Chapter 3

Alex stared at her for two seconds.

There was sweat on her face and tiny specks of dirt caught in her lashes.

Several red scratches from rose thorns marked her fingers.

Yet she still wore a bright, energetic smile more radiant than any flower.

"They make you do this?"

His tone sounded strange.

"It's okay. I like it."

Mia smiled, the corners of her mouth lifting before she quickly suppressed it, as though holding something back.

"They'll only let me go to school if I do."

Alex didn't leave.

He leaned against the low wall beside the driveway and removed his other earbud.

Mia pretended to be embarrassed and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear.

"Oh, I've been talking so much. Am I bothering you?"

"No."

Alex looked at her.

"I'm Alex Sterling. Nice to meet you, Mia."

Neither of them noticed what was happening upstairs.

A set of blinds on the second floor opened slightly.

Camille Vaughn, the only daughter of the Vaughn family—the Vances' employers—had just finished her morning stretches.

Her blonde hair was twisted into a casual bun as she leaned against the window frame with an iced latte, watching the two people by the driveway.

"Wow."

She took a sip of coffee, the corner of her mouth curving upward.

"Looks like Cinderella moved in. Too bad she thinks she's the queen."

She watched Mia fiddle with the dirt, then watched Alex bend toward her to talk.

Camille scoffed.

"Nice acting. Shame the script is so old."

She lowered the blinds and walked back into her room.

...

The halls of Windermere High were always as loud as a pot at full boil.

Lockers slammed. TikTok hits blasted from phones. Someone shot past the stairwell on a skateboard while boys and girls clustered in their separate groups.

But spend more than five minutes inside the school and one fact became obvious.

There were only so many spots at the top of the pyramid.

Family background, looks, or both.

Take Alex Sterling.

Six foot two, gray-blue eyes, with shoulders that looked sculpted by a Greek artist beneath his hockey jersey.

He never wore the school blazer, always slinging his team jacket backward over one shoulder.

Girls watched him in the hall.

Boys watched him too—or more accurately, they wanted to be him.

Whenever he passed, younger girls suddenly started laughing louder, deliberately tossing their hair over one shoulder.

He probably knew exactly what they were doing. That half-smile was always hanging on his lips.

On the girls' side, Camille Vaughn leaned against a locker, chatting.

Her blonde hair gleamed beneath the fluorescent lights as though she'd just had it dyed.

Three or four cheerleaders surrounded her, laughing at everything she said.

That was the absolute authority of the school's queen bee.

As for me, the Sterling family's newly adopted daughter?

Honestly, nobody cared.

Fine by me.

I hadn't come here to socialize anyway.

The only person interested in me was Mia.

By the second week of school, I'd already run into her three times in the hall.

Outside the cafeteria, she'd nearly "accidentally" bumped into me while carrying a tray.

Then she'd widened those blue eyes and said, "Oh my God, Bella, what a coincidence!"

Loud enough for people ten feet away to hear.

At the same time, Mia Vance was carrying out her plan to win Alex over.

She constantly arranged chance encounters.

Outside the library, she'd appear carrying a stack of books.

They would "just happen" to fall, and she would crouch down to pick them up just as Alex appeared.

Or—

This time, she sat directly on the steps outside the hockey rink.

An economics textbook lay open on her knees, a highlighter in her hand.

Her damp hair clung to her neck as if she'd just finished working out.