Where Beauty Lies (Sophia and Ava London) Read Online Free

stop when it started to tug. But that day he’d been so eager that she ended up being dragged on her butt through the dirt ten feet before she could get him to stop.
    She should have known. There was only one person who had that perk-up-your-ears-and-run-to-his-arms effect on Popcorn—on either of them—but she’d been too startled to realize. Until she pushed her long brown hair out of her eyes and saw Popcorn jumping to lick Dalton’s face.
    For a moment their eyes met and Ava’s heart had started to pound so loud that it sounded like it was outside her body. Then his expression hardened and without a word he stood and turned to go.
    “Wait,” Ava called. “What happened? Why haven’t you called? Don’t you think you owe me an explanation?”
    He wasn’t wearing sunglasses, so she was able to see his eyes, how hard and cold they were as he narrowed them. His jaw was so tight that it looked like he had to wrench the words out. “Why? Haven’t you and your sister done enough to destroy my life? I don’t owe you anything, and I never want to see or speak to you again.”
    His words, his tone, made Ava’s body go cold and her heart slow almost to a stop. She felt frozen in place, unable to reply or move or think.
    Popcorn’s sad whine brought her out of it. He was looking from her to Dalton’s receding back with such a forlorn expression that Ava felt like her heart was breaking.
    Only because of Popcorn. Not because of Dalton. She would never let someone who was such bad news break her heart.
    “Well, that was unexpected,” she’d said to Popcorn as they moped back to her blanket together. Her pants were covered with dust and her face was streaked with dirt.
    Popcorn gave a little growl and she looked down to see him gazing reproachfully at her. “What? It’s not my fault. I know you like him, but trust me, there’s no place for him in our lives.” Popcorn’s accusing glance said he wasn’t convinced. “Sometimes people aren’t who you think they are and the only thing you can do is forget about them.”
    Determined to do just that, she’d thrown herself into her boytox. It had worked fantastically for Sophia, who was really happy with Hunter. Ava would just follow in her sister’s footsteps and one day, she hoped, she would feel happy again, too. One day she would look back on the whole Dalton thing and laugh at the thought that she’d ever gone through four boxes of Kleenex (well, three; Popcorn ate one) crying over him.
    It had worked. She’d gone from thinking about him a hundred times a day and checking her phone for texts that weren’t there, to thinking of him only a handful. Increasingly the feeling of missing him and being sad was replaced almost exclusively with anger and hurt and betrayal. Which, she told herself, was progress. Anything else was foolish hope.
    The day before they were leaving for New York she’d been so busy she hadn’t even thought about him at all, until she went to take Popcorn for a walk. When they got back she’d found an envelope sticking out of their mailbox. It had her name on it and no stamp, which meant it had been hand delivered.
    Inside was a piece of white paper with the words D ALTON I S I NNOCENT. A SK ABOUT X AVIER laser printed across the center.
    She’d dragged Popcorn into the house and woken Sophia. “Look!” She waved the paper in her face. “What do you think this means? We have to take this to the police. It might be important.”
    Sophia glanced at it and the envelope and handed it back to her. “I don’t think the police take anonymous notes too seriously,” she said.
    “It’s not any old anonymous note. It was delivered to our house. That means it’s from someone who knows we know Dalton.”
    “Or a crazy person. Or someone trying to stir up even more trouble.”
    “They could still check the name,” Ava said. “Xavier. Maybe there’s more to what happened than we know.”
    “Is this you trying to forget about what Dalton