Page 69 of Heart of Thorns
Her brows furrow. “What? Why?”
I show her the text from my father. “We need to get our stories straight. We need to—we need to be able to be affectionate in public without freaking out. We need to be able to tell them our first date, and each other’s favorite color, and our coffee orders. And movies! What if they ask about what you like to watch? Do you evenlikeStar Wars? Not that they would give a shit, really, I’m pretty sure my dad turns up his nose at that kind of thing?—”
She grabs my face. “Thorne? Breathe.”
I take a long, ragged inhale.
Her palms are warm on my cheeks. “You’re freaking me out.”
“Yeah, well, I’m freaking myself out. They’re…” I wince. I can’t say it.
“They’re what?”
Shaking my head, I lean down and grab the shirt she dropped. “I think we need to discuss this over breakfast. Get dressed.”
The diner down the street is technically open twenty-four hours, but the prime people-watching time is from seven to ten in the morning, give or take. It’s when they’re at their busiest with people in all the stages of life.
You’ve got the corporate people in suits. The blue-collar folks getting ready to start their shifts—or, in some cases, just coming off them.
And then the students.
Grad students, looking harried and stressed.
Undergrads, half-asleep in their giant mugs of coffee after a long night out.
And us.
I wouldn’t say Briar and I stand out, by any means. We fit in amongst the harried and half-asleep, tucked into a booth at the back. I took the side with my back to the wall, because some thoughts have filtered through my brain about how to make my parents accept this fake relationship, and I don’t think Briar will like any of them. So I’ve been avoiding her gaze by people watching.
“Just spit it out,” she eventually says.
“Spit what out?” I focus on her.
Her lips press in a flat line, and I get the sense that she’s one lie—or omission—away from getting up and going home.
Not that I can blame her.
It suddenly occurs to me that she had her own freak out this morning. And I reacted the same way she did to mine, grabbing her face. Helping her calm down.
“Let’s talk about you,” I suggest. “Who did you think I was this morning?”
Her face reddens. “No. I’ll tell you that later—ifyou can just say what you’ve been stewing on since you read that text.”
Right.
I shift in my seat. “Well. My family has, uh, generational wealth.”
She blinks. “Obviously.”
“Like, they’re really fucking rich.” My voice stays low. “And I know, this isliterallythe definition of a first-world problem. Or a one-percenter problem, I guess. But the rich tend to only socialize with… themselves.”
Briar glares at me. “Thorne, I’m going to be honest, you’re driving me crazy.”
I hold up my hands in surrender. “Fine. They’re judgmental, okay? To a neurotic degree. They judge me, they judge their peers…”
“They’ll judge me,” she finishes. “I gotta say, I was expecting this.”
I pause. “You were?”