by Shel Stone
Seb wasn’t one to question why whenever asked to invite girls. If asked to invite fifteen freshmen girls, he’d probably do it without thinking twice. Girls were just girls to him, a commodity—a perspective Adrian was increasingly losing interest in. Finding someone to fuck was stupidly easy. Finding someone to fuck with was much more rewarding.
Getting up, he walked to his wardrobe and pulled some clothes on. With a plan in mind, the malaise he’d felt had lifted. Things were moving again. He was moving again.
Unwilling to sort the driver, he took a cab instead and instantly regretted it, because it smelled. That should teach him for being impatient. And traffic was crap.
The music was perfect when he walked in, filled the air, but not so loud you couldn’t hear anything. It lacked that waft of desperation when it tried to pound you into liking it. Seb had chosen well. And girls were there when he arrived, even Mishti, who stood in a dress he could only describe as interesting, navy blue with netting and what looked like shards of bamboo around the middle. Expensive, no doubt. Had at some point featured in Vogue, he would guess.
A bottle of Champagne stood by the table surrounded by ample cushions, but he wasn’t in the mood for grapes tonight and ordered a rum and coke from the server standing by.
Seb had chosen his intended victim for the night. A consolation for still flaming out with Samantha Vollich. Turned out he just didn’t have to chops to seduce Samantha. Maybe it would do him good to hear a no every once in a while. But hearing no rubbed every bit the wrong way, Adrian felt it in his bones. Or maybe it was the right way. Point was, it rubbed.
“Mishti, you look good,” he said as his drink arrived. She smiled and tucked her hair behind her ear.
“Adrian. Not so bad yourself as always.” She was guarded—as she should be if she had any brains, considering he had recently leisurely destroyed her new friend.
“How’s Morgan?”
“Ah,” Mishti started, not quite sure what to say. “We haven’t spoken much lately.”
“That’s a shame. I thought you guys were really close.”
Her eyes traveled around as if she didn’t know where to look. “As you know, things have been tense. I’m sure that you out of anyone understands, seeing as you’re the reason for it.”
“What does that have to do with Morgan?”
“Look, I know in your hate for Cecily, and all that, you’re trying to take her friend away from her.”
It was curious that Mishti was defending Cecily, but also not owning her own friendship with her. It referred exclusively to Morgan. “I don’t give a fuck who Morgan hangs with. As for Cecily, the thing between me and her is done and dusted.”
Mishti looked at him now. Pretty brown eyes. Mishti had always been pretty.
“Never had a problem with Morgan. I mean,” he continued, “you gotta stand up for your friends, right? I respect that.” And right now, he was strong-arming Mishti to stand up for her friendship with Morgan. Both giving her permission and also criticism if she didn’t. And some part of Mishti knew she was being played, but it hadn’t been worth her making a stand before, so why would it be worth her doing so now? “You should invite her to Finn’s party next week.”
And she certainly wasn’t dumb enough to not know she had just been given an order. The problem with not taking a stand was that other people took stands for you. But this also gave her permission to heal the rift between her and her friend.
“She’s not going to come if Cecily’s not invited.”
“Like I said, I don’t give a fuck what Cecily does. If she wants to come, it’s nothing to me. I mean, I doubt she would, for obvious reasons. She being all mortified by the turn of events.”
“Yeah,” Mishti said without inflection. “Why do you hate her so much anyway?”
For the first time in the conversation, he was stumped. Anger seeped under the surface, but he refused to let it show. What could he say? “She just annoyed me.”
“Pretty shitty thing to do to someone who annoys you.”
Well, you’re annoying me right now, he wanted to say, but he smiled instead. “Yeah, probably.” It was supposed to be a short, sharp cut and she would be gone, and her existence quickly forgotten by all and sundry, but no, they were playing a longer game at Cecily’s insistence. “I have apologized.”
Mishti smiled tightly, partially mollified and also not. She knew better than to keep going with this conversation. In her eyes, he could see that Mishti didn’t quite know how to deal with him, how to feel about him. If he was Sebastian, he would be crying into his beer that all the honeys were now wary of getting in bed with him in case he filmed it and then posted it on social.
As for himself, there was a certain honesty attached to the notoriety, because he was the guy who would film it and post it if it suited his purposes. What was the point in denying it? Not just that—he was the guy who would take it all the way if he had to.
Leaning back, he relaxed. Things were back on track. It had felt a little like they had spun out of control. Maybe he had to concede that there was something very fucked up about all this. It wasn’t healthy, and he should stop. He should let it go—but he couldn’t. The gauntlet had been thrown. He couldn’t simply not respond.
Chapter 24
“HEY,” A SOFT VOICE said as they sat in the pale sun in the square. With surprise, Cecily looked up to see Mishti. This was unexpected.
“Hey,” she said back, not quite knowing what to say, or what this was all about. Was pure nastiness about to pour down on her? Looking over at Morgan, she wanted to see if she knew what this was about.
“What’s up, Mishti?” Morgan asked, equally unsure, it would seem.
“I had the weirdest night last night,” she said. “Went to this bar with Sebastian Hawke and his boys.”
“By his boys, you mean Adrian.”
“Yeah.” Mishti looked uncomfortable. “He basically said his issue with you,” Mishti said, looking specifically at Cecily, “is over.”
“Yeah,” Cecily said with a disbelieving snort, because that went against everything Adrian had personally said to her.
“Done and dusted his words were.”
“Guess what, Mishti,” Cecily said. “Adrian lies.”
Mishti shrugged. “How the fuck would I know. I don’t get the guy. Apparently you annoyed him.”
“Is that what he said?”
“Yes.”
An eyeroll and another chuckle was all Cecily could manage as response to this bullshit. “He’s upset because his dad’s a massive fucking loser. I know, to a logical person that doesn’t make sense, but apparently my dad took his dad to the cleaners and Adrian was out for payback.”
Mishti looked astounded. “Is that true?”
“Yeah, it’s true. The mother of all awkwardness when his dad got called in to Mr. Walters to make him apologize to me in front of my dad. So yeah, I annoyed the fuck out of him.”
“That’s… I don’t even know what to say. He seems sorry for what he’s done, like he was embarrassed about it. He said he apologized. Also invited you to Finn Trueblood’s party next week.”
“Me?” Cecily said with surprise.
“Well, he was specifically speaking about Morgan, saying he respected how you stood by your friend. He also said you were invited, but he didn’t think you’d come being as you were mortified by what… he’d done.”
Anger rose up Cecily’s gut. Mortified? The guy was fucking certifiable. As if she’d even want to go to his friend’s party. How was she not supposed to be mortified? Was that just something he’d expected her to take in her stride? A fucking sex tape? Although she was fully against guns, she wished she had one right now so she could march into the cafeteria and shoot him. Okay, that was the exact reason she supported gun laws, because right now, she could not be trusted with one. She screamed through her teeth. “Fuck him!”
“You already did that, darling,” Morgan said tartly. The comment took the wind out of he
r sails.
“The guy seriously rubs me the wrong way on everything.”
“Not every way from what I saw,” Morgan continued with raised eyebrows. How could she tease her at a time like this? Because it was the perfect antidote to her anger.
“Okay, that’s enough of that,” Cecily said with a pointed finger.
“You know, there are some girls who are asking what’s so special about you that he would post it,” Mishti said.
“What?!” Cecily responded disbelievingly.
“He’s never done anything like that before.”
“So that makes it worth commenting on? If he murdered someone, would they think that was curious? People are seriously fucked up.”
“I think you should go,” Morgan stated.
“What?”
“To Finn’s party. Show him you aren’t chased away.”
For a moment, Cecily didn’t know what to say. She wanted to tell him she wasn’t mortified by what he’d done. That would give him too much impact on her and she refused to let him have it. Morgan was right—she had been cowering and she wasn’t going to do that. Too much space had been conceded to him. “Fine, we’ll go to the fucking party.” At the very least, she was going to have her face seen there. “Might not stay, but I’ll go.”
“Good girl,” Morgan said. “Way to go.”
Mishti, however, looked more uncertain and Cecily knew what she was thinking. Tilly and those girls were going to be there. Even if Adrian had put this behind him, like he said—which was total bullshit—they hadn’t. The point with his act was that it pulled in everyone else. This wasn’t simply about him and her, he’d brought the whole school’s judgment down on her—and beyond.
*
Curiously, Adrian behaved. No more snarky comments whenever they grudgingly sat next to each other, each refusing to concede ground. Didn’t even look her way, and even though it shouldn’t, it bugged the hell out of her. As if he was saying that he really was over it and she was now too beneath him to even bother with.
Her own reaction was crazy and she needed to get herself in check. Her being out of his mind was only good. There was absolutely nothing good in there and the sooner he turned his evil eyes somewhere else, the better. Done and dusted.
And then the night of the party came, and Cecily refused to even admit she had qualms about going. A part of her feared this was some kind of setup and he would totally humiliate her with everyone and their dog present. Obviously, she was overreacting. She meant nothing to Adrian and he meant nothing to her. But she didn’t trust this change in direction in him, from what he’d said to her a week or so back, to now not giving a shit. Maybe he did just shift like that. How would she know? She didn’t know him.
Well, either way, she refused to dress up. Instead, she wore jeans and cashmere. If this was a setup, she wasn’t going to lose her cool, just give him the finger with her nicely manicured nail that she and Morgan had gotten that afternoon. They weren’t really claws, but they felt like it.
Nerves bit in her stomach, but it was a feeling she was used to. It was there all the time, whenever she walked into the school, when she walked through the halls—when she walked into English Lit. And now tonight.
Tory, Mishti and Morgan were all excited. Cecily couldn’t help feeling like the person on probation, even as she had done nothing wrong. Other than sleeping with Adrian, which had really been her fatal error. Mishti was nice, but Tory was still a little reserved around her. The rift in the group was still very much there, even as Mishti pretended it wasn’t. Audrina had blankly refused to come—or to in any way be associated with her.
The doorman had to organize it because the elevator worked on biometrics. Cecily felt her gut clench even more. This might be a super bad idea, but she felt she owed her friends to try to claw back some ground. The elevator opened to a nice apartment with expensive artwork along the walls. Well, someone in the Trueblood family was a collector.
Music played and there were muted murmurs everywhere. Immediately, Cecily sought Adrian. It was good to know where he was at all times, although she couldn’t immediately see him.
There were a few odd looks, but no one baulked at her presence and demanded she leave. On the far side of the large living room, she saw Tilly and Sapphire. They saw her too and a look of distaste crossed their faces before Sapphire turned her back while saying something to Tilly. Yep, they hadn’t exactly forgiven.
Immediately, Cecily wished she could leave, but didn’t want to be the one chased away by dirty looks. She was doing this for her friends, and the mortification was a temporary thing. Honestly, she didn’t care if these people ever accepted her, as long as Morgan, Tory and Mishti weren’t tarred by her brush, and this was the way to achieve that. A way to take the sting out of this whole miserable affair. Also a way to show every single one of these guys that no, she wasn’t going to be grateful for them throwing her a bone—she wasn’t going to go on dates with them, or come study back at theirs. Any preconceptions they had about her were firmly wrong.
And there he was, talking to a group of people with a drink in his hand. He looked up as he saw her. Didn’t smile, but his eyes lingered as she continued walking to the next room. She ended up in some kind of library. There was a couple sitting on one of the chairs, making out. Turning around, she was about to leave them to it, but the door was blocked by the person she least wanted to see.
He threw a look at the couple in the chair, who quickly got up and left.
“What do you want, Adrian?”
“Just thought we should chat.”
“Yeah? Because I was really cool with the us ignoring each other phase.”
“It was never going to last, was it?”
She’d known it all along. “I thought your whole thing with me was done and dusted.”
“Mishti’s been blabbing, I see. Did she also tell you that I do feel bad about my grave error in judgment?”
“I think we can both agree that you don’t,” Cecily said suspiciously. Whatever was next in Adrian’s plan, he was executing it right now. “So what is this?”
It was hard to read his eyes, which in her mind ranged from psycho to dead inside. Now he bit his lips together and released them, which would look gorgeous if she had no idea how fundamentally fucked-up he was. But the pretty ones always were, weren’t they? No, not all of them, but this one definitely was.
“I can undo this all, you know,” he finally said.
“Oh, you can unviral a sex tape? Wow. I hadn’t realized you had superpowers.”
“I think power is the key word. You have it, you can do all sorts of things. Figure you would have known that being Jeffrey Chambers’ daughter, but then you didn’t grow up with him. Still, you have backbone. I have to give you that.”
This conversation was intensely uncomfortable. Her heart was beating. This felt like fight or flight. “Get to the point, Adrian.”
“I can completely undo the damage. Turn it into a strength. That’s quite a skill, turning weaknesses into strengths. And visa versa.”
Cecily was getting annoyed with this banter. She just wanted him to go away. “Well, that’s great. Good for you.”
“That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“To minimize the damage. Your poor friends who’re copping so much flack. Loyal Morgan.”
Was there anything more hateful than the fact that he could read her intentions? Why did he have to be both evil and observant? Biting her cheek, she considered the best way of dealing with this—dealing with him. “So what? I leave and you make my friends super popular? Is that what you’re saying?”
“No, nothing quite so tacky. The true finesse in these things is not in the overt things.” Walking over to the desk, he leaned on it with crossed arms. “In this day and age, a sex clip is hardly the end of the world. The true damage in it was that it signified the end of the relationship. It’s pretty shallow, but it’s true. If it didn’t…”
Cecily’s eyes widened. “If it didn’t?” What was he trying to say? “Are you on drugs right now?”
“Am I lying?”
Moments passed and she had no idea what to say. And yes, he was right. Everything would instantly be forgiven. “What? Why? Why would you even want to do that?” Some kind of twisted altruistic streak? This didn’t make sense. Not with him.
“Maybe I miss you.”
The jarring words did not make sense in her head. Miss her? “Yeah, you never really knew me.” Or did he mean the sex? Eww, her mind could not even go there. He had mentioned their chemistry a few times, how she’d ‘burned’ for him. Then it struck her. This was about power. He’d so much as said it just now. He had the power to ruin her and now he had the power to restore her. Her completely in his power. Still the same sick game.
With a snort, she turned away to face the window.
“This town would be yours. Your friends would be the ‘It’ girls of the whole fucking crowd. It would have consequences for the next decade for them.”
“And all as long as I jump at your command. You would have complete control. All part of your revenge.”
“In all honesty, I didn’t intent it. You knew full well what my intentions were. I didn’t hide it. But…”
Behind her, he moved closer. She felt him, and goosebumps rose across her skin. There was something devastatingly familiar about this. For a short while, they had felt like they’d fit together perfectly. It had all been a lie.
“There were things I didn’t expect.” His breath warmed her skin and she felt as his lips gently touched the back of her neck, slowly forming into a kiss. Maybe the desire hadn’t been fake. Energy rose in her body, that heady desire she had previously given herself over to. Clearly he felt it. Now he wanted his cake and to eat it too. Perfect revenge that went on and on, until he’d had enough. Until he was sated.
Shaking it off, she stepped away. “No. I’m not going to be at your beck and call.” For a relationship that was completely on his terms—whatever that entailed, which was probably a lot of fucking. It was hard to forget how she had burned, but it wouldn’t be worth it. Wow, out of everything he’d done, this was the closest he had gotten her to wanting to flee. Or had that been his intent? There were absolutely no boundaries with him.