to know why it matters to you. I mean, even if he was interested in you because of that, you two were together for a while, right?”

I clasped my hands together, still remembering earlier with Wilder. I wanted to throw up. “It’s a big deal to me because . . .” I hadn’t said her name aloud in such a long time. It sat at the back of my throat. “I could never really tell you why my father did what he did to me.”

He leaned forward. “What do you mean?”

I rubbed my index finger over my thumb. “I told you that I was in a bad car accident when I was ten, right?”

His eyes flickered over to the scar on my neck as he nodded.

“It wasn’t just me and my father in the car that night.” I swallowed. “My twin sister died in that accident.”

He said nothing, but his gaze grew more intense.

“I survived, but she didn’t. He wanted her, but instead he was stuck with me.” For the longest time, I’d wished the same. Tonight I felt that more than ever.

“That’s not—”

I raised my hand. “I know that he didn’t want me to survive,” I said firmly. “After that, he started calling me by her name and making me dress like her and act like her. He told everyone that Harper died. They all thought I was grieving and crazy, and they believed him.”

Danny’s eyes widened.

“That’s why . . . he did all that to me.” Danny was the only one who really knew what my father had been capable of back then. He saw the evidence of the fights—the bruises, the gash on my forehead the night I’d finally left. “He couldn’t ever completely control me, but he tried.” I swallowed. “I can’t live in someone’s shadow like that again. I won’t.”

“Why didn’t you ever tell me?” he asked quietly.

I shrugged. “Because it’s messed up. And I wanted to forget too. When I met you, that was the first time I felt like I could be myself again.”

He stared down at his hands.

“You said before there was something off about Iann,” I started. “What did you mean?”

He shook his head. “It’s nothing. I was only saying that.”

I held his gaze. “Really, Danny. What did I miss?”

He looked down again. “I don’t know. When we were at the club, there was something off about the way he was watching you.” He caught my steady gaze and continued. “It’s not how normal people look at their girlfriends. It was like he was studying you or something. I don’t know how to describe it. It was some feeling I had.”

I tried to remember, to conjure any memory of how he had looked at me that night or any other night.

“Come on,” Danny said, standing up from the chair. “You should get some sleep. Take the bed. I’ll take the couch.” He grabbed a pillow from behind me and straightened the sheets.