I’m so aware of him, it’s overwhelming. The heat of his large body. The way his biceps tense beneath his uniform blazer as he leans closer. His scent wraps around me like a straitjacket, confining me. He smells like smoke and weed, but there’s an underlying aroma that’s warm and intense and uniquely his. I don’t want to breath it in because it feels like I’m taking a part of him inside me, but I have no choice. He’s too close.
Far too close.
“Not an option,” I manage to answer at last, my voice hardly louder than a whisper. “I’m here to stay, so you just need to deal with it.”
He stares at me for several moments in silence, studying me intently, as though searching for cracks in my armor. One of his hands drops from the wall and he’s suddenly tangling his fingers in the hair at the nape of my neck, completely decimating what’s left of my braid. He pulls me closer, not enough to hurt me, but enough to let me know that I’m not in control of this situation. His fingers are big and rough, and I can’t remember anyone ever touching me like this.
He’s touching me like he owns me.
“You’ll regret staying,” he promises in a murmur. “I swear to God you will.”
Before I can think of a response—before I can think at all—he steps away from me, unraveling his fingers from my hair. Without a word or a backwards glance, he turns and walks down the hall and away from me. I watch him go, helpless to do anything else but stare at his retreating back.
6
My days fall into a regular pattern of taunts and abuse. The hope I’d had that everything would die down dwindles as the weeks pass and there’s no relief from my torment. I’m teased and bullied every day, and while Laurel and her minions are my main antagonists, I get called names by total strangers as I’m going to and from class, mocked about my accent, and told to go home constantly. The harassment doesn’t stop with the verbal abuse, however.
Oh, no. My classmates get much more creative than that.
The Friday of the first week of classes, I come back to my dorm to find HOEBILLY SLUT painted in red on my door, with opened condoms taped all around it. Luckily, they’re unused.
The Monday of the second week, someone trips me in the dining hall, and I go tumbling to the floor, my plate of roast beef and potatoes splattering everywhere. That shit earns me a round of applause and the nickname “Beef Curtain” from a few artistically challenged sophomores who are obsessed with Saint and crew.
That Wednesday, I get shoved into a utility closet and have to wait until a janitor comes along to let me out.
Saturday, I wake up to find bags of trash dumped outside my dorm room with—surprise, surprise—more condoms and feminine hygiene products.
This time, I’m not so fortunate in the used versus unused department.
If it weren’t for Alondra and her friend Henry, I don’t think I’d be able to bear the abuse. Loni proves herself a truly good person, though. She eats just about every meal with me, and even started walking with me to some of my classes. She’s like a human shield, willingly putting herself between me and the bullshit flying my way.
Henry turns out to be a pretty decent guy, too.
He’s kind of quiet and doesn’t say too much about himself. He’s good-looking enough that I think he should be among the popular group, namely Saint and those he deems worthy, but he tells me that he hates those guys’ fucking guts. He won’t tell me why, and I can’t get the reason out of Alondra either.
She’s surprisingly tight-lipped when it comes to Henry, which makes her even more of a badass in my eyes.
The girl is fiercely loyal.
At the end of my second week of hell, the three of us are sitting out in the courtyard, soaking up what we can of the late summer sun before the chill of fall sets in. Friday afternoons are quiet on campus, I’ve found. A ton of our classmates have beach houses nearby—or at least their families do—that they flee to over the weekends for wild parties that I’ll probably never be invited to.
Not that I’d have any interest in attending because who knew what fresh torture awaited me off-campus. Instead, I revel in the peace I find on the weekends, when my tormentors are too busy living their fabulous lives to give two shits about me.
“You sticking around this weekend, Loni?” Henry asks from where he’s spread out on his back in the grass. He tilts his head to look at her but doesn’t bother to ask me the same question. I don’t mind, though. It’s not a secret that I have nowhere else to go.
Squinting over at him, she shakes her head. “Nope. I figure I’d stay here and force Mal to study with me.” She turns her head slightly, casting me a pleading look. “I’ll beg if I have to. My dad’ll kill me if I bring home anything less than a B.”
Swallowing hard, I nod.
I love her. I truly do. At first, I was afraid that she’d be putting herself at risk of similar treatment by associating with me, but to my surprise, her popularity hasn’t appeared to have taken a hit. People still seek her out to gush about her dad, and she still gets invited to hang out with the other popular kids, even though she never accepts.
“Yeah, I’m probably staying on campus too,” Henry says with a nod. “Not that I’m getting a lot of invites lately to the Douche Squad’s orgies.”
While I’m almost certain he’s joking, I can’t help but blurt out, “Orgies? Really?”
He shakes his head and laughs. “No—I mean, none that I can confirm, anyway. There’s always rumors, and those guys screw enough that I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve really happened.”
“Well they can fuck each other for all I care,” I spit out. “So long as it keeps them busy.”
Loni and Henry both laugh but I’m dead serious. Saint, Liam, and Gabe can all go fuck off and I don’t really care how they choose to go about the fuckening or who they do it with.
“Who’d top, do you think?” she asks with a giggle.
“Saint, for sure,” he replies. “That dude’s ego wouldn’t stand for it being any other way.”
I grin and close my eyes, feeling light and almost content.
Almost.
It’s been hard finding any peace of mind ever since Saint’s threat that first day. He haunts my thoughts, like an annoying song I just can’t get out of my head. I replay his words again and again, as if there’s some hidden meaning behind them, even though what he said was pretty damn clear.
You’ll regret staying. I swear to God you will.
I later found out that the weekend after he made that promise, he’d declared me “Open Season” at a party at Liam’s beach house. Open-fucking-season, like I was an animal, where anyone could go after me without repercussions because their lord and master had dubbed it so.
Astonishingly, though, he hasn’t breathed a word to me since that first day. None of them have. While their friends and admirers have terrorized me nonstop, none of Angelview’s gods have approached me. I can’t understand why, because it’s obvious Saint enjoys watching me suffer. I’ve caught him in the periphery of my vision, smirking as my self-esteem takes hit after brutal hit. He likes it. Likes watching me crack. Is probably hoping to see me shatter completely.