My jaw drops and a choked noise bursts from my throat, but he’s already walking away from me. I can’t speak. I can’t stop him.
All I can do is stare after him as he leaves nothing but utter devastation in his wake.
4
Five tiny faces stare up at me, stirring up more questions than answers. I don’t know why I brought this photo home with me. I should’ve thrown it away before I left Angelview, abandoned it along with my pride and sense of being. I thought quitting and letting Saint win would make the pressure go away and ease my misery.
I don’t feel better, though.
I just feel … less.
Numb—inside and out.
Saint’s confession that he knew about James and the fire long before I told him left me reeling, and I still haven’t fully recovered from the shock, even six days later. I don’t know what’s worse. The pain that stabs at my heart whenever I think of his deceit, or the humiliation that burns through me when I realize that he was playing me the whole time we were together. While I was confessing my secrets to him, believing he had become someone I could trust, he was sharpening his knife and plotting to use it all against me.
The worst part is that I knew better.
My stomach rumbles, and for a moment I think I might be sick, but I take a deep breath and the nausea passes. It hasn’t always. I’ve vomited so much in the last week that I’ve grown nervous eating because I just assume it’s going to come back up later. I hate him more than I’ve ever hated anyone, and that emotion is manifesting physically and gnawing away at my body.
And yet … there’s this stubborn, insistent little flame of desire that continues to burn for him deep in my soul. I’m such a fucking mess. My mind isn’t right. That’s the only real explanation I can come up with to describe why I’m like this. I’ve got to be sick to still want a person that treated me so cruelly. But every time I think of our late nights together, the feel of his hands on me, the touch of his lips…
Snorting a deep breath of disgust, I clamp my thighs together and shake my head. “Fuck off, Saint.”
Pushing thoughts of him from my mind, I focus on the picture again. It’s about the only thing that can keep me from dwelling on Hot Draco, so I’ve been studying it nearly non-stop since I returned to Atlanta. The edges are starting to crinkle with how much I’ve been handling it.
Stretching out on my back on my bed, I hold it above my face and skim over the two boys on the left and Mr. Angelle, not really caring about them, and focus my attention on the other two figures on the right. His former business partner and Nora. The girl who looks so much like me, it’s eerie.
The girl who looks like Jenn.
I did some research to try and discover more about them, but the Internet was surprisingly useless. Other than telling me what I already knew—that Benjamin was the co-founder of NightOwl, the social-media network Mr. Angelle owns—there was nothing but a brief obituary from his car accident death sixteen years ago and an obituary for his mother, an eccentric socialite who died five years ago.
There was nothing about Nora.
Not that I had much to go on, considering I don’t know her last name, but even when I linked her to Benjamin, I didn’t come up with anything. When I showed the photo to Carley and asked if the girl looked like Mom, she’d examined it for a long time before handing it back and saying that something was off and that it definitely wasn’t Jenn.
I hadn’t pointed out that the girl in the photo wasn’t high or drunk or beat down after a life of hard partying and bad decisions. I’d simply shrugged off Carley’s string of curious questions and mumbled a lie: That it was a project I did for an art assignment.
Because I couldn’t explain any of it. Not the picture and sure as hell not the note about my real parents or that warning not to let him win.
Win what?
Who am I supposed to keep from winning? Saint? That bastard already has.
A knock on my bedroom door pulls me from my cluttered musings, and I quickly tuck the picture and note away beneath my pillow and holler, “Come in.”
The next moment, Carley comes rushing into my room. She’s brimming with angry energy as she begins pacing across my floor. I sit up with a sigh, wrapping my arms around my bare legs as I ready myself for her latest tirade. She’s been like this pretty much since the minute I arrived home. Actually, probably since the minute I was able to fully explain what went down the night of the fire.
She’s been in permanent mama bear mode, but she’s got no one she can sink her claws into.
“I’m so pissed,” she growls. She doesn’t elaborate right away, but that doesn’t matter. I know the context of her rage well enough by now.
“Carley, you have to let it go.”
She whirls on me, her big blue eyes even wider in disbelief. “Let it go? After what they did to you? No way in hell!”
“Let me guess, you just spoke to Headmaster Aldridge again?”
Her blond bun flops up and down as she bobs her head. “And he told me he’ll be in touch with us about your missed exams after holiday break. It wasn’t your fault you missed the damn exams. It wasn’t your fault they made you leave.”
I scratch at my chin, trying to think of something new to say to ease her fury. “They didn’t end up arresting me, at least.”
God, that sounds so pathetic.
“You should never have been a suspect in the first place!” she declares.
I completely agree with her, but I’m exhausted by the whole situation. I’d rather forget all about Angelview and the shit I went through there. I don’t want to think about any of it. Saint. Laurel. Gabe. Liam. The assembly. My near arrest. It’s over now, and since I’m not planning on going back, what’s it all really matter anyway?
It’s not like I’ll ever see those assholes again.
I feel a strange pang in my heart at the thought of never seeing Saint again, but I remind myself it’s because I’m sick in the head and I don’t always know what’s best for myself. A few more weeks away from that place, and he’ll be purged from my system—like with one of those drug detoxes Jenn used to order online whenever she needed to score a new job.
I’m just going into withdrawal, grasping to come up with anything redeemable about him when there’s nothing.
I mean, even when he saved me, he’d made it a point to degrade me.
Propping my chin on my knees, I watch Carley rage-pace until my vision starts to swim. “Carley, stop. I appreciate your anger on my behalf, but it’s really not necessary anymore,” I try to reason with her again. “I’m not going back, so who gives a fuck about those people? It’s not like the district here will penalize me because I didn’t take exams.”
“It’s still a bunch of bull,” she insists, not even bothering to point out my F-bomb when she spins around to face me. “You were targeted because of your background.”
“Well … I’m a statistic and my mom was a meth dealer.” But I think about the photo of the smiling girl—the one that looks like Jenn pre-drugs—and my shrug is forced.
“That shouldn’t matter, you’re not Jenn,” Carley spits out. I’ve noticed, in addition to being angry with Angelview, she seems extra angry with my mother lately, too. I think it has something to do with the fact that she can’t get a hold of Jenn. The second Carley found out about Dylan getting hired at the school, she began trying to hunt Mom down, but hasn’t had any luck.