“Lucy?” Tyson said as I pulled away from him, adjusting his shirt that had risen up, and I tossed the blanket back before realizing I still didn’t have panties on. I tried to pull his shirt down to cover my nakedness underneath the shirt.
“Why do you gotta be a dick?” Tyson asked Ace as I got out of his bed, suddenly feeling ashamed for being in here.What woman is scared of storms?I mentally scolded myself. It wasn’t the storms themselves, it was the noise they created, deafening and always bringing back terrible memories of the facility in which I was kept. There was nothing worse than being locked in a glass cell during a storm. The vibrations alone would send you mad, then the rain seeping through the cracks in the concrete floor above always made me feel like a goldfish in its tank, only I couldn’t breathe underwater.
“Lucy, you don’t have to leave,” Tyson said, sitting up and tossing the blanket back as he too got to his feet. I was on my way to the door when Ace stepped in my path, making me look up at him. He looked incredibly irritated with me for some unknown reason, making me nervous about how he glared at me.
“Morning,” I told him awkwardly. I didn’t understand why he was glaring at me or the disgusted look he gave me. We were only sleeping, nothing indecent was going on.
“You lied to us. Josey told Melana what you did,” Ace said, making me furrow my brows in confusion.Josey?What did Josey say that would upset him this much?I wondered.
“What do you mean? Josey is still at school.”
“She told me why you burned the classroom down. You lied to us.” I felt my stomach drop. I hadn’t told anyone, and I knew I never told Josey. She became distant and hardly had anything to do with me the last couple of weeks of school, always making excuses about being too busy with her studies to hang out, making that boarding school even more lonely for me. We used to be joined at the hip.
“Because anything Melana said can be taken as truth,” Tyson growled at him.
“Well, it didn’t take her long to climb in bed with you now, did it? Shows what sort of person she is. I honestly expected better of you, Lucy,” Ace growled.
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Tyson snapped at him. Yet I was growing more confused, wondering what Melana had said. I barely had a chance to speak to Josey before they turned me out, so what could she have said to her sister about me? She knew Melana and I didn’t get along, and Josey wasn’t one to gossip.
“Just that she had no problems fucking her teacher, and now she is in bed with you. How could you?” Ace said, turning to look at me, and I took a step away from him.
“She said I did what?!” I asked, unable to believe what just came out of his mouth.
“Are you going to tell him, or am I?”
“Tell him what? I never slept with anybody! I told you I was a virgin! How could you say such a thing?” I yelled at him. Hot tears burned my eyes at his words.
“Josey saw you leaving his classroom half-naked, Lucy. Deny it all you want, but I know what happened. Now I know why you didn’t want to admit guilt for what you did. Then you burned his classroom because he found his mate and tossed you aside,” Ace said, pointing his finger at me.
While I was mortified that Josey could say that. It was far from the truth.Why would she say such a thing? Why wouldn’t she ask me?No one ever wanted to hear my side.
“Lucy, is what he is saying true?” Tyson asked, making me look back at him.
“So, because that’s what Josey said, it means it’s true?” I asked him.
“Why would she lie? She is your best friend, is she not?” Ace said.
I can’t believe this shit! He was the one who attacked me, yet I am being blamed!
“You know what? Fuck you!” I told Ace. This was exactly why I never told anyone.Why should I have to prove anything to anyone?This right here was exactly why girls didn’t come forward, and no one believed them. The victims were the ones having to defend themselves against the perpetrators.Never in my life have I been made to feel more disgusting than right now.I could deal with what he tried to do. What I couldn’t live with however, was being blamed for it.
Ace still didn’t move and even pushed me back when I tried to walk around him.
“Is it true, Lucy?” Tyson asked behind me, making me look over my shoulder at him. I felt tears brim and spill over, realizing that they would think that little of me to sleep with a teacher. That they would take the word of another over mine.
“Believe what you want. You will anyway,” I told him before shoving past Ace and heading to the bathroom.
Chapter eighteen
Lucy
Walking into the bathroom, I grabbed the pants I had on yesterday, and pulled them on. They were slightly damp from the wet floor, the room chilly from the tiles, and the window cracked open.
I then grabbed my jumper, tugged it over my head, and pulled my hair into a ponytail. That day was replaying in my head on repeat. The smell of his cologne, the weird prickling sensation of my hair standing on end when I realized his intentions, the fear that paralyzed me, making me freeze up while I tried to figure out what I did that would make him do this to me. That sense of dread, the coldest feeling in the world, before I felt my breathing become shorter. I clutched at my throat, trying to catch my breath as I started to hyperventilate, fear gripping me in its confines, suffocating me excruciatingly slowly.
I needed my pills, needed something so I could breathe. Yet, it became harder and harder to catch my breath. My vision blurred with panic from my inability to calm myself before everything went dark, and I knew I was falling into the depths of my tortured memories. My body hit the tiles with a thud, yet I couldn’t feel any pain. I felt nothing. I couldn’t feel anything when I was pulled back to that fateful day. Watching my own torment like it was a movie. Like it had happened to someone else. Only, I recognized the girl in it, because she was me.
***