Only it wasn’t the Eastwood family.
It was Gray.
Gray, who’s so fucking desperate for me to leave that he’s bribing other companies and businesses in a desperate attempt to lure me away. He knows there’s no way he could ever convince me, so he’s gone to outside sources, hoping I’ll be flattered and convinced to do it by other people.
“I’m not interested,” I say stiffly, my heart lurching into my throat.
I hang up the phone before she can respond, staring down at the screen until it goes dark. I feel a little sick, so many emotions churning inside me that I don’t know how to sort through them all.
Why is Gray doing this?
He’s smart. He knows my fucking weaknesses. I’ve never really dared to dream about becoming a professional artist, but he knows how much painting means to me.
So he used that to try to force me out of his life.
He’s trying to bribe me.
To pay me off like I’m a fucking whore.
I try to calm myself, try to push away the dark stars that are prickling at the corners of my vision as wave after wave of anger pumps through me, but I can’t. Especially not when I see Gray walking toward me, his gaze fixed firmly on my face.
He looks pissed. Furious, actually.
But guess what?
So am I.
“Why won’t you take the fucking hint, Sophie?” he growls in a low voice, stopping just a foot away from me. “I’m trying to help you right now. Trying to give you the easy way out. Why don’t you understand that?”
“Trying to help me?” I scoff. “By lying to me? By bribing art studios?”
I’m practically shaking, trying to stay in control of myself. But it’s so fucking hard when all I want to do is punch his too-handsome face so hard his teeth sink into his skull.
“Would you really rather keep going to school here, where you’ve been mocked and bullied from day one, where people don’t even fucking like you?” he continues viciously, not even trying to be subtle about it anymore. “You could go anywhere, Sophie. Anywhere.”
“I don’t want to go anywhere.” My hands curl into fists at my sides. “I want to stay right here. I’m gonna graduate from Hawthorne and use that degree to build a better life for myself. I’m not gonna be somebody’s pawn or plaything, and I’m not gonna end up like Jared—taking my own life because the world has fucked me over too many times and I don’t see any other way out.”
Gray’s jaw clenches, his eyes growing dark. He’s breathing hard, his emotions barely under control. If this were another place and another time, I’d say he’s about to shove me against the nearest wall and fuck me until all of our problems go away for a few precious seconds.
But it’s not.
And he doesn’t.
“I’ll give you a million dollars,” he says instead. “A million dollars, Sparrow. Think of how much you could do with that. You can go wherever the fuck you want to go with it. Do whatever you want. As long as you leave Hawthorne. Gone. Forever.”
He says it with a sweep of his hands, like he’s magically poofing me away.
For a second, I just stare at him, too shocked to do anything else.
A million dollars.
His family is clearly loaded, but even so, I don’t think they have that kind of money just lying around. Gray would have to make excuses to his parents, probably lie to them about what the money was for, and all for what?
To erase me like I never existed.
It’s so much money that if I were smarter, I’d just take it and run. I’d do exactly what he asks and buy myself a little hut on a deserted island where I’d never have to deal with another fucking person again.
But I won’t.