The Lie (Kings of Linwood Academy 2)

1

My favorite color has always been blue.

I never had a least favorite before.

But I do now.

Orange.

I fucking hate it.

My mom smiles at me from behind the glass partition that separates us, and the sight of it twists my stomach into knots. She’s only been in here for four days, but when your mom’s been arrested for a murder she didn’t commit, four days feels like a goddamn lifetime.

“Harlow, sweetheart, it’s going to be all right,” she promises for the millionth time, and I do my best to smile back at her, even though it hurts my face.

I don’t see how that’s true, but I can’t stand that my mom, the one locked behind bars, is the one trying to comfort me. I should be protecting her, comforting her—hell, I shouldn’t have let Detective Dunagan and those other cops haul her away in the first place.

That thought makes my stomach clench so hard I think I might throw up, so I push it away, attempting to slow my heart rate by sheer force of will.

“Are you okay? Are you sure you’re doing all right?” I scoot to the edge of my chair, getting as close to the glass divider as possible. “I can’t believe they won’t even let you out on bail. This is fucking bullshit. You didn’t do anything.”

“Low.”

Mom shoots me a disapproving look, shaking her head slightly. Normally, she doesn’t really care about my tendency to curse like a sailor. She had me when she was nineteen and raised me on her own, so we’ve always been as much like sisters as mother and daughter. I heard those words from her lips plenty of times growing up.

But when her gaze leaves me, it darts to the guard standing near the door, looking bored out of his mind—and I know it’s not the swearing she minds so much as where I’m doing it. She doesn’t want me to say something to rile up the guard or get myself in trouble.

And that’s what tells me, more than anything else, that she’s scared.

She may be trying to put on a brave face for me, but it doesn’t change the fact that she’s caught in a system now that won’t let her go until she proves her innocence.

And whoever put her here, whoever called in the anonymous tip to Detective Dunagan and his buddies, did everything they could to make sure that never happens.

I’m losing my battle to keep my emotions under control—again.

My jaw clenches so hard my teeth hurt, and I blink back the tears that make my eyes sting.

Motherfucker.

Mom can read me like a book, so she sees on my face that I’m about to lose it and scoots closer to the window dividing us too. Her gaze flicks to the guard by the door one last time, then she looks back to me, her voice softening to a whisper.

“I hate this, Low. I hate it so much. But we have to just… have faith in the system. We have to believe that when the truth all comes out, they’ll know it wasn’t me. It has to be possible to prove that, because it’s the truth.”

“I know it is, but—”

My voice is ragged and too loud, and she cuts me off, putting her hand against the glass.

“It will be okay. The lawyer Samuel recommended is excellent; she really knows her stuff. I’ve got money saved up from my first few paychecks, and beyond that… well, we’ll figure it out.”

We’ll figure it out.

Loans, maybe. Credit cards.

My chest squeezes painfully, and I have to fight down the urge to yank the phone receiver from the wall and bash it against the glass until it breaks—the receiver, probably, not the glass. I’m sure the clear pane that separates us is made of some kind of unbreakable material.

But I don’t fucking care. I just want to break something.

We’ll figure it out.

My mom spent the past seven years digging herself out of the financial hole she went into trying to pay for my cancer treatments. She isn’t even all the way out yet, but her new job at the Black family’s house as their Executive Housekeeper was going to get her there. It was going to turn our fucking lives around.

Now it’s like someone cut the rope she was using to climb out of that hole and made the hole deeper while they were at it, leaving her to fall into a dark abyss that seems to have no bottom.

But what are her choices?

Take on more crushing debt, or go to prison—possibly for life—on a murder charge?

That’s a shitty list of options.

“I’m sorry, Mom.” I reach out and press my palm against hers, hating every atom of the plexiglass that keeps us from touching. “I’m so sorry.”

She smiles sadly and even huffs a soft breath of laughter. “Sweetheart, it’s not your fault. None of this is.”

She’s wrong about that.

I didn’t murder Iris, but I know who did. A man in black, who wore a black mask and moved like a predator.

I don’t know his name, but I know he exists. I know my mom didn’t do this. And if Lincoln, River, Dax, and Chase hadn’t betrayed me, maybe I could’ve convinced the detective to look for that man instead of arresting my mother.

The tears I always promise myself I won’t cry when I come see her slip down my cheeks, and I can see her brown eyes glisten in response. Quickly, I pull my hand away from the glass and wipe my eyes, sucking in a deep breath and forcing a smile to my face.

“I love you, Mom. You’re the most badass person I know. And—and you’re right. It’s all gonna be okay.”

We traded these kinds of empty promises and reassurances back and forth when I was going through chemo, and even though we both knew they were promises we couldn’t guarantee, I know how much it helps to hear the words.

There is power in believing. In holding onto hope.

And I won’t take that away from my mom, even if I can’t find my own hope right now.

Some of the strain leaves her face. Her hair, the same deep brown as mine, is pulled back from her face in a simple ponytail, and her complexion still seems too pale, like the blood never fully returned to her face after the shock of being arrested in the middle of Mr.

and Mrs. Black’s cocktail party.

“Is there anything I can do for you? Anything to help?” I ask, chewing my lip.

She starts to shake her head, then stops, and my heart leaps with hope. I’m dying to do something, anything.

“You can go back to school.”

She arches a brow, and for a second, she looks just like she would if we were hanging out in her apartment in the service quarters over a pint of ice cream—for a second, I can almost forget that she’s locked behind bars.