“I don’t know if I can do this,” Lumen mumbles, looking down at the ground like she’s searching the grass for answers. “Maybe this is a mistake?”
“It will be if you don’t start talking,” X confirms, and Lumen gives him a sharp look in response.
“Just because I’m here, and I feel bad for Dakota, doesn’t mean I’m going to take shit from you. From any of you.” Lumen turns back to me, steeling herself and curling her hands into the fabric of her pleated skirt. “Let’s just say: I’m being blackmailed.”
My blood goes cold, and I wet my lips, taking a small step forward. The boys tense on either side of me, but I don’t plan on getting any closer. I just need Lumen to know that I’m listening.
“By who?” I ask, and she shakes her head.
“I don’t know. All I know is that …” She lifts her head up and glances back in the direction of the academy, its white walls shining in the afternoon sun. Lumen trails off, heaves another sigh, and turns back to me. Her expression is resolute. “I don’t know who the person is, but I do know that they can spy on me through phones or laptops or whatever. That’s why I gave you that note at the party. It was the only way I could think for us to talk without being watched.”
“What did you do to get blackmailed?” Chas drawls, but Lumen ignores him. She wasn’t lying when she said she wasn’t interested in any of the boys, just me.
“At first, the things my blackmailer was asking weren’t so bad. Just a little thing here or there. But his demands are getting bigger and bigger, and I’m learning to hate myself more and more …” Lumen trails off, takes in a deep breath, and lifts her chin. “Before we get any further, I just need to say this: Danyella isn’t involved. I don’t want her involved. And if you get her involved …” She trails off, and the threat in her words is apparent.
Chasm snorts derisively from behind me.
“We won’t involve Danyella,” I agree, crossing my arms and waiting for her to continue. “And I’m pretty sure you know we’re going through the same shit?”
She grimaces, like this is what she suspected, but hoped wasn’t true.
“I figured it out right away, when you told Danyella you’d set the theatre on fire. That isn’t something you’d do unless you had to.” Lumen’s calculating gaze swings over to Chasm, and I can see why they’re battling it out for future valedictorian. “That’s why I figure we’re both being blackmailed by Parrish’s kidnapper.”
I cock a brow at that. I mean, with the information she has, it really is the most logical conclusion to come to.
She turns to him with a stern look on her face.
“Anything you want to add to this that I didn’t already see on the news or hear from Emerald City Murder?” Lumen twists her lips to the side in an expression of complete disbelief. “I feel like you know more than you’re letting on.”
“And I feel like you forget that we’re equals at this school, Lumen. Don’t get started with me.” Parrish tilts his head at her. “Or … are we? I mean, I have turned you down over a dozen times—officially. Unofficially, I’m sure it’s a hell of a lot more than that.”
Lumen bristles, but she doesn’t remark on it. I’ve always sensed there was something more going on with her and Parrish, but I now at least know what it is from his side. He said everything in his life was bullshit; he didn’t want a shallow romantic relationship on top of everything else. Lumen? I don’t know what Lumen’s story is.
“I have to be honest with you, Dakota,” she continues, taking a step closer to me. Parrish moves up on my right, but Lumen doesn’t acknowledge him at all. “When I first approached you, I was already being directed by the blackmailer.” I shiver, and my eyes go wide, but Lumen isn’t done. “He wanted me to befriend you; he asked me to keep tabs on you. Sometimes, he asked me to take you places or convince you to attend things. Antonio’s party, for example.”
I just blink back at her as Chasm scowls and comes storming around Parrish to get in her face.
“I knew it,” he snaps, and she narrows her eyes, shifting her gaze over to him. It’s like watching two titans clash. “You were up to this shit from the very beginning. Typical Whitehall nonsense.”
“Oh, please, as if the three of you are Whitehall’s angels? Its saints?” Lumen turns back to me and then leans in even closer. “They might act like they’re your friends, but don’t think they haven’t done terrible things in the past. They’ve been just as bad—if not worse—than most.” Lumen tosses her hair casually over one shoulder before glancing at Maxx with disdain. “Remember the guy you drove to drop out?”
“Throwing stones in glass houses?” X jibes, his expression of contemptuousness equaling Lumen’s with zero effort. “What’s your point? We’re on Dakota’s side now. Are you?”
Lumen sighs, her cheeks flushing slightly as she turns back to me. Why she’s blushing now, I’m not sure.
“Not only are the demands from this getting insane—like asking me to beat you up—but I just … I like you, Dakota. You’re too nice. I don’t want to do this.”
“Oh, please,” Parrish scoffs, but then Lumen is staring at me like she’s gathering herself up to do something.
She reaches out, grabs me by the cheeks, and crushes her mouth to mine.
My eyes go wide, and I immediately push her back, before any of the guys can step in.
“What the fuck?!” Chasm snarls as Parrish goes stone-still and completely cold. Maxx is gaping in disbelief—and he actually takes a step back. To, I think, stop himself from having an inappropriate reaction.
“Lumen,” I start as she sighs and then shakes her hands out.
“So anyway, there’s that,” she says, looking at me with curiosity. “I like you. Whether you like me or not is irrelevant; I’m done with this.”
“You just kissed my girlfriend,” Parrish tells her, hooking an awful smile, one that promises pain. “I should kill you for that.”
“But you won’t because you need my help,” Lumen confirms, crossing her arms and taking a step back. She looks at me with a question in her eyes that I feel like I really need to answer before things get weird.
“I’m way taken, Lumen,” I tell her, giving a small shake of my head. “I’m sorry; I’m not interested in you like that.”
She sighs and turns away, shaking out her hair with her fingers.
“I knew as soon as you started crushing on Parrish that I was in trouble. Chasm, too.” She glances back and takes Maxx in with a curious expression, likely noting that his jaw is clenched and he’s struggling to hold back his anger. “And … Maxx? Eww. No, please, not Maxim. He’s the biggest asshole of them all. Didn’t think you were into alpha-hole pricks.”
“Lumen,” I start with an exasperated sigh. I mean, like, I’ve missed her so fucking bad these past several weeks, but also, we need to focus. “Parrish and I are together officially, but … yeah, I have feelings for all three of them. So that’s another reason I know you and I won’t work: we don’t have that spark.”
“We have a spark, eh, Little Sister?” Chasm asks, but he sounds so absurdly pleased that my heart warms. Parrish ignores all of that.
“So what does your blackmailer want now? Why are we here?” he demands, flicking his eyes back to the towering walls of the school. “If we don’t get going, like, now, Tess is going to start calling the FBI to come and find me—not that they did a great job last time.” He rolls his eyes as he looks back to Lumen, and my heart goes cold.
Shit.
He has a point.
Like, we all finished our exams a little early, but I’m pretty sure that sound I’m hearing now is the final bell of the day. Crap, crap, crap.
“I’ll admit: he wanted me to arrange a meeting with you anyway.” Lumen twists her hands in the fabric of her skirts again. “I figured if I got caught early, I could make up an excuse. Anyway, he wants me to get Dakota to come somewhere by herself, to meet me.”
“And then what?” Parrish prompts, b
ut she just shakes her head.
“I don’t know, but I’ve got a really, really bad feeling about it. I’m supposed to lure her somewhere and then leave, and I … I just don’t like the sound of that.”
I crinkle up my face, glancing over at Parrish and Chasm as X steps forward to fall in line beside me.
“This guy—this blackmailer—why wouldn’t he just blackmail me to get me to go somewhere?” I wonder aloud, but then it hits me. Because he would know that I’d try to bring the boys with me. If he explicitly told me not to bring them, I’d be suspicious. I’d know something was coming. But if Lumen were able to convince me to come meet her somewhere … I mean, I’d still tell the boys, but I wonder if that was part of Justin’s experiment, to see if I would. To see if I’d sneak off to see Lumen against their wishes.
“That’s what I was wondering. So … here we are.” She spreads her hands helplessly. “I need help getting out of this. The thing that he’s blackmailing about is … it’s bad.” Lumen shivers and closes her eyes, like she can shut out the horror of whatever this ‘bad thing’ is.
We all pause at the sound of rustling nearby, and Lumen’s eyes go wide.
She turns and stumbles over to the hedges, spreading the branches to look through as Chasm does the same.
He makes a scoffing sound.
“Danyella,” he says, but when I move forward to look myself, I see that she’s already taken off and is walking quickly back toward the school.
“Damn it, damn it, damn it. She followed me.” Lumen grits her teeth and then sighs heavily. “Okay, I will deal with her. Don’t tell her anything. I want to keep her innocent in all of this.”
“Seems like she knows enough to think to follow you?” Chas adds, giving Lumen a suspicious once-over. “What the fuck did the two of you do that has you afraid enough to follow a crazy kidnapper’s orders?”
“Leave Danyella out of this,” Lumen repeats as she points at him, and then she turns to me. “I don’t know what Veronica is up to, I swear it. She’s gone off the fucking rocker, and I think it has something to do with your dad coming back into town. Her dad might seem all friendly with him now, but the Fishers have like, a whole vendetta with Justin Prior.” Lumen squats down near the hole in the hedge, and I see that she, too, knows her way around the cameras here at Whitehall. “I have to go after her, but I’ll be in touch. We can pass notes like we’re old-school. Don’t text or call or even come near me where anyone might see.”
She ducks out and disappears as Parrish scowls.
“I don’t trust her,” he says, but I’m watching the hole she just disappeared through, deep in thought.
Justin is manipulating Lumen against me. I thought about it, but I wasn’t sure. Nice to know daddy dearest only pretends to be on my side. Also, nice to know that I was right: there are opposing forces at work here, aren’t there?
“We need to go,” Parrish says, giving my outfit a harsh frown. “If Tess asks, you … spilled something on it. And be careful if you raise your arms. If she sees those cuts, we’re going to be on lockdown for the rest of the century.”
“I don’t trust that girl for shit,” Chasm says, lying on his back on Parrish’s bed and looking up at the ceiling. We should probably be studying, but I think we both just need a small break to recover from today. It was … well, let’s just say it was fucking insane.
“Why not?” I ask, turning my head to look at him. I’m lying on the bed on Chas’ left, waiting for Parrish to extricate himself from Tess’ grip and join us. “I mean, I don’t either—at least not yet. I’m just curious as to what your reasons are.”
“If she really does need to lure you somewhere,” X interrupts, pausing beside the bed and looking down at the two of us like he might still be in overprotective mode. I appreciate it, actually. That, and I find it too cute that he rushed down to the academy to Chasm’s aid. “Then this would be a smart way to do it, act like she’s learned the error of her ways.”
Chas glances back at me, a suspicious cast to his gaze.
“You’re still too nice. Do I agree that going down to the maze today was a good choice? Sure, we learned a lot. But it was risky. And Lumen is guilty as fuck. That’s all I’m saying.” He looks back up toward the ceiling and then closes his eyes. He’s exhausted and so am I. Between rescuing Parrish, losing Maxine, studying like crazy, and getting our asses kicked, we’re spent. “And when Lumen says she wants to keep Danyella ‘innocent’ in all of this?” Chas lets out a low, disbelieving chuckle. “There’s no such thing. Whatever is going on with this blackmail situation, she knows.”
“Agreed.” Maxx sits down on the side of the bed, reaching out with a single finger and running it along the sole of my bare foot. I shiver, my mind straying back to that night when he gave me the foot massage. “Also, she kissed you, so … fuck her. If she were a guy, I would’ve decked her.”
We all pause as the bedroom door opens and Parrish slips in, looking completely picked over.
“God, I love Tess, and I understand her pain, but she’s suffocating me,” he whispers, putting his back to the door and closing his eyes. “You’d think we were an hour late for pickup.”
After leaving the hedge maze, Maxx guided us back the way we came to avoid the cameras, and then peeled off from Parrish and me to head for the visitor’s parking lot. We dropped Chasm at the garage, and then the two of us proceeded outside to where Kimber was already waiting with Tess.
She got tears in her eyes—no joke—and hugged him for a good three minutes straight while Kimber and I sat awkwardly inside her Mercedes, waiting.
“Just give her some time,” I say, sitting up as Parrish opens his eyes and turns to look at me. He’s probably wondering what alternate universe we’re trapped in, seeing as I’m actually sitting here and defending Tess. That pretty much never happens. “She’s got a lot of trauma to work through.”
“I’m more worried about you,” Parrish remarks, pushing away from the door and moving around the bed to stand next to Maxx. “How are you feeling?” He looks up and over at Chasm. “Both of you.”
“I’m all good,” Chasm says first, gesturing absently in my direction. “It’s Little Sister that I’m worried about.”
“I’m fine. A little sore, but that’s about it.” I decide to leave it at that for now. Justin’s sent me several texts praising my handling of today’s situation and promising to get rid of the images of me online. For anyone else, scrubbing the internet of a particular photo or video is a near impossible task; once it gets around, it’s out there forever. For him, it appears to be a relatively easy one. Even though I hate relying on that man for anything, I want this too badly to say no. He hasn’t asked me for anything in return—yet—but he sent another short video of Maxine that felt like a warning. She was sitting by an indoor pool, eyes closed, legs dangling over the edge. Take it one day at a time, Dakota. “Don’t stress about it.”
“I am going to stress about it,” Parrish asserts, looking beyond gorgeous in his uniform; all of that black and green and gray complements the gold flecks in his eyes. “Veronica and her friends; Antonio and his friends. They’ll get what’s coming to them.”
He pauses for a minute, like he’s just thought of something.
“Do you mind if I grab my phone real quick?” he asks, and Maxx gives him a harsh stare in response.
“You’re not making a TikTok,” he warns, and Parrish gives him a sharp look. “Don’t invite more conflict in. We have Justin and Maxine to worry about then we can clap back at Veronica and the others. We have all summer to do that.”
“They can’t walk away after what they did,” Parrish argues, but Maxx is already shaking his head.
“No. But don’t go on social media and start playing those games with them.”
The two boys stare at each other as I adjust my position and cross my legs, drawing their attention back to me.
“Don’t forget that Lumen kissed her,” Chasm reminds them, and Parrish’s e
yes narrow to slits. I give Chas a look.
“Stop harping on that; I turned her down. I told her no. You don’t have to trust her, but for now, we should at least act as if we do. The more information we can get out of her the better. Now, at least, we know for sure that Justin really is the one blackmailing her.”
“I’ve never liked that,” Parrish says, staring down at me and making me fidget. “Her touching and kissing you; it’s bothered me from the start.” He looks over at me, and I shiver underneath his gaze. I won’t soon forget the way his blazer wrapped around me like a pair of dark wings, how he carried me into the bathroom, how attentive he was. “Seeing my rival put her hands on the girl that was supposed to be mine from the get-go.”
“You could’ve tried not bullying me,” I offer up, and he affects this haughty look that has me wanting to kick him in his admittedly awesome (and very useful) junk. “I thought you were hot from moment one. All it would’ve taken was a genuine attempt at connection and we probably would’ve gotten together much sooner.”
Parrish moves away from the bed as I look up to see Maxx studying me carefully. Chasm, too.
“Yeah, Pear-Pear,” Chas teases, sitting up and curling his fingers around the edge of the mattress. I can tell that he’s tired, but I also know that he’s about to rally us and get us back to work. These exams are of paramount importance now that the possibility of seeing my sister has been dangled in front of me. I need that; I need to see that she’s okay with my own eyes. “That’s what you get for letting years of resentment toward Tess blind you to Mia’s hotness.”
I give him a look, but he just smirks at me and rises to his feet.
“I wasn’t blinded by anything,” Parrish says, turning back to look at Chasm. “I knew she was hot from moment one; I told her so. I just …” He lifts his gaze up toward his bedroom door and then sighs. “Tess isn’t going to like us being together.”
“She’s going to hate it,” Maxx agrees, and I notice that his fingers are pressed hard into the mattress on either side of him. “And if you tell her, both of your lives are going to change for the worse. I’m not saying that you should keep it a secret forever. Just … maybe until after you’ve both graduated.”
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