Well, that wasn’t holding my tongue.
His smirk falters when he realizes some of his friends are laughing at my mocking of him. “Didn’t realize they let amateurs in here either. Or do we need to count the days since Niles finally brought you up from that peasant town?”
This wanker isn’t worth it, I know that. He’s jealous of me and trying to act like the king in front of his friends. But I’m in a foul mood and primed to unleash my frustration on someone, and he seems to be the prime target.
I know he’s the best option I have when he lets the next couple of words tumble out of his mouth.
“Perhaps you need to up your caliber of women. That impoverished, bland girl you’ve been photographed with doesn’t seem to be loosening your joints well enough.”
“What did you say?” I set down the glass in an eerily calm manner.
The rat’s French accent is painted with spittle from his thin lips. “I said, if you weren’t so busy shagging average girls, you might have a better chance of scoring goals on the actual pitch.”
Rage begins to brew in my veins, hot and lethal as his group of friends titter behind him. I am going to rip this guy apart limb by limb.
No one is here to stop me. I am alone, and in the heat of the moment, everything I’ve worked so hard on personally goes out the window. It doesn’t matter that I have reformed myself into a better man, one worthy of Aria. She isn’t here, she’s thrown us away as easily as could be … because she’s scared. I’m not enough to make her brave enough to pursue what we had together, but I’m not going to let someone speak about her in this way.
I must blackout as I stand from my wingback chair and launch myself across the room at Nasri because the next couple of minutes are a blur of consciousness. My solid mass hits his and we wrestle to the floor, a flash of my fist sinking into his jaw, the whiz of his elbow catching me in the temple. Blood and screams and the cathartic feel of pain leaking out of my body and into my victim.
All too suddenly, someone is pulling me off a limp and sobbing Nasri, yelling something into my face that I can’t quite comprehend. He may have popped my eardrum, or maybe I’m in shock.
It doesn’t dawn on me until later that I’ve just flushed my entire life down the drain.
33
Aria
Having a taste of the champagne life is dangerous.
Because when you don’t belong there and know the entire time you’re in that moment that you’ll need to go back to paying bills and living below the poverty line, it feels even worse when the rug is pulled out from under you.
I’ve experienced what it’s like to travel first class or go to posh nightclubs. I’ve known what it means to stay in a penthouse and not worry about how much a limo cost. The food, the clothes, the glamour of it all was enticing.
And now, it’s gone.
That isn’t what has me in the dreariest of moods. No, they can take all that from me and I wouldn’t bat an eyelash. While it was nice to experience, I’ve subsisted on far worse and I’ll do it again.
What I don’t think I’ll be able to survive is the crushing ache of something breaking in my chest every bloody second. Jude left, fled like he hadn’t been given enough time to leave everything he wanted to push out of his life behind. And I am stuck here, in Clavering, in the same old life that has been oppressing me for two years.
I am a survivor, yes, but ask me to survive in a world that has been brightened by the most unexpected boy imaginable, and it is bloody impossible. In every corner of every academy building, I feel him. It’s as if my senses are overcome with the scent of Jude, my eyes play tricks on me as other boys walk across the academy pathways and I do a double take to see if it was really Jude.
The tunnels are off limits … I can’t handle venturing back to the spot where so many of our secret moments were had. And avoiding Kingston and Vance is a top priority.
In my life, I’ve never experienced this kind of sharp, yearning loss. Not even with my mother, who was biologically inclined to love me. Jude has opened my eyes to what the world could be, he’s shown me excitement and freedom. Not only have I fallen in love with the man, something I never told him and now never would, but I’ve fallen in love with the kind of life he created for me. One where I wasn’t downtrodden, or sad, or lonely all the time.
Having that taken away … it does something to the essential makeup of a person.
The only thing that makes me feel slightly better? Well, not better, but maybe in good company with my misery, is the fact that Jude’s bloody face was splashed all over the papers. Scratch that, it doesn’t make me feel good at all. He’d gotten into a pub brawl with some French national team player who’d been taunting him.
I was severely disappointed, but maybe this was who Jude has always been. Never attempt to change the bad boy, because it will never work.
Patricia and Louisa must know something is up but by the grace of God, don’t call attention to it. Perhaps, these days, I give off more of a dismal attitude and they know well enough to leave it alone.
Sitting at my station in the sew house, I’m trying to focus my attention fully on the kit I’m embroidering when Patricia comes by and leans a hip into the table.
“Aria, love, someone from the headmaster’s office just rang. He wants to see you on the double.”
My head shoots up because I have never been called in about anything. Not only am I a model worker, but Patricia is my direct boss. The only two times there has ever been a problem—a mishandled stitch and the time I’d been five minutes late because Dad had thrown up on my blouse—she had been the one to handle talking to me about them.
The organ in my chest, the one Jude shattered when he’d left, pounds against the cage of my ribs with nervous fear. Being called to Headmaster Darnot’s office is like being called to the principal’s office … quite literally. I have no idea what I’ve done, and as Louisa and Patricia stare at me, I begin to wrack my brain for any indiscretion I could have committed.
Taking my lunch in the tunnels? There’s no way they could care much about that. Had I sewn one of the kits wrong? Left a light on after I cleaned a certain part of the buildings?
I’m not sure, but whatever it is … it’s not a good sign that the headmaster wants to see me.
My body is sluggish as it rises from the stool I’ve been occupying for hours. I keep my mouth glued shut as I walk out of the sew house, my mind racing as my hands begin to sweat.
No amount of wiping them on my khaki pants as I walk disjointedly across the grounds can get them to dry.
As I walk into the headmaster’s wing of one of the administrative buildings, and into the waiting area outside his office, the secretary gives me a curt nod. Does she know why I’m here? Perhaps I should ask her …
No, even if she knows, she’ll never tell me. From what I can remember, she’s served Headmaster Darnot faithfully for over three decades.
A beep comes over the phone on her desk, she picks it up, nods into the receiver, and places it back down.
“You may go in,” she says to me in a clipped tone.
I’m ushered into the headmaster’s office, a place I’ve only been to when no one else is in the building. His desk comes into view first, the gleaming wood of it polished by me the night before. I wonder if he realizes that?
“Miss Lloyd, have a seat.” Headmaster Darnot’s hawk-like gaze flits over me, and I feel instantly vulnerable.
The man has a Napoleon-complex if I ever heard of one. The academy players loathe him, and it’s said that he acts so harshly with the young men here because he has no real power in the grand scheme of the organization. Luckily, I’ve never had to have a genuine interaction with him … until now.
I try to keep my voice calm and professional as I attempt to seek out why I might have been called in here. “Sir, have I done something wrong? I arrive promptly for all of my shifts, if there is something with the janitorial work you’d like done differently—”
“We’re going to have to let you go, Miss Lloyd.” He looks me straight in the face with his emotionless eyes.
I must look like a fish because my mouth simply won’t stop gaping open. “I’m … I’m sorry, what?”
“The academy is relieving you of your position. Seeing as how your boyfriend just caused a rather enormous mess for the club, we decided it was best to rid ourselves of any … baggage he left in his wake.”
Realization dawns on me, and confusion sets in at almost the same time. “I’m being shown the door because Jude Davies got into some pub brawl in London? I’m not quite sure what that has to do with me. And we are no longer dating, so it shouldn’t be an issue. I swear to you, Headmaster, I am not in contact with him.”
My voice takes on a pleading edge at the end of my sentence, but I can see that none of my explanations have affected him in the slightest. Darnot looks down his nose at me, and his mouth flicks up in a sneer.
“That may be a technicality, but we’re scrubbing this academy of any stain of Jude Davies, and unfortunately, you’re collateral damage. You’ll turn in your keys and passes to the campus by end of day, and any training materials for your protégé should be left with Patricia.”
My lungs begin to seize, and my body is throttled into panic mode. “Headmaster, please, I need this job. I swear, I have always been a top-notch employee, I’ll work longer shifts, I’ll … please, you don’t understand …”
Emotion catches in my throat as I try to blink back the tears threatening to fall. I can see it all so clearly, the crumbling pieces of my world falling from the sky and burning to ash as they touch the ground. This job, it’s more than essential. Without money, without work, I can’ help my father. We can’t eat, we’ll be evicted …
“Unfortunately, Miss Lloyd, you shouldn’t have let your foolish female intuitions get in the way. This is your problem now, and there is nothing more I can do. Next time, perhaps don’t hitch your wagon to a wild one.”
With a flick of his wrist, he shoos me from his office, dismissing me like some kind of guttersnipe. I want to plead more, to get down on my knees and beg, but I can feel the smug satisfaction coming off the headmaster in waves … and I know there is nothing more I can say.
I’ve known from the beginning that falling into bed with Jude, for lack of better terms, was going to end terribly. That associating with him would only cause me fatal harm, and I was correct. Not only have I lost my heart, but now I’ve lost the means to keep my family from falling fully into poverty.
Too numb to cry, too distraught to throw myself on the ground and scream at the gods, I walk out of his office and through the grounds, blind to anything else around me.
Because the only thing running through my mind is one question.
How will I save my father’s life now?
34
Aria
“Aria, I think something is wrong.”
These are the words I’m greeted with as I walk into my house, and for a second, I wonder how my dad knows already that I’ve been sacked.
“Did someone from the school call you?” I ask from the tiny entryway as I shed my coat.
Walking into the living room, I’m greeted by the most horrific sight I’ve ever seen.
Dad is on his hands and knees, but in a haphazard way that looks like he must have fallen out of his chair. His limbs are rigid but bent at strange angles, and there is …
Blood. Staining the carpet in ugly brown patches.
It’s dripping from his mouth, covering his hands, and his eyes are so wide and pale that I think he must see death lurking behind me.
“Dad?” I tremble, my entire body going into shock.
“I think something is wrong,” he says as his voice breaks, and then passes out on the floor in front of me.
My system goes into panic mode, adrenaline coursing through my veins and fueling me to do one thing and one thing only.
Save him.
I honestly don’t remember calling the ambulance or opening the door for them when they showed up. The period of time from the point of him passing out to when I walked into the emergency room is an utter blur. All I can see, the memory seared into the frontal lobe of my brain, is the horrified panic on my father’s face as I first took in the scene of the living room.
The doctors rush him off to somewhere in the hospital … I’m too distressed to catch anything but bits and pieces of conversations being relayed to me. The nurse at the check-in desk hands me a clipboard and I stare at it.
“Miss? You need to fill out your father’s information.”
“Where have they taken him?” I can’t focus, it’s as if my mind has splintered into seven different pieces.
“He’s going into surgery. After you fill out his information, we can have someone take you to the waiting room on the floor he’ll be on,” she explains, taking a bit of pity on me.
She probably sees half-dazed people like me every hour, coming in here with ill relatives. She probably holds the hands of plenty … but right now, that person is me. And even though I’m the strong one, I’m the one our family of two leans on to be the rock, in this time of need, I find I can’t pull it together.
I’m ninety percent sure I scribble down gibberish on the registration paperwork, but the nurse seems to approve it because fifteen minutes later, I’m being escorted to an elevator and finally deposited in a small waiting room with a door that closes.
I’m not sure if that’s good or bad. You know, sometimes in movies or what not, they show the family of the about-to-be … dead person in an offshoot waiting room instead of the main one. So that when they break down, it isn’t in full view of every other person in the hospital.
My hands shake just thinking about this, and the fear that I might really lose my dad starts to creep in, paralyzing every nerve in my body. Time must be moving, but if it is, I can’t feel it. It’s as if I sit in this small, auxiliary waiting room alone for years, or maybe decades. No noise, no movement around me.
Finally, my head whips to the door as I hear the knob twist open, and a man in scrubs appears before me.
“Miss Lloyd? You’re Edward’s daughter?” He relays my father’s first name and I nod. “Your father is stable. Still in surgery, but stable.”
“Is he … will he …” I can’t say the words that have been flashing through my head since I found him in a puddle of his own blood.
The doctor blanches and gives me a sympathetic smile. “He’s going to be okay. We found a ruptured ulcer in his stomach … the inflammation was likely caused by the chemotherapy treatments he’s been undergoing. The bleeding was a result of the ulcer, but we have it under control now and are just trying to clean it out. He’ll be in recovery in about an hour or so.”
Sucking in lungfuls of deep breaths, I press my palm to my chest to calm my rattled heart. He’s going to be okay … I just have to keep repeating it to myself over and over again.
“Can you give me the name of his oncologist and general doctors? I’d like to touch base with them,” the doctor says.
I give him all the information he’s asking about, and he leaves me with another assurance that Dad will be okay coming out of surgery. Notice how he doesn’t say just fine, because we both know the man is fighting cancer and there are no guarantees when it comes to that.
A half an hour after he leaves, my phone rings. I don’t even realize where it’s coming from at first, because I rarely get calls to the thing. And now, with no job, no boyfriend and the only person close to me in surgery, it’s bizarre I’d be receiving a ring from anyone.
“Hello?” My voice sounds ragged and tired.
“Hi, Aria, it’s Ian Rethal. How are you getting on? Listen, the demo is going to be played on a radio station later this week, and there is an executive at my label who thinks it’s bloody brilliant.”
At any other moment, I’d be elated. I’d be jumping up and down and letting the euphoric rush of good luck suffuse my body. B
ut right now, I can do little more than tell Ian, “Wonderful.”
Silence on the other end. “Aria, did you hear me? Your song is going to be played on the radio! And once it gets some circulation, and I can get it on some streaming services, you’ll be cut a check from the royalties!”
The mention of money gets my blood pumping a bit. “That will be a welcome thing. Sorry, Ian … it’s not a great time. My father was rushed to hospital this morning and I can’t … I’m glad to hear the news. But I have other things on my plate right now.”
“Oh, Aria, I apologize … I know it isn’t a great time, but we’d like to have you do an interview with a reporter in anticipation of the single. Can he give you a call tomorrow?”
I have no idea what the rest of my week will hold. My father is still fighting for his life. “Ian, I won’t be able to do that.”
“Aria, you know this is the chance a million singers would jump at …” He probably thinks I’m mental.
I nod into the phone, though he can’t see me. “And right now, I’m not one of them. There are more important things. Thank you for letting me know about the radio, Ian. I hope the song does well.”
I disconnect the call before he can spit any more industry talk at me. What a shame, that the moment something goes right for me, I can’t even recognize how big of a deal it is. Once again, my universe has robbed me of any personal joy. Not that I care … the only thing I can think about is getting into that recovery room to give my dad a hug. To make sure that he is, in fact, going to be okay.
My thoughts need a distraction, and I pick up the closest issue of Daily Mail on the table next to me. As if the world hasn’t taunted me enough today, lo and behold, there is Jude Davies’ gorgeous mug on the cover.
And I do mean mugshot. Even with a bloody nose and a split lip, up against the brick police station wall, he’s still the most dishy man I’ve ever laid eyes on. The criminal photo only makes him appear more dangerous, as if he could send a poison arrow through your heart with one look.
The Second Coming: Rogue Academy, Book One Page 15