by Callie Hart
36
CARRIE
I like her, this new girl.
She’s smart, and her clothes are sick. She listens when people talk and engages in conversation instead of just waiting for her turn to say something. I see the academy through her eyes, and the place transforms from a dark hellhole full of painful memories to a fantastical gothic fairytale, full of hidden passageways and secrets. She’s in awe every time she sees something new, and I begin to appreciate my surroundings again. I used to think of this place as my home, a sanctuary, but recently I’ve treated it like a prison. I’ve been counting down the days, waiting to get out of here, but with the fresh burst of energy Elodie (or Elle, as I’ve started to call her) brings, I realize that my remaining months at the academy might just be bearable.
Presley’s neck-deep in some extra credit classes that she’s taking to boost her college applications, which means that she’s super busy. Has been for months now. It turns out that having Elodie around is exactly what I needed. There’s only one problem.
And that problem goes by the name of Wren Jacobi.
He’s looking at Elodie. Looking in the same kind of way that a lion looks at a mouse before it pounces, and I will not let that motherfucker pounce on this poor girl. I even warn him off her. Verbally. To his stupidly good-looking face. Not that it does much good, of course. See, I catch Elodie looking back at him. It’s not quite the same as any of the looks Mara used to send Wren’s way, but I can see the infatuation in her eyes. I can see what’s happening, and I want to scream. To shake her. Warn her to run as far and as fast from him as humanly possible. There’s only so much I can say to her. At the end of the day, plenty of people warned me to steer clear of Dash. And did I listen to any of them? Did I hell. I had to learn that mistake for myself—a mistake I will never, ever repeat. A part of me thinks that Elle should learn this lesson for herself, too. But then I remember how bad shit gets when people fall for Wren Jacobi and I do a complete one-eighty.
I’ll do whatever I can to stop this poor girl from getting hurt by Wren. It might not be much, but it might make a difference. If I can save anyone from going through the type of pain I suffered because of Dash, even if it means rehashing the past and opening old wounds in the process, then so be it. It’s a price I will gladly pay.
37
DASH
It was Pax’s idea. Instead of running the same route every single day, he demanded we run on different tracks at the weekends to break up the monotony. We get up at the crack of dawn, our teeth chattering against the cold, and Pax drives us over to a campground on the other side of the Sullivan Mountain Range. The three of us race each other up the loose, rocky trail, our breath forming clouds of steam in the early morning sun, and for once everything feels normal.
Pax shoves Wren. Wren shoves me. I flip them both off and surge past them up the hill, enjoying the feeling of burning lungs and aching quads as I leave them both in the dust. My head pounds for the first ten minutes of the run, but my pseudo-hangover evaporates as I get my blood pumping. It wasn’t a real hangover, anyway. I got high with Wren last night and weed doesn’t make me feel as dusty as alcohol. It was good to chill with him on the couch and shoot the shit. It feels as though we haven’t done that in so long, and reconnecting felt good.
There were a few revelations, though. Wren’s traded away his time on his father’s yacht in Corsica to Pax in return for dibs on Elodie Stillwater. Turns out he’s got it bad for this new girl. Like, bad. He denied it, as I knew he would, but I’ve lived with the guy for years now. I know him. I thought he might open up and tell me that he’s caught feelings for the blonde, but oh no, that would have been too easy for the bastard, wouldn’t it? He changed the subject. Told me to steer clear of Carrie, or I was risking getting my balls clipped.
This advice, coming from him, made me want to punch a hole in a wall, but I kept my cool. At some point, Wren just openly accepted the fact that I was seeing Carrie. I don’t even know when it happened. There were no fireworks. No reaction from him. My brief relationship with her is just common, unremarkable knowledge at Riot House now, and that, my friends? That is seriously fucked up. After all of the hard work I did to hide what was going on between me and Carrie, both of us worrying so badly about what was going to happen if Wren or Pax found out…it irks the shit out of me that neither of the boys seem to care that I was screwing her last year. All of that sneaking around, missing out on sleep, lying, pretending, hiding… It was all for nothing.
I didn’t take any of that out on Wren last night. I kind of hoped he would open up to me—I asked him whether he’d ever experimented with guys, curious to see if he’d finally confess about sleeping with Fitz—but he’d remained frustratingly vague. Seems he’s still not ready to come clean about that particular mess, even though it’s ancient history by now.
I’m the first to reach the top of Mount Sullivan. I beat Pax and Wren by a clear thirty seconds, and I make sure I rub salt in their wounds all the way back down the mountain. And while we make use of the shower block at the camp site. And then all the way back to Mountain Lakes. I’m still giving them shit about it when we drive past Screamin’ Beans and I see Carina’s beaten-up old Firebird parked out front in the lot.
“Hey.” I dig Pax in the shoulder. “Let’s grab some breakfast.”
Pax scowls. “I don’t eat breakfast.”
“I know you don’t, man, but Wren and I aren’t vampires like you. We need to consume solid food. Not everyone can survive on the blood of innocent virgins. You can get a coffee or something.”
He keeps driving, a stubborn set to his jaw.
“I swear, if you don’t pull into that parking lot…”
“Do it, Davis,” Wren commands. “We could all use some caffeine.”
Pax can go against one of us at a time, but not both. That’s an unspoken rule. He grumbles unhappily as he swings into the café’s parking lot, making sure that he pulls up alongside a huge bank of wet, rotting leaves on my side of the car.
I huff down my nose. “Child.”
“Dumbass,” he retorts, stabbing a finger at the black Firebird three cars down.
I vault over the pile of rank leaves, smirking smugly at Pax, who flips me off as we head inside. Screamin’ Beans is fairly quiet. It’s nine thirty on a Saturday morning, so the really early crowd have already cleared out, and the lunch crowd won’t arrive for a while yet. It’s easy to locate Carina, sitting at a booth, tucked away in the corner.
A guy in a grey waistcoat greets us, already pulling out a notepad. “Morning, guys. For here or to go?”
“Table for three, please,” I tell him.
Wren looks like he’s mentally crowing; the new girl is here with Carrie, too. They’ve both seen us. Must have. Why else would they be sliding down in their seats? “God, I’m such an idiot,” Pax grumbles. “Scratch that. You two are the fucking idiots. I should have known something was up when you wanted to get a fucking drip coffee.” He jabs an accusatory finger into Wren’s chest.
“What? I felt like eggs.”
“Yeah, well I feel like a fucking vomit bag. You know. One of the ones you find in the seat back things on planes. You think they have any of those around here?” He stalks off in the direction of the rest room.
“This way please, gentlemen,” our server says, smiling very wide as he holds out a hand, guiding us to a booth at the front of the café, right in the window. Wren follows him, but I…I don’t know what’s gotten into me. I need to be closer to Carrie. I drift toward her booth, unable to stop myself.
“Hah!” She shakes her head, looking up at the ceiling. “Romantic? Yeah. I guess you could call it that. He was charming and polite. A real gentleman. Treated me with respect. Took me out to dinner. Wined and dined me. Made me feel so special that I thought I was the only girl he’d ever been interested in. And that fucking accent. He got me good, Elle. I swear, I’ve always prided myself on being smarter than the dumb girl who gets duped by a handso
me guy with a few cheesy pickup lines. I should have seen it coming. I should have seen him coming a mile off, but he totally blindsided me.
“I was saving myself. Hadn’t even let a guy graze my fucking kneecap with an index finger before. I was a virgin. And I’m talking virgin. No experience whatsoever. And then, low and behold, Lord Dashiell Lovett the Fourth comes along with his family fucking title, and his airs and graces, and he looked deep into my eyes and told me that he loved me, and I just…”
What…the…fuck?
“I just spread my damn legs for him like it was nothing. Two days later, he asked me to meet him in the observatory after dinner. So, I went along, excited about getting to see him, getting to kiss him, getting to tell him that I’d fallen head over heel in love with him…and I walk in to find Amalie Gibbons on her knees with his dick aaaaaallllll the way down her throat.”
That’s one version of events, I suppose. Redacted. A little fudged, and that’s being generous. I don’t begrudge her the hyperbole and the embellishment. I fucked her over so hard that she deserves to make me sound like an absolute asshole. I am an absolute asshole. Why is she downplaying the amount of time we spent together, though? She compressed the two months we spent together down into two days.
Sitting opposite Carina, Elodie makes a horrified sound. Carrie continues with her tale. She’s crying, which would have made my dick rock hard at one point. Not anymore. It feels like I’ve been shot in the chest. I wish I could take it all back. I wish I’d never listened to Alderman. The man made so much sense back at Cosgrove’s, but seeing Carrie cry, I’m beginning to think I was a fucking idiot for letting him get into my head.
“And you know the worst part?” Carrie wipes her eyes. “The worst part was that he didn’t even care. He wasn’t embarrassed. Didn’t scramble to push her off him, or pull his pants up, or come after me. He saw me, standing there in the doorway, saw the hurt and the pain in my eyes…and he fucking laughed. He said—” She clears her throat. Breathes. “He said, ‘Looks like I might have made a scheduling error. Can you come back in twenty minutes? I should be ready to go again by then.’”
“Wow. What an unbelievable prick.”
I nod, rubbing at my jaw. I couldn’t agree more. Elodie and Carina continue to talk, and I continue to eavesdrop. I hold my tongue until the new girl declares that I’ll probably be rendered infertile for my crimes. Then, it’s time to put an end to this.
“Jesus. I really hope not.”
The girls look up and see me; horror and embarrassment go to war on Carrie’s beautiful face. She must know that I heard that interesting little take on our love story. Is she expecting me to correct her in front of her new little friend now? How crushed would she be if I told Elodie that it was Carrie who pursued me? That she actually didn’t tell me she was a virgin before we fucked for the first time? Or that we fucked a thousand times after that, and we were perfectly happy together before I admittedly shattered her heart into pieces.
I pop a toothpick into my mouth, grinning at them.
The little blonde looks at me like a portal to hell just opened up right next to their table and I stepped right out of it. “Can you kindly fuck off?” She snaps. “This is a private conversation. You’re not welcome at this table.”
I can’t help but laugh. By God, she’s a feisty thing. Now I know why Wren’s so taken with her. “Sorry, mon amour. I’m over here at the counter, minding my business. What fault is it of mine if you’re talking loud enough to wake a dead man and give him a hard on? I heard something about Amalie Gibbons on her knees with someone’s dick in her mouth and I lost all sense of propriety. And then…” I feel sick to my stomach. I should keep my fucking mouth shut, but I can’t. It’s better if Carrie keeps on hating me. I keep staring at the wet pathways her tears have formed where they’re streaked down her cheeks, and I can’t take it. Better that she cries a little over me now, than so much more if her past catches up to her, though. Better if she really, truly despises me. “…And then, I remembered that I had Amalie Gibbons on her knees and my dick was in her mouth, and things just got really messy. Because that was a really fun time, girls. A really fun time. I am sad you don’t want to play with me anymore, though, Carrie. I guess I should have said I was sorry or something. Better late than never, right?”
The next few minutes are a blur. A waitress with a really bad attitude arrives and scolds the living shit out of me. I bite back, playing with her just to prove what a genuine prick I am, and all the while I’m staring at Carina. I’m remembering her at the observatory, lying on her back under a muddle of thick blankets, gazing up at the night sky with a sea of stars reflected in her eyes.
It’s around about now that I realize how little I care if I live or die.
The waitress chases me off, and I’m happy to go. The moment I step out into the biting cold, I suck in a series of ragged gulps of air, unable to catch my breath. Then, there’s Pax, standing in front of me, offering me a cigarette. He’s already got one, just lit by the looks of it. He pulls on it, squinting as he inhales.
I don’t normally smoke cigarettes. Sometimes, when I’m drinking, maybe, but never at nine-thirty in the morning after a fucking run. I feel like I just chugged a liter of acid, though. What the hell? I take one of the smokes and light it using the Zippo Pax supplies. The two of us stand in silence, leaning up against the brick wall, pulling on our smokes. Wren arrives shortly after, taking out his own pack of smokes. No one says anything.
We just stand there, the cold nipping our hands and the smoke burning our lungs.
38
DASH
Lovett Estates
Thu 8.31 PM
Reply-To: [email protected]
To: Dashiell Lovett
Dashiell,
The annual Lovett Foundation Fundraiser for Battered Women will be held at the Viceroy in Boston next Friday evening. Your presence is required. 7 pm sharp.
For God’s sake, WEAR A TUXEDO.
39
CARRIE
The week rushes by in a blur. Wednesday’s here before I know it, and things begin to feel normal again. Ish. Elle seems to be fitting in at Wolf Hall just fine. She makes friends easily. Unfortunately, there are some assholes at the academy who, for reasons of their own, aren’t as welcoming as they should be.
Her room gets trashed. A lot of her stuff gets destroyed, and someone stabs her bed with a hunting knife, of all things; no one could ever say the students of Wolf Hall are without a penchant for drama. Damiana Lozano laughs when she hears me talking to Presley in the hall about the damage, and the odds of who committed the act of vandalism narrow significantly. Dami’s been chasing Wren—when does he not have someone chasing him, for fuck’s sake—and she doesn’t like that Wren’s more interested in the new girl. It makes sense that she’d act out, but the whole thing is more than a little pathetic.
Elodie takes Dami’s jealousy in-stride, which is more than I can say I would have done.
I do my assignments.
I hang out with the girls.
I do my best to keep busy, and I do not think about Dash.
On Monday, the following week, I’m rushing out of Screamin’ Beans with a bagel jammed in my mouth, trying to wrestle my keys out of my pocket, when it happens:
“Whoa! Whoa, whoa, whoa! Oh my god!”
Someone collides with me, knocking both my cell phone and my coffee out of my hands. I stare into the face of the stranger, wide-eyed, the bagel still jammed in my mouth, and all I can do is blink. My phone has skidded halfway across the parking lot. My coffee is now a puddle named Lake Robusta at my feet.
The guy who walked right into me is still bent over, his hand comically outstretched, one foot off the ground—a still frame of a man who lunged to try and grab a coffee and a phone and missed both.
He cringes. “God. I’m sorry. That was bad, wasn’t it?”
<
br /> I remove the bagel from my mouth. “Oh, it’s okay. No big deal. I’ll just—”
I go to grab my phone, but he holds up a hand. “Let me get it.” He flips it over to see if it’s still in one piece. “No cracks. Thank god for that. Uhh, I need to grab you another coffee,” he says, running a hand through his hair. “Sorry. I’m all over the place this morning. I shouldn’t—” He laughs, shaking his head. “I shouldn’t even be driving right now. I have assignments due, and I haven’t slept in like…” His eyes go wide. He shakes his head again, laughing nervously.
I realize, with a sudden, alarming clarity, like a light bulb going off over my head, that this guy with the unruly, dark, thick hair, the warm brown eyes, and the faintest five o’clock shadow is hot as hell.
“I’m basically more caffeine than man at this stage,” he says, rubbing at the back of his neck with one hand. “Hey, what was your order? Seriously. Let me get you another.”
“Oh, it’s okay. Really. It’s not a big deal. I have to get to school, so…”
He looks at me for the first time, really looks at me, and his mouth falls open. “Oh, Jesus. You’re really pretty.”
The heat coming off my cheeks could fuel a thermal power plant. “Wow. Guys don’t normally just…come out and say something like that to a girl’s face.”
He raises his eyebrows. “They don’t?” He sounds surprised.
I shake my head no.