So why did I feel guilty?
Sick?
She hesitated at the door and then looked over her shoulder and damned me with the sad look on her face. “I really do appreciate it, Ash. I know you’d rather drown, but thank you—for breakfast and for the ride.”
She was out before I could say anything more.
The door clicked shut, blanketing me in damning silence, and then my fucking phone went off. Heaving a sigh, I wiped my hands down my face. Why was it getting harder and harder to get revenge on someone who actually deserved it? And why did her words hurt?
With a curse, I picked up my phone and felt the blood drain from my face. I’d been driven to distraction by her—that was a problem—I’d put this plan into effect over a month ago.
Out of anger.
Out of necessity.
And now it was too late.
“Shit, shit, shit!” I slammed my hand against the steering wheel because, in all my failures, this would be my worst. I’d been upset.
Could anyone blame me?
I’d wanted to hurt her.
I’d wanted to embarrass her.
Take her heart and stomp on it, then kiss it better and fuck with her head.
And because I was still so messed up.
I’d forgotten my own damn plan.
I’d fallen.
Bit by bit.
Maybe it started with the stupid bacon.
With the way her eyes lit up over the things that should have been handed to her the day she was born, the moment she first smiled.
I forgot.
And as I lifted my head, my eyes greedily searching the campus as she stopped and looked down at her phone, I knew.
I only had one choice.
One.
And I had to take it.
Or Claire would haunt me the rest of my life, and I’d want to die even more.
Fuck, I’d fallen so deep into despair I hadn’t even seen how wrong I’d been, how horrible. And I’d been so pissed that even having someone tell me would have done nothing.
“You’re not mine anymore,” I choked out to Claire, to whatever spirit I felt that followed me. “You’re gone… so that means I’m no longer yours.”
I could have sworn I heard her say. “Go.”
Chapter Ten
“The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.” —Harriet Beecher Stowe
Annie
December
December sucked.
Really, that was all there was to it.
I got out of the car every stupid day. I walked to my classes, I went through the motions like every student did, I gave Ash a wide berth and was thankful for Izzy when I did see her or even Serena on campus for her remaining final class, but other than that.
I was alone.
And for some reason, it made me feel destitute. I lived in the home of one of the wealthiest families in the US, and still, I found myself…
Jealous.
It all started during lunch yesterday. I went to the rich kid cafeteria because of who basically owned me. I watched people eat organic everything from pasta to soups to salads to bread that wasn’t even bread anymore, and when I couldn’t stomach all the faces openly staring at me, I went to the Quick Bite Grill in search of a hamburger only to have even more eyes staring at me as if I didn’t belong there either.
And that was the problem.
I was Cinderella but in the wrong story.
I wasn’t a slave.
I wasn’t a princess either.
I was a charity case who had no place at Eagle Elite, and yet it was my only ticket to a life where I no longer had to worry about any of these things anymore.
I decided if I could just survive my lunch hour, I could survive anything, even if it included violence—what with the way students stared at me, all calculated, judging, from what I wore to how I did my hair, and it didn’t matter if I was in the earlier lunch with the richer kids or with the later lunch with the scholarship kids, I had no place.
Then again, I’d never had a place.
But this last year, at one point, I’d felt like I did.
When Serena and Junior took Tank and me in, when they told us we had a choice when they decided to train the rest of the De Lange kids despite their parentage, when they looked at me like I was more than my blood.
I finally had hope.
But now, it was as if everything was forgotten.
As if they realized I wasn’t De Lange.
I was a nobody.
Not worth training, only worth protecting because of who I had been to Tank, and even then, all he’d said was, she’s with me, like some horrible gang movie where I went where he went.
And still, was I even with him?
Um no, I was with the enemy.
Just thinking about Ash had me fuming.
Hot all over.
Angry.
“Until the stars fall,” Ash had whispered, instead of the sky but why? And why was I so damn fixated?