by Callie Rose
My body is responding to his voice in ways I can’t quite understand. Like it doesn’t know or care what he’s saying, it just wants more.
But my brain knows. The tiny part of my mind that can still form rational thoughts, the part that’s been screaming alarms at me ever since Mom and I arrived in this house, knows better than to answer Lincoln.
Knows not to give him that power over me.
So instead, I shove backward again, and this time, he does step away from the door. As soon as Dax and Chase leave my view, my mind clears a little more, and I clamp my hands around Lincoln’s forearm, feeling the taut lines of muscle flex under my grip.
“I don’t want anyone. And I wasn’t trying to snoop, you asshole. Tell your fucking friends to close the damn door next time,” I whisper.
He huffs a breath, letting out a disappointed sounding chuckle. “You’re a lot better at bluffing when you’re at the poker table, Pool Girl. Didn’t anybody ever tell you you shouldn’t lie either?”
I snort. “That’s rich, coming from a guy who lives in a house basically built on lies.”
Before I can register what’s happening, his hands shift to spin me around, the movement so fast it leaves me dizzy. His amber eyes blaze as he stares down at me. “What are you talking about?”
Oh shit. I shouldn’t have said that.
I could probably hurt him right now, if I wanted to. Whether he knows about the paternity test his dad took or not, it would still be a blow to hear about it from me. Because even if he is already aware of it, I’m sure he doesn’t want the help knowing all his family drama.
But for some reason, I keep my mouth shut.
Maybe it’s because, for all the stupid comments and taunts and pranks he and his friends have thrown at me, none of them have felt as damaging or real as this.
“Nothing. Just that I’m sure you didn’t tell your parents you were throwing this little party,” I shoot back, trying to give my words enough bite to make them believable.
He narrows his eyes at me. “You’re a shit liar. What did you really mean?”
“That’s it!” I insist in a low whisper. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going back to bed—”
I tug out of his grasp and start down the hallway, but I don’t make it more than a few feet before he’s on me again, silent and fast as a fucking cat.
“Oh no, you don’t,” he murmurs, wrapping a hand around my arm. “You don’t want to tell me the truth? Fine. But here’s the thing, Pool Girl. I don’t know if you noticed, but I’m throwing a little party. I’m sure it’s gotten a little messy downstairs. And you’re the only cleaning staff around right now.”
I blink at him, anger making me a little slow. “What, you want me to… clean? Right now?”
A lazy smile tilts his lips, and I know he’s doing this just to get back at me. “Yeah. Wouldn’t want to have to tell my dad you fucked up while they were gone. Or that you smoked weed while you were working his cocktail party.”
The blood drains from my face, and my skin prickles. Goddammit. Is he serious?
“Fine.” I’m shaking with anger, but I force the word out. “Let me get my uniform—”
“Nah.” His hand doesn’t release my arm. “You’re fine how you are. Nobody downstairs stands on ceremony like that.”
My gaze flicks down for a second. I’m wearing a pair of soft pink shorts and a tank top to match. I don’t have a bra on, and the tank isn’t see through, but it’s soft and stretchy enough to leave nothing to the imagination. And he wants me to go downstairs in this?
“Now, Pool Girl,” he whispers softly, as if he heard my internal thoughts. “Don’t make me get you fired. I know you want to keep this job; I do believe you on that.”
I want to hit him. I want to wind up with my free hand and slap him so hard his head bounces off the wall. But I don’t, for several reasons. One, it would definitely be loud enough for Dax and Chase to hear. And two, he’s not wrong. I want to keep this job. He has me by the fucking balls, and he knows it.
When he sees my almost imperceptible nod, he releases my arm, herding me downstairs to the main floor, where the party continues to rage.
It’s fucking humiliating. He follows me like a dog trainer showing off his prize bitch, making me go from room to room grabbing empty cups and cleaning up spills. Savannah and Iris are in a corner of the ballroom with a group of other cheerleaders, and they scream with laughter until Lincoln glares at them.
He’s not trying to protect me though; I’m sure of it. He just hates them.
Dax and Chase show back up downstairs while I’m still cleaning in my pajamas, and they shoot curious glances at me as I keep my head down and work.
Fuck them. It’s their fault I’m stuck doing this. Theirs and Lincoln’s.
I should’ve told him the truth.
No matter how much it hurt him.
13
When Mom comes back with Lincoln’s parents on Sunday evening and asks how the weekend was, I tell her it was fine.
What else am I going to say? If I tell her what happened, she’ll probably quit in protest, and that would be just as bad as her getting fired. Worse, actually, because she couldn’t even file for unemployment if she quit. So I keep my lips zipped and ask her how her weekend was.
“It was fine.” She lets out a yawn as she flops down on the couch in her apartment. “A little odd, but the work was easy.”
“Odd how?” I sink down next to her.
She waggles her head back and forth like she can’t quite decide on the answer. “It felt a little like I was a third wheel, traveling with a married couple. But it also sort of felt like I was a buffer somehow, if that makes sense.”
I shake my head, because it really doesn’t. Not that I expect much to make sense when it comes to this family.
“Yeah, no.” She shrugs. “Maybe it’s a married couple thing. They’ve been together—well, I don’t know how long, but at least seventeen or eighteen years, probably. Maybe that’s just how it is after a while.”
“Guess you dodged a bullet on that one,” I joke. From everything Mom’s told me about my dad, I’m glad as hell she didn’t marry him. He proposed after she got pregnant but then dragged his feet until after I was born and disappeared a year later. Good riddance, I say.
The one bright spot in the whole weekend was that I went to another poker game on Friday, and this time, I cleaned up. I managed to replace the money I lost to River, which makes me feel better—although I’ve still got that fucking favor hanging over my head.
I can’t stop thinking about what I saw in the spare bedroom on Thursday night… and for some reason, whenever I try to imagine what River might ask me for, it always turns into something sexual, and I hate, hate, hate how my body responds to those thoughts.
“Low? Where’d you go?”
My mom’s words penetrate my brain, yanking me out of my distracted musings.
“Nowhere. Sorry.” I shake my head. “I gotta get to bed. I’m glad your trip went okay. And I’m glad you’re back.”
I hop off the couch, then lean over the back of it to give her an upside-down hug.
“Love you, kiddo,” she murmurs.
“Love you more.”
Now that I’m not getting harassed in the hallways anymore, school is mostly just a blur of homework and long, boring lectures. I’m doing pretty well in most of my classes, although Business and Econ sucks. Somehow, it doesn’t surprise me that it’s a required course at a school like this, but I don’t have much interest or aptitude for it. I’m clinging to a B- though, and as long as I don’t let it slip any further, I’ll be okay.
We have a test in that class on Monday, and as I turn in my answers and walk out, a heavy feeling settles in my chest. That… could’ve gone better. I studied some over the weekend, but I was a little distracted by Lincoln’s fucking party and the poker game I went to, on top of managing my mom’s usual duties at the house. And I’ve been in such a weird place mentally
ever since the party, it was hard to focus.
Not that Mr. Arndt would care about any of those excuses even if I told him.
The rest of the week scrapes by, and when we get our tests back on Thursday, my eyes widen as I look at the circled number written in the top right corner.
100.
Holy shit. How is that even possible? I mean, I definitely tried my hardest, but I was completely guessing on some of the questions. Did I just guess that well?
A little wave of relief hits me. I was expecting to have to scramble to bring my average back up, but this test probably raised my overall grade to a solid B. I can definitely live with that.
When the bell rings at the end of class, I shove the papers in my bag and start to file out with the rest of the kids, but Mr. Arndt gestures me toward the front with two fingers. “Ms. Thomas? May I have a word with you, please?”
I divert my course toward his desk, glancing at the clock on the wall. “Um, yeah. Sure. But I have Calculus in ten minutes, and Ms. Watson will—”
“It’s all right. I’ll have a hall monitor tell her to expect you late.”
“Okay,” I say slowly, wondering what the hell he needs me for that’s so urgent. Not that I hate getting out of Calculus, but still.
“I’d like you to come with me to see Principal Osterhaut,” Mr. Arndt says mildly, and a prickle of nerves twists my stomach.
“What for?”
“We’ll talk about it with him.” His voice is still calm, almost reassuring, but it doesn’t help. Going to see the principal is, in my experience, never a good thing.
“Okay, sure.”
We walk down the hall together, past students talking and joking loudly with each other, grabbing things from their lockers, or rushing to a class on the other side of the building. Linwood Academy is three stories tall, but the principal’s office and other admin offices are all on the first floor. I follow Mr. Arndt down the stairs in silence, and when he leads me into the admin wing and knocks on Mr. Osterhaut’s open door, I have to fight to keep my nervousness off my face.
“Ah, Ms. Thomas.” Mr. Osterhaut has skinny legs and a big gut, which sits on his lap like some kind of weird pet. His chair is scooted back from his desk, and he doesn’t stand up when we enter, just gestures for us to sit too.
“Um, what’s going on?” I ask, wracking my brain for what I could possibly be getting busted for. I smoked a joint under the bleachers last week, but nobody saw me except Dax and Chase. I swear, those two guys have a fucking sixth sense for that sort of thing.
“We were pleased to offer you enrollment to Linwood Academy, and you’ve been doing just fine academically so far,” the principal begins. “But we take our reputation as a scholarly institution very seriously, Ms. Thomas, and that includes having no tolerance for cheating. When colleges see the Linwood name on an application and see the grades a student achieved, it’s important to us that they know those grades were earned. We don’t pad grades or give easy A’s. If a student excels here, it’s because they put in the time and work to achieve high marks.”
“Okay.” My brows furrow, and I glance from him to Mr. Arndt.
The dark-haired teacher clicks his tongue. “Harlow, no one got a one hundred on my exam—except for you.”
“Well, it was a hard test.”
“It was.” He steeples his hands, placing his elbows on the armrest of the chair. “And you haven’t done better than a seventy-nine on any previous exams.”
“I studied hard,” I say, except I really didn’t. I’m starting to understand where he’s going with this, but it makes no sense. “I didn’t cheat.”
“I’m not saying you did—”
“Yes, you are,” I interrupt. “That’s why you brought me down here, isn’t it?”
His gaze flickers, and I know I’m exactly right. But all he says is, “I just wanted to have a frank discussion with you and Principal Osterhaut.”
“Well, I didn’t cheat. That’s about as frank as I can make it.”
He sighs, and Mr. Osterhaut scoots his chair forward a little.
“Ms. Thomas, as of right now, we can’t prove you tampered with the exam. But we’ll be looking into it, and if we do find evidence that you cheated… well, it would be better if you just come clean now.”
“There’s nothing to come clean about,” I insist, my cheeks heating. “I didn’t cheat.”
“All right.” Mr. Osterhaut nods, but I know he doesn’t believe me. “Well, Mr. Arndt will be keeping a close eye on your future assignments and exams. And if you decide you have anything you’d like to add to this conversation, you can speak to him or me anytime. If our investigation turns anything up, we’ll have to contact your parents.”
“My mom,” I correct.
“Yes. Well.” He leans back. “Thank you for speaking to us. And just so you’re aware, Ms. Thomas, we have a zero tolerance policy for cheating here. So bear that in mind going forward.”
I blink then shift my gaze over to Mr. Arndt. His expression is carefully neutral. I know he thinks I’m guilty too, but he doesn’t want to make it obvious. He likes me, or at least he used to, so hopefully he’s not going to assume every other project I do is a cheat from now on.
But I don’t understand how this happened in the first place. I’ve never cheated on schoolwork. I’ve never really had to. I’m smart, and I work hard enough to pull the kind of grades I can live with without having to do anything underhanded.
“Yeah, thanks. I will,” I mumble, then grab my backpack and slip out of the room.
I’m late to Calculus, but Ms. Becker doesn’t comment on it. She must’ve gotten whatever message Mr. Arndt sent her. That class and History pass in a blur as I stare at my desk, trying to figure out how I could’ve done so well on a test I didn’t study enough for. To my mind, it’s still possible I just got lucky as hell with my guesses, but neither the principal nor my teacher seem convinced of that.
My stomach is in a tight knot by the time I walk down the front steps of the school just after three p.m., and I feel a little sick.
“Congrats on your perfect score,” a sickly sweet voice croons from my left, and I glance over to see Savannah smiling at me. She’s leaning against a low brick wall that edges the sidewalk on this side of the school, and her face set in a smug mask.
Oh my fucking God.
Of course.
I didn’t cheat on the test, but someone did—on my behalf. Probably knowing exactly what would happen when the scores were calculated. She’s been pissed as shit at me ever since she caught Trent hitting on me, so instead of sabotaging my test, she made sure I did too well. Which is worse. I could’ve handled a bad grade, but this could get me kicked out of the entire school.
Stopping in my tracks, I turn to face her slowly. She doesn’t have her usual backup of Iris and the other cheerleaders with her—maybe she and Iris are on the outs again this week. Whatever the reason, I’m glad she’s alone.
Because I’m about to kick her ass.
I’ve never gotten in a fistfight before. I’m not really a violent person. But after all the weird shit that’s happened in the past few weeks, the exhaustion of maintaining constant vigilance, the mindfucks and the games, I’m just about ready to crack. There’s an energy pent up inside me like liquid lightning, and it just wants to unleash on someone.
Might as well be this bitch.
“I knew they’d figure out it was a cheat if you did well in your business class.” She smirks. “My friend Megan is in that class, and she says you never know the right answer when Mr. Arndt calls on you. Why am I not surpri—”
The end of the word turns into a high-pitched shriek as my fist connects with the side of her face. I didn’t get a great wind-up, so it wasn’t the world’s hardest punch. But Savannah isn’t the world’s toughest cookie either. Her head whips sideways, one hand flying up to clamp over her cheek. She uses her other to brace against the wall, keeping herself from going to the ground as she stumbles.
Then she rights herself, blinking fast as she stares at me. “You—you—”
I don’t give her time to think of the perfect insult, dropping my backpack to the sidewalk before swinging at her again. She throws her arms up and manages to block my punch, but I hook my leg behind hers and push, bringing us both to the ground. I end up on top and use the position to yank on her bright red hair—hard. She shrieks, batting at my face with her claw-like nails.
Sounds pour into my ears from around us as we fight, and I’m vaguely aware we’ve drawn a crowd that’s whistling and yelling, but I don’t really care. At least, I don’t until a large pair of hands lands on my shoulders and hauls me away from the shrieking cheerleader. I stumble to my feet and look up into Mr. Arndt’s angry face.
“Ms. Thomas.” His lips press into a line. “Shall we go back to see Mr. Osterhaut—again?”
Savannah and I are both hauled into the principal’s office. She’s got a split lip, and her hair is a mess. She cries a lot, and there are several witnesses who can confirm I threw the first punch. I tell Osterhaut she basically admitted to tampering with the test, but he doesn’t really listen or care.
So I get detention and Savannah gets sent home.
I’ll have to stay after school every day for the next two weeks, starting today. And they’re calling my mother to report what happened.
Fucking great.
I stomp down the hall, accompanied by Mr. Arndt—who’s probably wishing he was home sipping a nice cold beer or something right now instead of escorting a surly teenager to her punishment.
He drops me off at the large room, and the teacher’s aid checks me in.
When I turn to find a seat, I hesitate for a second. River is sitting at a desk in the back row, watching me with a surprised look on his face. I’m not sure why—it’s not like we’re friends or anything—but I head toward the back and take the seat one over from his.
As I settle into the chair, he turns to face me more fully, gaze still locked on my face.
“What are you in for?” he murmurs.