“I doubt it,” she murmurs. “I don’t want to help anyone but myself from now on. I’ve learned my lesson.”
“I don’t understand why you’re still being this way!” I force myself to lower my head and speak in a hushed pitch, to avoid screaming so loud the entire cafeteria hears me. “The Elites are gone! Sure, maybe Emmett will still be around, but he hasn’t been at school since his dad died. And if you do think he took care of the Julliard thing…don’t you think that proves maybe he’s different than the rest of them?”
I think to myself that it’s a good sign that he would do something like that for Lily even while I’m not giving him what he wants. Maybe he does stand some chance at being redeemed. But I don’t dare try to argue that to Lily right now.
“I knew it,” her eyes cut into me. “I knew you were going soft for him. He got to you, didn’t he? Buttered you all up to make you think he wasn’t like his dad and sister? Don’t fall for it, Ophelia. You’re only going to get hurt.”
“I’ve already been hurt plenty,” I quip back. “You have no idea.” I study her to see if there is any hope of this conversation turning with a positive spin, but she seems dead set on keeping me as her enemy for some reason. “Look, if that’s how you want to be…I’ll leave you alone. But I hope you come around someday. I’m not with Emmett. We don’t even speak anymore. And even if I do ever get ‘buttered up’ as you say…I could never be like Vivian.”
“You keep telling yourself that, sweetheart,” she answers coldly. “I know all about who your father is.”
My blood runs cold. “What the hell do you know about my father?”
“I know he was one of them, and I heard he’s back,” she thunders.
The words of the police officers ring through my ears. If my father is still around, I don’t want to know anything about it. I don’t want to be held responsible for not reporting it or being faced with the choice of what to do with that information. As much as I want to pry into what exactly Lily knows, I want even more to protect myself and stay blissfully ignorant for as long as I can.
“I have to go,” I quake, rushing up from seat without bothering to grab my tray. “Take care of yourself, Lily,” I offer sincerely as I bolt from the cafeteria.
“You too, Ophelia,” she calls out menacingly as I flee.
My chest burns as I race through the halls, looking over my shoulders in paranoia. Lily’s words echoing through my brain with each step. He’s back. What did that mean…he’s back? What could possibly be left for him in Jameson? Surely, he was smart enough to know it’d never be safe here for him. He got his revenge and took out Thomas Jameson. Why wasn’t that enough?
Unless…with Emmett’s rise to power as the new alpha of Jameson…he latched on to work his way back up the top, taking back everything he lost and then some. Could they still be working together?
Why would Emmett do that for Lilly? Was that some sort of peace offering? An attempt to show me he’s changed now that he’s free from his father?
Lily’s accusations rest sour in my gut. How could she ever think I would be anything like Vivian? I think back to what they did to her freshman year. How they took her in, treated her like a friend. All so they could humiliate her at the homecoming dance.
That was the same Emmett. Not too different from the way he declared his love for her in the schoolyard right after we had sex. Lily once had the hots for him too and even considered Vivian a friend. Was it just history repeating itself with me? Only the torture tactics intensified with age?
But maybe Emmett really was just always doing what he thought he had to. Looking tough and cool in front of his friends, because if he didn’t they’d destroy him. And make sure his father made his life more of a living hell than he already did.
Emmett said I would understand more if I gave him a chance. If I knew more about what his life had been like. But opening myself up to his side of things only opened me up to more manipulation. More risk of harm. And I just don’t think I can do it again.
I make my way down the mostly empty halls, trying to keep my breathing under control. I go to get my things for my next class out of my locker. I stop for a moment, smoothing my thumb across the metal of my lock. I want everything to be open like that. To have all the answers so I can be free from worrying and not knowing who to trust. The moment I was freed from the Jameson’s, I was thrown into the crashing waves of the mind fuck that lingers after.
I shrug my shoulders and slam the door shut, jumping at a figure that appears suddenly behind it.
It’s Emmett. He has dark circles under his eyes and his hair looks damp from sweat.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I gasp, feeling uneasy with his disheveled appearance.
“Come with me,” he barks, not bothering to explain before taking me by the hand and leading me into a janitor’s closet.
I try to pull away, but he’s too strong.
We shuffle in between shelves filled with chemicals and boxes of supplies. A cascade of mops and brooms clatter in the corner as we accidentally bump into them. He quickly turns me around, placing his hands across my shoulders in urgency.
I start to squirm to pull away, but I sense an urgency in him. He’s looking over his shoulder in fear as footsteps echo beyond the door, but he seems to breathe more easily when he hears the unrecognizable voices of two girls laughing and talking about normal things.
“What’s going on?” I shriek as he pushes me into the closet, locking the door behind us.
“Shhhhh, please,” he’s panicked, looking around with his palms suspended midair as he tries to quiet me. “Keep it down. I know I’m being watched.”
I have never seen him so vulnerable and afraid. I don’t want to buy into it, but a big part of me also just wants to take him into my arms like a scared little child.
Emmett’s grown up in a life of privilege. He’s never had to want for anything. He’s intelligent, selfish and dangerous. He harbors a caged-in resentment toward everyone, and I am all too familiar with the violence he can inflict when he’s angry. He’s nothing like an innocent little child. But for some reason, as I look at him now, all I can see is a lost little boy. And I want to hold him.