by Rebel Hart
I don’t even care anymore how sick and twisted this whole thing is. His desire is all I care about right now. I need the validation. I need to know I am real after this week of feeling non-existent. And I know that’s what he gets out of all of this. I don’t know if his motivation for making my life a living hell is the same as Vivian’s or any of the other Elites, but I know the benefit is that it leaves me like this…putty in his hands.
When he doesn’t answer, I push forward to run away, but his palm quickly juts across my chest and slams me back again. His breath quickens even more, and I can see him trying to resist as his finger trails across my face.
All at once we both surrender, our lips colliding and opening wide as our tongues crash across each other in firm waves. I can’t help but whimper into his mouth, sparking an earnest groan from his in return.
“When I saw you storm up to our table, I was hoping we would end up like this,” he mumbles into my lips, barely breaking us apart to speak. “I was expecting you to put up more of a fight. We really did get to you this time, huh?”
I almost think I can sense a tinge of pity in his voice. Not the degrading kind, but a sincere sympathy for what they have put me through. It makes me lose myself in him even more, my hands sliding across his back, up his neck and clenching into his hair. His hips push against mine, keeping me pinned firmly to the wall, and I can feel his hardness straining against his paints.
“Touch me,” I plead, biting his lip.
He pulls back, his eyes lighting up with a yearning fire as he studies me. He’s surprised I’m so willing right now. I saw it in the moment his eyebrows raised ever so slightly.
But rather than give in to what we both want, his grip tightens around my neck again, pulling my lips from his.
“You know I can’t just let you get away with what you did to Vivian,” he says almost apologetically. “They’ll never let me.”
“So…what? You’re just their puppet?” I tease defiantly, expecting a swift reprimand for challenging him.
The way he stills suddenly frightens me. I can see a new touch of humanity in him. One that really does feel sorry for me and all he’s done to me. Could it be that none of this is Emmett’s choosing? Is he just caught up in the game like I am and doing what he’s told?
His hand loosens from my neck, falling limp to his side as he steps back in surrender, still saying nothing.
My mind flashes with all that he’s done. The physical and emotional abuse. And all at once I remember there’s no way he’s just an Elite pawn. He is one of them through and through. And even if part of him feels regret now, he was completely in charge all the times before when he caused me harm.
And it all served the exact purpose it was intended to…to leave me so fucked up and desperate for anything that I would willingly give myself over to him. Admit to the things he makes my body feel, no matter how much it repulses me.
I’m overwhelmed with it all. I can’t believe this sad puppy act he’s putting on all of a sudden, and I don’t want to fall for it. Unable to fight the single tear spilling down the side of my face, I push past him and run away down the hall as fast as I can.
I don’t stop until I’m halfway to my car. Fuck this day. Fuck school. The way the teachers have been acting I’m not even entirely sure they’re counting my attendance or grades anyway. I might as well give up and go home.
But once I reach my car door, I still don’t stop. Running feels too good right now. It’s what I need. I keep barreling forward, right past my car, all the way to my house. I’ll figure out the rest later. Right now I just need to run.
The cold sting of air bursts in my lungs as I go, burning with tears that I try to fight back as hard as I can. Every time I feel the pulse of his lingering touch, I run faster and harder. Hoping the swift wind against my body will blow it all away.
By the time I collapse on my bed in my room, all I can feel is the need for his warmth against me again. The fantasy of him falling on top of me in my bed is so palpable that I almost reach for my phone to message him. Beg him to come finish what he started.
I swear I hear a drum beating in my ears, but I quickly realize it’s just the steady severity of my own heart. Pounding through me as the most tangible images of Emmett flash through my mind. I can see exactly what he would look like right here right now…towering above me in this light as he takes off his shirt.
I roll into my hands, covering my eyes and wishing it would all go away. Somehow my desperate need to punish Vivian and to get some kind of attention rapidly crumbled into a completely unhindered lustful need for Emmett. More strong than I have ever felt before.
The way he sounded so sorry… It reminds me of how he sounded before I got into his car. I remember now that’s why I followed him in the first place. He sounded so sincere. So normal. Maybe even kind.
It was the same boy I met at that track meet before coming here. Maybe I don’t have to beat myself up so much, or maybe I’m just grasping at straws. But I have seen small glimpses of a decent human being in him. Ever so brief moments when he doesn’t seem demented or sadistic. And each new taste of it seems to cause my longing for him to erupt. It clouds my judgment. Makes me do everything I swore I couldn’t.
It makes me surrender completely to him.
Completely exhausted, I close my eyes and hope to dream of something…anything else.
My brush with Emmett was exactly what I needed to set my head straight in a weird way, because now I am more than happy to embrace my isolation. I’m resting in it like a shroud.
I gladly walk alone and eat alone yet again when I return to the lunchroom. But it seems now that I want the isolation, they’re ready to take it away again. Because I can see the Elite pack marching right toward me in the corner of my eye. I don’t look at them, staring down at the sandwich in my hands instead, hoping they will just walk right past.
And at first, they do. But then Emmett’s hands reach around and spread out on the table before me, his chest leaning into mine with his lips next to my ear. Reawakening every spark I felt the day before and had worked so hard to erase. Only now, Vivian is just a few feet away, watching our every move.
“Get up and come with us,” he demands with the best growl he can muster, but I can still hear the lingering pity and reluctance. I tell myself he doesn’t want to be doing this. He said he couldn’t let me get away with it…that they’d never let him.
Before I can protest, his hand grips my arm and lifts me to my feet with a subtle jerk. Just enough to let me know I don’t have a choice without outright manhandling me in front of the entire cafeteria. My sandwich drops to my tray and before I can say or do anything else, I’m being led back to the same classroom he and I took refuge in just the day before.
He pushes me inside as the rest of them file in behind him. I catch one last subtle “I’m sorry” look from him in my direction before he turns to lock the door and close the blinds. Instinctively, I start stepping back away from them, quickly meeting the edge of a table that stops me from moving any further.
I lean back to brace myself and consider attempting to dart away between the table and chairs, but they’re surrounding me like a pack of hungry dogs. I know it’s no use. Trey and Vincent surround me on either side, each grabbing an arm and carrying me to the wall.
The memories of Emmett pinning me to this wall almost make me immune to my fear of whatever is about to happen. I glance over to him, but before our eyes can meet, he quickly looks away. By the time I look back up, Vivian is storming toward me.
I brace myself for a revenge slap and am instead met with the blow of her fist, shooting straight into my nose and up between my eyes with streams of tears. Followed by a warm trickle of blood from my nostrils.
I feel the physical sensation of the pain, but barely. I am numb to them now. My apathy scares me more than they do as I look back to her blankly, unmoved by the punch. It only eggs her on. She delivers another swift blow to my gut.
&nb
sp; “You had enough yet?” she growls into my ear. “You ready to talk?”
“Talk about what?” I shoot back, defiantly spitting the blood from my lips in her direction.
Her palm strikes my cheek, the sting echoing into my eardrums.
She steps back with a half-hearted smirk and looks me up and down, nodding to Trey and Vincent to let me down. I collapse to the floor, but quickly pull myself back up. Ready to stand and take more of a beating if that’s what she insists on. I’m over backing down to them.
“Well?” Vivian snaps expectantly.
I don’t know what she wants from me, but I’m positive I wouldn’t give it to her even if I could.
“What!?” I cry back in frustration. “What is it you want from me?”
“You know damn well what we want,” she sneers, pacing in front of me. “Don’t play dumb.”
I consider telling her what Emmett and I did in here the day before, and again before that in the hospital room. My eyes glint toward him at the prospect, but he still refuses to look in my direction. His hands are in his pockets shamefully, looking down to the floor as if he has nothing to do with any of this. But I know, no matter how sorry he may be, that’s not entirely true.
And anyway, telling her about those moments will only ensure they never happen again. However fucked up it may be, it’s not a bridge I’m willing to burn just yet.
“I don’t know what you want!” I bark back at her, clutching the ache in my gut. “I haven’t known what you’ve wanted this whole time! You’re all fucking crazy! Ganging up on me for no reason!”
“Is that what you think?” she smiles arrogantly. “That we don’t have better things to do with our time than chase you around? Get over yourself. We’d be happy to just forget you ever existed like the meaningless nothing you are. But we have to protect ourselves. So here we are.”
“Protect yourselves!?” I scoff in disbelief, my voice betraying me with too high of a pitch. “What the hell do you need to be protected from? I’m the one that’s being treated like some kind of prey. You’ve gone after me relentlessly from day one!”
“I’m not an idiot,” she growls back. “You know more than you’re letting on.” She nods back to Vincent and Trey who promptly scoop me back up against the wall, my stomach muscles still clenching in pain from the time before.
I grit my teeth to bear another round of blows to my face and stomach, punctuated with a crippling kick to my shin. The sting sends me into a panic.
“Stop!” I scream in anguish. I can take a beating anywhere at this point, but not my legs. I have lost enough time on the track because of these assholes. I won’t lose any more. “Not my legs! Please! I don’t know what you want from me…but whatever it is, I’ll try. Just please not my legs.”
Vivian’s lips curl. She’s pleased that she struck a nerve. Found a weak spot. She steps forward, her foot rearing back again, but Emmett grabs her.
“Vivian, no,” he commands, shaking her by the shoulder between his hands. “She said she’d talk.”
Her eyes burn into him, giving me the feeling that he’d pay for that later. But for now, she complies and turns her attention back to me.
“You’re gonna have to do more than try,” she grunts. “When’s the last time you talked to him? I want to know everything he has said recently. About us.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I sob in exasperation, feeling completely clueless. Like they have the wrong girl. I’m being framed. I have to be. I don’t know whatever it is they think I know.
“Give it up already, Ophelia! Your fucking dad!!” She barks back, my heart stopping as the words roll from her tongue.
My fucking dad, indeed. I should have known this entire vendetta against me had something to do with him from the moment I found out he was once an Elite. I suddenly wish I had kept digging. That I knew more by now. But I was too distracted with the exile they placed me under.
I can feel my blood boiling beneath my skin. Of course this man who my mom considers to be the scum of the earth…who has been completely absent from my entire life…is now somehow responsible for all the torture I’ve been enduring.
Chapter Twelve
BOOK 1
My brain sparks, rapidly trying to connect everything enough to make some sense of her ranting. Wrapping my head around my dad being an Elite in the first place was hard enough. But that was in the past…and he seems to be long gone now. But Vivian is acting like he’s still around…playing all of their games. I’m screaming inside, wishing I could escape being involved at all.
My eyebrows gather with a heavy sigh as my mind drifts to all the places I’d rather be. Anywhere but here. Running. Laying in my bed. Eating in the cafeteria.
I hate myself for slapping Vivian yesterday, even if it was rewarding. And even if it did get Emmett’s lips pressed back to mine, if only for a few moments.
I knew there would be a price to pay. But I’m not so sure the benefits were worth the cost as I stand here now with the Elites circling me like vultures, working my stomach into knots.
My feet point toward the door as my dull eyes drift to its window, wishing I could catch sight of a teacher passing by. Or another student. But I know better. Even if someone did walk by, they wouldn’t help.
I’m completely stuck. Cornered. The only way out is to bend to their will, and even that isn’t a way out. It’s just more of the same. No matter what I do…I am their pawn. Or, their “pet” as Emmett likes to say.
I want nothing to do with the Elites, especially if it helps them. The only thing I can think I want less than working with the Elites in any way…is to have anything to do with my biological father. In fact, it seems more and more that those two things are one and the same.
The sun is shining in through the classroom windows, and I can see the track field off in the distance. I would do anything to be out there running right now instead of in here being threatened and tortured.
I think back on Coach Granger’s offer…when he told me I could tell him anything. I am kicking myself for not having the balls to talk to him then.
But now here I am piecing this all together on my own. All of this has something to do with my dad.
I guess it’s better than having to think the Elites are so incredibly bored and desperate for something to do that they make people’s lives miserable just for fun. These people have power and money, and they’re willing to do whatever it takes to protect their positions in life.
I want this new motive to redeem Emmett. All of them, but mostly him. I know I wouldn’t have liked Vivian and Bernadette even if they hadn’t attacked me before I even set foot on campus.
But my crush on Emmett was strong. I thought we had potential…until I realized who he really was. Does having some insight to the motive somehow excuse everything he has done?
I can’t believe my father used to be one of them and that he is apparently still chasing after them in some way. Enough to have them all riled up.
My mother is completely the opposite of anything the Elites stand for. She’s worked hard to give me a good life. Brendan does too. But at the end of the day, all they care about is family. Money and things have never been top priorities for them. And they would never betray their friends or family, or bring physical harm to someone, just to protect some perceived entitlement to social and financial standing.
I look to the clock on the wall, gulping as I realize lunch period lasts for another twenty minutes. Then the students will crowd back into the halls and this classroom will need to be used.
It’s a relief to know there is an end in sight. They could have thrown me into one of their cars and drove me off somewhere. At least this way I know we have to be done in twenty minutes or less. But a lot can happen in that amount of time.
“Just tell me what you want,” I hiss with tired eyes that are dead and flat. I’m over the secrecy and vagueness. Maybe if I hear them out it will give me more information on what my dad has to do
with all of this.
“You’re just collateral, sweetie,” Vivian answers smugly, her voice chiming sweetly in a mocking tone with her pinched face and sour expression. “Just be a good little bitch and do what we tell you, and we’ll take it easy on you.”
“Ha!” I scoff, finding it hard to believe they’d ever take it easy on me. “Now I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”
They’ve hurt me. Humiliated me. I’ve suffered greatly at their hands and now…they want my help? I look away, feeling at a loss for words.
“Let me put it this way,” she continues menacingly, jutting out her chest and crossing her arms. “If he doesn’t stop playing games, you’re dead. So, you might as well save your own ass and help us.”
“You’re out of luck, Vivian. I’ve never talked to my dad. I don’t know the guy. He doesn’t even know I’m here, so this is just a waste of your time,” I fume, rolling my eyes, my head hanging heavy, in hopes that this will be the end of it. But I know better. They’d never give up so easy.
“I find that hard to believe,” she fires back with a look of superiority, projecting her voice just to show she has the upper hand in a determined strut around the room in perfect posture. “We know he saw the press release about your scholarship and you attending WJ Prep.”
“And how would you know something like that?” I groan with an upward glance, a dramatic breath rattling my lips.
“Because we sent it to him, you dumb bitch!” she shrieks impatiently, her fingers retracting into claw-like fists.
“Well then that’s on you, isn’t it? Still has nothing to do with me. And if anything, it just proves my point more. So, you made sure he knew I was here, but he still hasn’t contacted me,” I explain condescendingly, settling my back to the wall and crossing my arms.
“Trust me, he knew exactly where you were long before we sent that release,” she continues with a loud blusterous voice. “We just wanted to make sure he knew we were on to him. I think he’s been more present in your life than you originally thought. And if it comes down to it…we’ll kidnap you and use you as a bargaining chip. He’s not going to get away with his bullshit.”