Page 36 of Hidden

They are dark purple-violet, fresh, and sitting in the vase like they grew there overnight.

Which they didn't, because that's not how flowers work. My door was locked. I know because I checked it five times, and there’s no way someone is getting through the window, my dorm is on the fifth fucking floor. So how the hell did they get there?

I stand there for a good ten seconds, just looking at them. Hating the fact that they’re gorgeous.

This is the second time now. The second time I woke up to fresh flowers in a room I locked before I went to sleep.

The thing is, and I'm aware this says something about me, my first feeling isn't fear. It's not even confusion, not really.

Someone is doing this deliberately. Someone who knows where I live, has access to this building, and has decided I should have fresh violets on my kitchen counter when they feel like it.

I should probably find that scary and make sure the alarm is even working. Yet the biggest question I have is How are they getting into my dorm room when it’s a fucking card to enter, it’s not even a key?

I walk over to the flowers and smell them. They’re faintly sweet, just at the edge of noticeable. The morning light is coming through the window at an angle that makes the whole kitchen look warmer than it is, and honestly, they do make the room look better. That's the most unsettling part. Whoever is doing this has genuinely good taste.

I make a coffee for myself, lean on the counter staring at the flowers, looking at them, and turning it over in my head.

I have one too many questions. Who is it? How are they getting into my apartment? Am I the only one getting them? I could ask Juno if she lives on this floor, but if she doesn’t then she’ll be worried and want to be here all the time.

My phone beeps from my room, and I walk back, looking around to make sure there is nothing else out of place.

Juno

Meet you at Grounds in 30 mins.

Placing my coffee on the table beside me, I quickly get in the shower, and go about my day, wondering who is coming into my dorm and not hurting me.

Juno spots me walking through the door at Grounds and her face does the thing where she's been waiting to say something since she woke up and is physically holding it in until I sit down. I can’t help my smile as I look over at the server who is used to us coming in all the time.

“The usual?” he asks.

I smile and nod. “Yes, please.”

“I’ll bring it over to you,” he says as he turns around to grind the coffee beans. "Okay," Juno says immediately. "Yesterday."

"Good morning to you too,” I joke, placing my coat on the back of the chair as I sit down.

"Yeah, yeah, morning. Yesterday. Spill.” Juno leans in closer as if I’m about to tell her the biggest secret ever.

"I told you everything yesterday, and it was an accident."

"You spilled coffee on Miles Crawford and then just left." She says it the way you'd say someone had won the lottery and then handed the ticket back. "You just walked away, and he brought you a coffee. I want details."

"He told me to watch where I was going, and I didn’t walk away. He brought me a coffee and he walked away.”

The table goes briefly quiet in the way that means everyone has an opinion and is deciding the order in which to deliver them and, knowing my friends, I’m going to hear all of them.

"Okay first of all," Juno starts.

"Here we go," Bree says.

"First of all, you had him. Right there. Coffee everywhere, perfect excuse to offer to sort it out, get his number, something"

"I was not going to offer to sort out his T-shirt, Juno." I thank the barista for my coffee, and even though I only had one thirty minutes ago, I feel like I really need this, particularly if they’re going to keep asking me questions about the spilled coffee yesterday.

"Why not?"

"Because that's insane." What world is she living in? Surely, she doesn’t think the Crawford twins are on the same level as us. “You’re insane, have you seen them, they look like they date and fuck models, not girls who look like me.”