by Lucy Auburn
Just as the self-pity is really setting in, I hear a voice. "Hey! Can you reach up and grab my hand?"
Opening my eyes, I look up in disbelief. Holly's face is staring down at me, rimmed by the distant light of the cloud-covered sun. She's wearing her hair in a ponytail, just like the day we met, wireless earbuds tucked into her ears.
Getting down on her knees, she leans forward into the pit and reaches down for me. Her hand seems to bring the sun, and its warmth, with it.
"Grab my hand, Brenna."
"I don't know if I can," I confess.
"Try anyway." Urgently, she stretches out her fingertips. "I've got you."
Something rises in my throat, tasting like absolution. Taking a step forward, I gingerly put weight on my injured ankle, stretch onto my toes, and reach both hands up to clasp the warmth and strength Holly offers.
"Get some purchase on the edge of the hole," she encourages me. "You can do it."
Biting my lower lip, I jump upwards, scrambling against the wet earth. Holly takes my weight effortlessly, grabbing my hands in both of hers, concentration lining her face as she pulls me up.
Out of the darkness and into the light.
By her side. I tumble out onto the earth, rolling on the wet leaves and cold grass, panting at the effort of it. Holly shakes out her hands, staring down at me. "You okay?"
"I'm good." I blink up at her face, still backlit by the sky. Above us, the wind pushes the clouds aside, and the sun dares to show itself. Its rays begin to banish the chill on my skin. "How did you know I was lost?"
She shrugs, looking away, then back at my face. "I just... knew. I looked for you and you weren't there. So I kept looking until I found you."
"Thank you." Sitting up, I confess, "I don't know if I would've been able to find you. If you were missing. Not that I was missing, just... a little lost."
A little laugh escapes Holly's mouth, and she smiles at me. The sight of it is worth more than a thousand kisses from a thousand terrible boys. I didn't even know I needed her smile until seeing it eases something within me, banishing a rot that set in the moment she discovered I'd betrayed her.
Maybe girls like me can be forgiven.
She suggests, "You stick to the getting lost. I'll stick to the finding. We both have our strengths."
"I guess so." I tilt my chin up and stare into the sun to hide the mist smarting at the corners of my eyes, but I know she sees through me. Girls like Holly always do. "Have I missed French class?"
"No," she says, and I groan in disappointment.
"Put me back in the hole and come back in an hour or two," I suggest. "In time for lunch."
"You wish." Laughing, she stands and helps me to my feet. "C'mon. I'll help you get to the nurse's office and have that ankle patched up. Next time, read the warning signs."
As we walk out of the woods, I look over my shoulder and see what she meant. The signs were there all along, nailed onto the tree trunks, long before I hit the torn red caution tape. But I wasn't looking for them, so I didn't see them.
This thing with Georgia is the same, except I see the warning signs.
I'm going to keep going anyway.
I can feel it all through French and biology class. The heaviness of my decision weighs on me, but I know it’s the only one that I could make. I have to do something about Hass, even if it means trusting Georgia.
Still, I can’t keep myself from feeling trepidation as I head towards the table in the back of the dining hall, where I’ve been eating with—and making plans with—the Elites. I get fewer eyes following me than I did the first few times I sat with them, but there are still plenty of curious, and jealous, onlookers. From the rumors that have trickled to me, some people think I’m Cole’s new girlfriend, others Lukas’s. No one has guessed that wild Tanner would settle down with me, or cold Blake warm up to me, but they all wonder what I’m doing here.
A voice calls my name, and I look to the left to see Holly waving at me from a table. “You can sit with us if you want,” she says, and I look over at Leo Cooper, her new boyfriend, as well as the other Rosalinds: Sasha, Piper, and Kaylie Jefferson, who replaced Georgia after she left. Tricia is also with them, sitting next to Sasha. Holly points to the seat next to her. “There’s a spot here for you.”
Unspoken is the fact that there’s also a spot in the Rosalinds for me. Holly never replaced me after I left, even though ostensibly five is the perfect number of students to run the events.
Before, I wouldn’t have thought it possible. But after she pulled me out of the hole this morning, we spent the whole walk to the nurse’s station talking and sharing. She told me that her new boyfriend likes to try to cook things for her late at night in the Coleridge kitchen, and confessed that she sneaks him in just so she can smear sauce on his nose. I told her that I’ve never been more sorry for anything than I am for what I did to her. She put her arm around me and held me up, then asked me if I wanted to talk about my brother.
For the first time, I wanted to tell her about Silas. About the way he used to laugh, and how he made the sun rise in the morning, and caught fireflies in the evening. But I choked up, and all I could say was, “I want to.”
“One day,” she responded, squeezing me comfortingly. “When you’re ready.”
Looking at her now, open-faced and waiting for me, all I want is to go to her. Sitting next to Holly would be a privilege. The thing is, though, I’m not done with the dirty work ahead of me, and until I am, I can’t let myself rest at her side.
“Maybe next week,” I tell her, glancing over at the table where the Elites sit. “I’ll see you after class?”
Holly follows my gaze, and I wonder if all she sees is that I’d rather spend time with her lying ex-boyfriend than with her. But she just says, “Of course. After class.”
It hurts to turn away from her. I know how valuable a friendship like hers is. But I have something to take care of before I can return to her good graces and stay there permanently.
Sitting down at the lunch table, I receive the full attention of the Elites. Cole raises a brow at me, expectantly.
I take a deep breath in. Let it out through my nose. Tell myself that I only feel like I'm making a decision I'll regret. If I do this, then soon, it'll all be over.
"I'm going to testify with Georgia. I'm going to do it."
I've made my choice. There's no going back now.
I hope it's not the last choice I get to make.
Chapter 20
After my music class, I spend some time in the outdoor pavilion where it's held, enjoying the rays of afternoon sun leaking in through the sides of the tent. It's been cold all winter, but now that the sun has come out I feel warmer than I've been in a long time.
In a few hours, Georgia and I are going to go to the police to tell them what happened at the private airport hanger.
I don't know what happens after that. The future is a blank space, waiting for somebody to write the next part of the story. For the first time that person will be me.
I think of Silas, and pinch the scar on the base of my thumb where the snake bit me the day that I found him hanging from a tree.
Maybe if the police open an investigation into Hass, they'll open an investigation into my brother's death too, and I'll finally be able to breathe again.
"Brenna." I turn at my name, surprised to see Blake entering the tent, his cheeks reddened from the cold and the sun. "We need to talk—somewhere private preferably. Come with me."
I frown at him. "What's this about?"
Standing at the entrance to the tent, he shifts back and forth impatiently. "Just follow me. It's important."
Sighing, I grab my backpack and stand up, the weight of Silas's laptop resting against my back. At this point I'm starting to resign myself to the reality that it might only ever be a brick to me, the closed-off partition reminding me of how little I ever truly knew my brother while he was still alive.
"Where are we going?" I ask Blake, as
he leads me down a path away from the Coleridge Center. "I've never been this way."
"This is where the advanced computer classes are held," he says, leading me to a small building and swiping his ID by the door. "No one is here this time of day."
I follow him inside, the sound of fans greeting me on the other side of the door. Three rows of tables hold monitors, and on one side is a long row of black boxes that are clearly servers. Despite the cold outside, it's cold in here too, no doubt to keep the computer equipment from overheating.
"You take a class here?"
"Yes. Don’t look so surprised. They hold advanced math classes here too.” He paces down the rows of computers and opens a door that leads to a small room full of comfortable chairs, built-in wall shelves holding thick volumes of esoteric programming books. "In here. No one will find us."
A strange thrill goes through me as I walk into the room, goosebumps rising along the skin of my arms. Here I am, alone with Blake, just like yesterday in the woods when we kissed so long and so hard that I felt his desire for me even hours afterwards, imprinted on the tender skin of my lips. I can still feel the strength of his hands digging into the curve of my waist, can almost taste his bittersweet mouth on mine.
But as he turns to face me, arms crossed over his chest, it becomes abundantly clear that we're not here to makeout. We're here to talk about something, and I have the feeling I won't like what he has to say.
"You need to know the truth." The seriousness in his voice catches me off guard, so I sit down on one of the study chairs next to the bookshelves, watching as he takes a seat opposite me. "I'm tired of all these half-truths and outright lies. If you're going to testify, Brenna, someone has to tell you what you're up against."
"I've been asking that for weeks now," I point out. "Why would you tell me when the others won't?"
"Because I'm not as embedded in all this as them. Not as scared as them. Maybe not as scared as I should be." He folds his hands on his knees, looking very serious. "My mother's career in Korea has sheltered my family from some of their influence, and though my father has had his unfortunate... dealings with them, we're not old Western money. Not like the Mastersons or the DuPonts. And we're not in politics like the Connallys. So the Syndicate doesn't have control over me like they do over the others, and they don't have any dirt on my family, either."
"The Syndicate?" I blink at him. "That sounds very... organized crime."
"What else would you call dark money in politics and international monopolies that destroy small businesses? Officially, they're an underground network of old money types who make business dealings and help each other out of a jam. They do favors and court influence. If money passes hands, that's just what they've been doing for generations. That's the cover, at least." He grimaces. "Unofficially, people who get in their way or look at them too closely tend to disappear in very sudden ways. The cops don't tend to get involved, either because the deaths look like an accident or..."
"Suicide." My hands tremble, and I have to fold them together. "So those men who killed Silas, who kidnapped me were..."
"The arm of the Syndicate, yes. Or in this case, low life thugs working for them. Those at the top rarely get their hands dirty—at least, not like this. They're fans of going on dates with models," he says, putting air quotes around emphasized words, "who are in reality trafficked female escorts. They do plenty of drugs, have wild parties, and break the law in big blue collar ways like insider trading. But they don't kill teenagers. That's dirty work that they leave to the lowest level."
Setting down my backpack, I pull Silas's laptop out of it, suddenly certain what I'll find on it. "You think my brother had dirt on the Syndicate?"
"I think he most definitely did, because he was one of their drug dealers. Not that he had direct dealings with them—at least, as far as I know he didn't. They weren't exactly the type to come visit Wayborne Virginia. But he must've had some sort of dealings with enough people in their organization to get curious, or paranoid, and start digging."
"He was killed for it." Setting the laptop down on the end table beside me, I squeeze my hands together so my fingers don't tremble. "And then I started posting on the Legacies blog. Somehow they must have figured out it was me. I don't even know how."
Gently, Blake says, "It wouldn't have been hard, Brenna. Half the social networks you used have members of the Syndicate somewhere on the board. When you got too close to that story involving the governor's son, they probably decided to look into you, pulled your public IP address, and figured out pretty quickly that only one person could've posted from both Wayborne and Coleridge's campus. From there, it's pretty easy to find you."
"They were looking into my family." I close my eyes briefly at the memory of those mens' voices. "They knew our house was destroyed by the tornado. I didn't realize how they knew the laptop was still around, but it must be because I logged into websites from it and posted to the blog."
"Exactly. So they're already gunning for you—or at least, that laptop." Staring me down, Blake says, "If you want to walk away from all this, Brenna, you can. Just give me the laptop, I'll have my dad turn it into one of them—he has to deal with their types in Hollywood even if he doesn't want to—and they can destroy it. We'll tell them that you never even looked at it, and they'll leave you alone."
I blink at him, confessing, "That's not what I want to do." Then I realize, "That's not what you want me to do, either."
"Walk away from all this? No. I think you should face them."
"Why?" I study him. "I'm just a teenaged girl, after all. Some nobody. Trailer trash, basically—isn't that what you call me? There's nothing about me that's special enough to go after a group that's actually called the Syndicate."
"You have a fire inside you." I startle at how much his words echo my thoughts. To me, the rage that I feel, the drive to destroy and take without thinking, is like flames seeking fuel. Blake continues, "I see that fire when I look at you. It burns so bright, I think it could bring the whole world to its knees. The Syndicate won't know what's coming when you come for them."
Quietly, I point out, "But I mess up so much. The SD card in the camera. All that logging into social media networks—I should've realized not to leave a trace, should've always used a VPN. Everything I touch is ruined."
"We all make mistakes. We all get better. You're the only person I've ever seen with the drive to take on the powerful." Sliding off his chair, he gets down on his knees in front of me and takes my hands between his, their broad strength and incredible warmth giving me a fire of another sort. "I believe in you, Brenna. You don't ruin things—you come at them headfirst, no matter the consequences. Also," a devilish smirk curls up his lips, the mouth I once saw as emotionless now wicked with desire, "you touched me, and I'm not ruined."
I find myself leaning down towards him, our eyes meeting, his hands touching the insides of my thighs, just above my knees. Breath catching, I murmur, "We should try again, just to see. Maybe this time I'll destroy you with a single brush of my lips."
"I wish that you would try."
Surging upwards, he captures my lips with his own, hand reaching up to cup the side of my cheek. I moan and lean back into the chair as he presses me into it, his body parting my knees, his broad shoulders warm beneath my hands as I reach up to brace myself against him.
Those clever fingers of his, fingers that trace the lines of books and memorize their secrets, reach between my legs and dance across my thighs, the edge of my skirt pushed up past my knee-high socks.
I whimper, and he captures the sound in his mouth, kissing me so deeply that all thoughts leave me at once.
Warmth pools inside me, warmth that has nothing to do with rage or revenge. I feel like an entirely different girl with Blake Lee's body against mine. Reaching beneath me, he pulls me body towards his until my legs are parted around his hips, wrapping around behind him, the bulge of his hardening erection obvious and so close to me that I shiver.
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br /> His mouth drops from mine and travels down, leaving kisses on my jawline, my neck, behind my ear. Pressing his hips forward, his breath hitches in a moan as his clothed erection brushes against the edge of my dampening underwear. I startle at the realization that my skirt is up around my hips, my breath coming hard and fast, his fingers traveling underneath my button-up and towards my bra. Any second someone could walk into this room and see us here, unmistakably heading towards something I've never done before, never even thought I'd be so close to doing.
"Blake..." My voice trails off into a breathy moan as he nips gently at the tender skin of my neck, right near my pulse, his fingers unhooking my bra, broad thumb reaching around to brush against my nipple. "Blake, we shouldn't. Not here."
"Why not?"
He leans back, his eyes all pupil, blown wide and dark. Somehow his belt has come undone, and my eyes travel down to his crotch, blushing fiercely—it's clear from what I can see that he has plenty to work with and is more than just a little into my body.
"Anyone can catch us," I point out, embarrassed at the roughness of my voice. "There's not even a lock on the door."
"So? Let them catch us." He smirks. "I'd like to see what they think of one of the Elites fucking a girl like you out in the open. They'd probably talk about it for days."
My stomach drops, even as a part of me imagines what that would be like, how he would feel inside me, and I blush furiously. Still, those words—I didn't think I'd hear the first guy who was really into me talk about it like that.
Stumbling, I tell him, "I'm a virgin."
"And?" He just looks at me, dark brows barely moving. His hand is still beneath my shirt, and he brings it up to rub a circle around my nipple, smirking as my breath hitches. "I figured that out. So am I—you know that. It's like an albatross around my neck. Let's get it out of the way together."