It was enough for me to almost say something, but I didn’t.
Breathe, you fucking idiot.
“You’re not okay,” Dad said beside me. Like he knew. Of course, he knew. He knew me. I was his son. He nodded, his reflection still in the window. “But maybe, once you want to be, you’ll come talk to me and your mother.”
I didn’t want to tell him fat chance. Dad wasn’t one to talk about his feelings either.
I’d probably gotten it from him.
Like he had his own process with his anger, I had mine. I could control it. I could if I just held on to it long enough. I had my own way of release.
I just needed the time to do what needed to be done.
Chapter Eighteen
Sloane
Word of what I?
?d done to Dorian Prinze (sent his mom) made it back to school somehow. I had no idea if he’d spread the information himself, or if it’d been his friends, but people found out.
Virtually overnight, I’d become known as the lying bitch amongst the halls of Windsor Prep on top of the terms Legacy bitch/Vapor. Worse, once people found out about the pregnancy prank (I’d gotten some pregnant lady at a gas station to pee on the stick for twenty bucks), I’d also been labeled as a Legacy groupie whore. People had assumed that I wanted the attention of the Legacy boys so bad, I faked a pregnancy just to get to their dark prince.
The halls of gossip and rumors ensued, and they quickly made it to my breakfast table. One of the things my brother, Bru, and I still actually did was eat together on the rare days he didn’t have to be at school early for practice.
Even if we didn’t talk to each other.
After the news had broken, he’d paid no attention to me, but this morning he actually scoffed at me. I’d been pouring a box of Frosted Flakes into an empty bowl, and quite honestly, that pissed me off. My kid brother hadn’t been in my corner at all since I made it to this school. Sure, I hadn’t told him about many of the terrible things Dorian had done to me, but that didn’t negate that he was well aware they were bullying me. He’d had to have heard about the pranks. Then, of course, there was the way things had started with Ares Mallick.
Bru hadn’t gone to bat for me whether I left certain things from his attention or not.
“I still can’t believe you did what you did,” he mumbled, on his phone while eating a piece of French toast. God, as if he’d actually made the thing for himself. He had gotten Callum to arrange a food delivery service for him. The service made him special meals Bru claimed he’d needed to bulk up for his new sport. I’d overheard this conversation my brother had had with our guardian at the beginning of the month.
My brother truly was taking advantage of the situation here. Becoming one of those people at the school and milking our new guardian for all he could. It disappointed me as much as how he still continued to be friends with those terrible boys…
And their wicked prince.
I hadn’t forgotten that day on the bleachers with Dorian. I mean, how could I?
He’d brought me down to my knees.
I’d sucked him off (openly) and for anyone to see. What was worse was I’d pretty much begged him to do it. He’d gotten into my head, and I hadn’t liked that.
Even if I’d enjoyed his taste.
Even if I’d indulged in his power and who he clearly was around the academy’s campus. How it’d all gone down had been sick, and I thought I truly would be ill the way he’d left me there. He’d said I had been a conquest, nothing but a mouth to fuck, and I’d fallen for the shit. I had become one of them, the girls who obviously fell all over him.
I was still waiting for that particular ball to drop. Either he hadn’t told anyone about that day on the bleachers, or he was simply waiting to expose me. He may want to keep me nervous and at his mercy. There was no way he’d conceal that information on purpose.
He’d said he wanted to break me.
He’d said he wanted me to scream for him, and he’d be the one to deliver. He’d gotten off on breaking me down and turning me into someone I didn’t want to be. I didn’t want to think about him.
I didn’t want to remember his taste.
Dorian Prinze was already enough in my head, in this house. He hovered in it with how my brother had become his own personal fanboy. I’d also caught Bru singing Dorian’s praises to Callum when my brother had been updating our guardian about his football stuff on the phone.
Bru dropped his fork on his plate. “You just couldn’t help yourself, could you?” Bru shot, really going there. “You can’t let me have just this one thing. You know, I’m actually good at football?”