His fingers paused, but he kept his gaze on his phone. “She’s made improvement.”
Emotion clogged my throat—slimy, dirty, and entirely unwelcome.
I swallowed it and coughed. “How wonderful.”
Dad sighed and walked to the door, but then he stopped. “Do I need to call in a favor?”
I frowned, lowering my book beside me to the velvet chaise. “What for?”
His eyes penetrated mine, waiting and assessing in that eerie way of his. “To find you someone to talk to. Discreetly.”
If anything was worse than failing an initiation you’d waited years for and fucking up your life, I’d yet to find out what the hell that could possibly be. Dad’s second and the other higher-ups still didn’t know about my botched attempt, and of course, my father would never let me say a word aloud about it.
I knew why, and my frosted spirit warmed a little at the way he was trying to protect me. Not from hurting anyone else, but from further damaging myself.
Belatedly, I shook my head.
I felt him watching me for long moments, and then I heard his Italian shoes clipping down the hall outside.
It wasn’t that I had an issue with talking to some therapist. It was that I knew I’d already shamed this family enough, and no amount of money could quiet someone with intel enough to take down the alpha of Peridot’s secret showrunners.
Nightingale.
We were but a rumor, but not once had any rumors came close to being facts.
I might not have liked my father, but he was still my father. Besides, I’d wanted this.
I’d wanted this enough to hand over half my soul for it.
Nothing, not even a therapist, could help me get that back.
Fern
“Clint’s an idiot,” I heard my mom tell Cory from the safety of my room. “So old-fashioned he’s already reached his expiration date. Just ignore him.”
Cory and January gossiped more than Cory and I did, and if there was someone my mother seemed to enjoy sharing her relationship woes with—if you could call them that—it was Coraline.
I’d once broached the subject with her, informing, “You totally don’t need to humor her; she’s crazy.”
“I happen to like crazy,” she’d said with a sharp look at me. “And I happen to find her interesting. You do know she owns two huge businesses, right? She’s an actual, legit badass, your mom.”
Three businesses, to be exact, the main source of income being the distillery on the fraying outskirts of the island that had once belonged to my grandparents. Their private plane had crashed on a return flight from New York when I was young, and they’d never found the bodies.
Mom had inherited it all.
Downstairs, they were discussing Silas’s parents, a hot topic between them given Clint and Sandra’s dislike of their son’s girlfriend. No status, no pedigree, and no wealth meant they did not approve. Silas didn’t care, and being their only remaining child—his older brother had disowned them and fled right after graduation—they could do nothing about it in fear of scaring him off, too.
Silas had set his sights on my best friend when I had on our first day of high school, and the rest was history.
If there was any couple I expected to survive all rounds of education and their debuts into the real world, it was Silas and Coraline.
I groaned, rolling over to bury my face in the pillow. How like Cory to come over and check on me only to get distracted with my mother over coffee first.
Finally, she arrived some minutes later, bouncing on the end of my bed with the dregs of said coffee, and asked, “On a scale of one to ten, how obsessed are you now with the asshole?”
Funny that she knew I still was.
I rolled to my back, sighing. Ever the faithful idiot would probably be printed upon my headstone when I eventually let the boy next door officially destroy me.
Boy, pfft.
He was all man, his scent and the overbearing carnal presence of him imprinted upon me forevermore. The feel of sinew wrapped in silken skin was trapped within the skin of my fingertips, and the taste of me on his tongue burned into my taste buds.
What are you afraid of, pretty Red?
I’d walked right to him and handed him the torch to light my heart aflame.
“A solid eleven.”
Cory half laughed, half groaned. “Jesus, Fern.”
“It’s fine.” It totally wasn’t.
“It’s so not fine,” she practically yelled. “I was so close to telling your mom.”
I sat up then. “Over my dead body and even then, that’s a firm hell no.”
Her lips twisted, head tilting. “Get out of bed and get ready for school then.”
“For real?” I said, grinning now because she had to be kidding. “You’re threatening me?”
“Damn right, I am.” She stood and crossed my room to my walk-in, expelling a sigh loud enough for me to hear as she entered. “Is that his cologne? I thought you’d at least stop adding to his shrine.”
Crinkling my nose, I threw off the comforter and stretched my arms above my head. “Let’s not get too carried away here.”
I’d had his cologne for a while now. She must have missed it upon her first inspection, but I decided not to point that out.
“Get in the shower,” she said, exiting with my school shirt and skirt in hand.
I winced, catching a whiff of last night’s dinner on my T-shirt. I hadn’t showered since Monday, and I’d only done so to rid the crawling, powdery sensation of those winged beasts from my skin. I had a few tiny cuts from scrubbing too hard under the scalding spray.
Cory laid my clothes over the green polka-dotted armchair beside my bookcase. “Seriously, we’re going to be late.”
“I don’t wanna go. I’ll shower, but I’m giving myself another day.”
“You’re coming. I didn’t pay twenty dollars for an Uber for nothing. I need a ride back.”
Damn it and shit.
“Fine,” I huffed and walked to the shower.
Cory waited for me, smiling down at her phone when I exited the steam in my panties and bra and pulled my damp hair into a messy, high ponytail.
“Ten minutes until the bell.”
“We’re not going to make it in time,” I needlessly told her.
“I know, and I also know it’ll help you to slip right into class without everyone leering at you in the hallways, but I don’t want to be too late. Let’s go.”
She stood, and half-dressed, I cursed. “I haven’t even put mascara on.”
“Do it in the car,” she called. “I’ll drive.”
“Only if we can stop by Ray’s.” I needed more than coffee to survive what was surely coming my way, but coffee would have to do.
Lipstick and mascara on, I felt a little better about the mess that was my hair.
Pulling it back accentuated my cheekbones anyway, so whatever. Not to mention, some might be curious about where I’d gotten the hickey from. It was faint, but a red mark remained.
I was all too happy to let them wonder.
In the dining hall, I waited for a cheese croissant, thankful that the whispers and laughter had died down after second period.