The Lie Hidden in Roses Chapter 03

The Lie Hidden in Roses Chapter 03 The Missing Mole

Rowan had a mole on the back of his neck.
It was small and faint, the kind of mark no one would ever notice unless they already knew it was there.
I knew because one night, when we were messing around on the couch, my fingernail had accidentally grazed that exact spot. Rowan had jerked his shoulders up, tucked his chin down, and laughed so hard he nearly knocked me off the cushions.
“That’s my worst spot,” he had said. “Don’t use that against me.”
But the man standing in front of me did not have it.
The mole was gone.
There was no pale scar, no mark from a laser, no uneven patch of skin. There was nothing to suggest it had ever existed at all.
My hands started to shake.
I moved them behind my back and pressed my nails into my palm until the pain cut through the panic.
“Find it?” he asked.
He turned his head and studied my face.
I smiled.
“No. Maybe you left it at the hotel?”
It took almost everything in me to make the smile stay in place.
My cheeks felt tight. My mouth felt wrong. But if I stopped smiling, he would know.
A slight frown crossed his face, and even that looked like Rowan. The same crease between his brows. The same thoughtful tilt of his head.
“Maybe,” he said. “I’ll call them later. The staff there were decent, so if it’s still in the room, they’ll probably find it.”
He straightened and stepped closer.
A drop of water slid from his damp hair and landed on the back of my hand.
“Maren,” he said softly, “did you miss me?”
His breath brushed my ear.
I went rigid.
For one terrible second, it felt as if all the warmth had been drained out of my blood.
“Of course I did.”
I kept my voice even.
“Then why haven’t you hugged me?”
He opened his arms, smiling at me with Rowan’s smile.
It was exactly what Rowan always did when he came home from a trip. He would stand there with his arms open, waiting for me to walk into them, pretending to be offended if I took too long.
It had been our little routine for years.
So I stepped forward.
I wrapped my arms lightly around his waist.
His body was warm. His heartbeat was steady beneath my hands, strong and ordinary through the thin fabric of his T-shirt.
I wanted to vomit.
“You’ve gotten too skinny,” he murmured, stroking my hair. “Have you been eating at all?”
“Work’s been rough.”
I pressed my face against his chest so he could not see whatever was happening to mine.
His shirt smelled like my body wash.
The same one I kept in the shower.
Rowan never used it. He said the scent was too heavy and always bought the unscented kind for himself.
But this man had used mine.
Had he missed that detail?
Or had he chosen it because he wanted me to notice?
Rowan, where are you?
And what the hell is this thing wearing your face?
That night, he cooked dinner.
Tomato scrambled eggs, sautéed greens, and a bowl of seaweed egg-drop soup.
They were Rowan’s safest dishes, the ones he made whenever he wanted to prove he could take care of me. The flavors were exactly right, down to the amount of salt he always insisted was “just enough” and I always said was too little.
“Eat more,” he said, placing another bite into my bowl. “You look like you’ve been starving yourself.”
He used his left hand.
Rowan was left-handed. He wrote with his left hand, ate with his left hand, even shot a basketball left-handed.
I used to call him my left-handed freak, and he would tell me left-handed people had more creative brains and were therefore obviously superior.
I lowered my head and kept eating while my thoughts spun faster and faster.
How long had this man been studying Rowan?
How many pieces of him had he memorized?
Some of these habits were too small for a stranger to copy. They were not the kind of things you could learn from social media, security footage, or a few days of watching through a window.
Unless he had been close to Rowan.
Unless he had spent time with him.
Unless Rowan had been trapped with him.
“By the way,” he said suddenly, as if he had only just remembered something, “did you call the police?”