Once I've got the sweater on, I head inside and take the elevator to floor six, knocking on the door and then scrolling through my messages while I wait for Dad to answer it.

There's not a single message from either Cody or Monica.

Not one.

They don't even care enough about me to apologize.

With a sigh, I tuck my phone away and force a smile as Dad opens the door with his brows raised.

“Charlotte, what are you doing here?” He moves aside for me to come in, and I scoot past him, depositing my stuff on the perfectly made queen bed on the left. The other is rumpled and has his suit laid out for the day. Dad's still in his pj's.

“Cody and I broke up,” I tell him, spinning around to face him and tucking my hands into the pockets of my new dress—ugh, don't you just love dresses with pockets?—and smiling. “It was necessary. I'm over it. I just … Monica wasn't very supportive, and I felt like I'd rather be here.”

Dad nods, but he doesn't seem entirely convinced.

“Okay, Charlotte,” he says with a sigh. “Look, I was about to call you …”

The blood drains from my face, and I sit down hard on the edge of the bed. No sentence that begins with I was about to call you ever turns out well in the end. My heart starts to race like crazy, and my hands begin to shake.

“What? What is it? It's not Mom, is it?” The way Dad's looking at me, however, tells me that it is, in fact, Mom. “She's not dead, is she?”

“Don't be dramatic,” he chastises which really isn't fair of him. Mom does drugs. She puts herself in dangerous situations. It's been a fear of mine for years. “She's not dead, but I'm taking her today to enroll in a rehab program.”

The air rushes out of me, and I put a hand to my chest, feeling like a deflated balloon. Too many emotions in too short of a time. I'm sort of … numb now. My plan for the last three months was to dig my heels in and stay here, return to my life in California.

Now, all I want to do is sit in that abandoned girls' dormitory and read a book. Pushing my glasses up my face, I give Dad a raised eyebrow.

“Can I come?” The way he frowns answers that question for me. “Why not? You said I could see her for Christmas, but if she's in rehab then I can't see her at all!”

“Don't be selfish, Charlotte. Your mother's making a conscious choice towards her own recovery.”

“I don't understand why I can't just come with you to drive her there,” I start, feeling tears prick my eyes, but Dad's clearly done with the conversation. He grabs his clothes off the bed, and heads for the bathroom. “This is fucking bullshit.”

“I am getting tired of your crass language. It makes you sound uneducated. Is that how you want people to perceive you? As willfully ignorant and uneducated? Because you won't get very far in life, Charlotte.” My mouth purses into a thin line, but there's no point in arguing with him. He makes sure he wins every single one. “Besides, you need to respect your mother's wishes.”

“How so?” I ask, following him a few steps toward the bathroom door. “Her wish is not to see me?”

Dad says nothing, but I can see it written into the lines of his face.

“She asked me to pick her up alone because she doesn't want you to see her like this. It's because she loves you, Charlotte, that she doesn't want you to come.” He heads into the bathroom and closes the door behind him. Meanwhile, that numb feeling just creeps into all my fingers and toes and stays there, even as he walks out the door, even when he comes back, and it holds onto me all the wat back to Connecticut.

January in the Northeast is freaking cold. That brief little stint back in California took away any residual resistance I had to the weather. The big stone hallways of Adamson Academy feel like ice caverns as I shiver my way from the last class of the day to the Culinary Club meeting.

“How long is this damn heater going to be out?” Spencer snaps, slamming some pots and pans on the counter. “Those assholes have been working on it all day.”

“For the amount the school's paying them, you'd think it'd be done already,” Church adds mildly, sipping a cup of coffee as I hip bump my way into the room. His amber eyes catch on mine as I chuck my backpack onto the floor, and pull the new North Face jacket I got for Christmas a little tighter around me. It's the only good Christmas memory I came back from California with.

“That's the problem with you upper crust types,” I say as I pull a cookbook close and pretend not to care that Ranger's watching me with narrowed, sapphire eyes. The twins have been teasing me all day, but it's a light, mild sort of teasing that doesn't really bother me. What sort of game they're playing, I don't know, but it's better than having a jar of spiders dumped on me, so I'll take it. “Those men are out there in the freezing cold busting their asses to fix a boiler system that's been around since the turn of the century. Cut them some slack.”

“Wow, you sure came back with an extra bite of asshole,” Spencer snaps, but I keep my gaze focused on the cookbook in front of me. I can't look at him, not after all the daydreaming I've been doing about his kisses. Those turquoise eyes, that silver ash hair, the heat of his hands. “You must've had a good time with your girlfriend, huh?”

“They broke up,” the twins announce as I fling the kitchen door open with gusto. “We witnessed it.” They both hold up their hands and shrug in a placating gesture.

“Actually, Tobias punched Cody, the guy Monica was sleeping with,” I say, flipping the pages and looking for some sort of casserole dish that I can make to stay warm. Now that I know we're actually earning extra credits for this class, I'm trying a bit harder. If I play my cards right, I won't end up in summer school again this year.

“Are you fucking serious?” Spencer asks, and I glance up to see him looking between the twins and me in confusion. “You were all together for break?”

The twins both sigh and exchange a look before turning back to Spencer. When I flick a quick glance over my shoulder at them, I know right away that Micah is the one on the left.

“Our mother works in Santa Cruz.” They point at each other again, and it reminds me of Tweedledee and Tweedledum in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Very whimsical. But then Micah gives a cruel smirk and ruins the illusion.

“How do you think his dad got the job?” He points at me next, and then comes up to stand on my left while Tobias takes up a spot on my right. Tobias flips over to a section on souffles and taps one with his finger.

“Let's cook this.”

“It says difficulty level challenging,” I say, trying to ignore that sweet-tart scent of theirs. If I were the poetic type, I might say they smell like insatiability. Yum. I mean … no. No, thank you.

“Don't be a wuss,” Micah purrs, whipping the book away from me while his brother goes to the fridge to grab the ingredients. Spencer is staring at me like I'm from a foreign planet, and then … his mouth twitches, and he lets this lascivious little smile take over his lush lips.

“Did you do what I asked? Did you compare my kiss to hers?”