Chapter 95
Camila POV
The next morning, I dragged myself back to my room after a very awkward breakfast where I tried not to think too hard about the fact that I was wearing Ethan’s shirt. Or that my mom was suspiciously glowing like someone who hadn’t just been mourning the death of her dignity last night. And let’s not even talk about Ethan–who looked like he hadn’t slept at all.
But whatever.
I stepped into my room and closed the door behind me with a soft click, leaning back against it and sighing like I’d just returned from war. In some ways, I had. Emotional warfare. Mental chaos. Secret agency. Suspicious stains and an endless trail of awkwardness. And now? Now I had laundry duty, apparently.
I glanced toward the small heap of clothes piled messily near the foot of my bed. All of them mine. All of them… well, definitely unwearable. My face twisted as I walked over and knelt beside them.
They looked worse in daylight.
The dried crusty streaks across the fabric made my skin crawl. A faint off–white color, hardened in some places, flaky in others. I didn’t know what it was exactly, and I didn’t want to know, but it felt… violating. My favorite pajama shorts, a few tank tops, a comfy pair of leggings I wore all the time. It was like someone had opened my wardrobe and just… defiled everything I owned.
“Gross,” I muttered under my breath as I picked up the pajama shorts with two fingers like they were biohazard material.
They were definitely done for. The stains were practically a part of the fabric now.
I forced myself not to overthink it and just toss them all in a bag and get them as far away from me as possible.
I grabbed one of the laundry bags from the wardrobe–thankfully unstained–and started tossing the clothes in one by one. Top. Shorts. Leggings. Tank. Another top. Why were there so many?
I paused as I held up one of the camisoles. My mouth twisted.
“Seriously?” I said aloud, to no one. “Even this?”
By the time I stuffed the last piece of crusty fabric into the bag, my shoulders were tense and my stomach had this tight, twisty feeling. Like I’d swallowed a bad memory.
I stood up, brushing my hands off, ready to toss everything into the trash–until it hit me. If I got rid of all this, what the hell was I even going to wear?
“Fuck,” I muttered, dragging a hand through my hair.
Clearly, living off Ethan’s clothes wasn’t a long term plan, and my mom? Yeah, she wouldn’t let me borrow a single thing without launching into a full–blown interrogation.
I plopped the bag down beside the little laundry hamper in the corner of my room. I stared at it for a second. Just stared.
Then…
“Alright,” I muttered, rolling my sleeves up like I was about to perform surgery. Let’s do this.”
I unzipped the bag and the ghost of whatever the hell that smell was smacked me in the face like a forgotten ex. Not foul, exactly. But musky. Weird. Suspicious. The kind of scent that made your nose crinkle before your brain even figured out why.
I shook it off and got to work,
1/2
Chapter 95
The first piece I pulled out was my leggings–there was a faded stain on the waistband, but nothing too crazy. I could work with that. Maybe, some boiling hot water, a little detergent, some serious denial? Yeah, they might make it.
“Okay, you live,” I mumbled, tossing them into a separate pile. The survivors.
Next came a t–shirt. White, ironically. With a very not–so–white splotch smack in the middle of the chest. It looked like someone sneezed on it and tried to cover it up with glitter glue. Absolutely not.
“You die,” I told it, throwing it straight into the to
And that’s how it went for the next fifteen minutes.
pile.
Keep. Toss. Toss. Keep. Toss. Burn. Toss. Why do I
even
Toss.
By the time I was done, there was a depressingly small “ke
a frat house on a Saturday night.
and a mountain of rejects that looked like they’d been dragged through
I let out a long breath and sat back on my heels, staring at the destruction. Half my wardrobe was dead. And the worst part? I still didn’t know how it happened. Or when. Or who. The crusty white mystery had turned my closet into a crime scene, and I had no damn suspects.
Grabbing the bag again, I stuffed the “keep” clothes into a fresh laundry basket–the safe pile–and zipped up the cursed ones in the original bag. I wasn’t even taking chances. They weren’t touching the rest of my laundry. Hell, I wasn’t even sure they deserved to be in the same house.
With a final pat to the top of the zipped–up bag, like I was laying a body to rest, I stood up.
“Good riddance,” I muttered under my breath and turned toward the door.
The house was quiet again, suspiciously so. My mom was probably still pretending she hadn’t traumatized me last night, and Ethan… God knew what corner he was brooding in now.
I shuffled down the hallway, arms wrapped around the laundry basket like it was a security blanket, trying not to think too hard. About the stains. About the fact that Ethan had seen me in a towel last night. About the shirt I was currently wearing that still smelled exactly like him no matter how many times I tried to pretend it didn’t.
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