an almost obsessive love for something I only thought I shared with one other person.
Cheshire.
Iliana and I meet eyes again, from a hundred feet away, and her expression tells me everything.
She knows. I know.
She knows I know.
Raindrops plod against the tent surface here, then there, before the sky opens up into a steady spatter that covers the entire expanse over our heads. It shakes in the trees and echoes off the pavement, but it doesn’t matter.
Griffin grabs for my arm, but I slither away and dart backward toward the crowd.
“Rhodes, don’t do anything you’re going to regret later—”
Kiersten is barely suppressing a grin behind her champagne flute, and Sarah looks as if the weight of the world rests on her small, round shoulders.
Sarah knows. Kiersten knows.
Griffin knows.
Somehow, everyone in this whole fucking world knew that Iliana was Cheshire but me, when—GOD. I can’t even think anymore. The room is pressing in on me, all roses and froggy men in their livery, and suddenly I’m Alice.
Drink me, whispers the champagne flute in my hand.
I open my throat and down the entire thing in one long, painful gulp. Little birds and silly men in top hats float around my head, and I’m shrinking, shrinking, shrinking. I’d be small enough to disappear through a tiny door in the baseboards, if this tent had baseboards. But I start to cry, and if I were very, very big, I could flood the place with teardrops the size of dinner plates.
I push past women in their minks and men sipping their scotch, grab my coat from the rack, and disappear out into the rain.
I’d meant to be alone, out here.
I thought the rain would be enough to keep anyone sensible inside, especially if the person I want to be far from most has a real, honest-to-God chance of leaving tonight as the newest recipient of the Capstone Award.
It isn’t, though.
Iliana’s voice echoes out into the night behind me.
My heart eases into the sound of my name on her lips, like a hot bath. I scald myself and retreat farther away. Her footsteps ring out behind me, louder and louder until I know she’s close by the warmth of her hand clasping mine.
She catches me and turns me around to face her, thrusting a wide, black umbrella over my head. She stares up at me with matching streaks of mascara down her cheeks, and her hair has grown three times in size from the moisture in the air.
This is Cheshire.
I knew it when I looked up that night standing in front of Frist and saw her staring at me from across the street. She was looking at me like I was a ghost, all wide-eyed and hollowed out. That night I chose not to see the fear, the disappointment, or anything else other than her anger, but it showed up in my dreams.
It’s nagged at the base of my brain ever since: When we were talking. When we were working together in the gallery. When she was kissing me, every time she gazed at me—so full of hope and warmth and lovesickness and eight thousand other emotions without a name.
I didn’t know, I chose not to believe, but I knew.
“You had so many chances to say something,” I hiss. “You told everyone else, but you didn’t tell me?”
“I didn’t tell everyone else,” Iliana cries. “Sarah was with me that night, remember? She knew what I was doing before I knew you were you. She told Kiersten, because of course she did.”
“Griffin?”
I wish so much to be brave. I envisioned this conversation with Cheshire eight thousand times, and in each little dream I was strong, and had courage in my convictions, and I didn’t cry.
“Griffin figured it out somehow. He’s really smart.”
“Yeah, he is.” I palm at my cheeks, and my fingers come away black with makeup. “You—Cheshire, I mean—were my best friend. Why didn’t you tell me?”
Speaking it out loud settles like lead in my bones.
You, Iliana, were my best friend.
Iliana Vrionides was the dream girl who once only lived inside my computer.
“Because we were horrible to each other,” Iliana says. “I was horrible to you. I was so angry with you about last summer, and it was so unfair. But I knew Alice’s heart, and I knew from my relationship with Alice that she—you—did everything in her—your—power to make things right. When I realized that you and Alice were the same person, I wanted time to prove that I’m worth loving, too.”
“Oh, Iliana—” I can only