Harleigh
“Well,well, if it isn’t Wilder’s pet.”
My spine stiffened, my skin vibrating with an overwhelming mix of anger and sadness.
Wilder’s pet.
Wilder’s pet.
Wilder’s pet.
The words were caught on loop in my mind.
His pet.
His pet.
Nix’s pet.
His—
“Don’t be an ass, Marc,” Celeste said, shooting me an apologetic smile.
It was lunch. I’d survived three periods, kept my head down, and ignored the constant stares and muffled whispers. But I couldn’t ignore this.
Discarding my half-eaten salad, I twisted around and looked up at Marc Denby, one of DA’s biggest douchebags. My stomach curled, every inch of me vibrating, but I tamped it down and focused on the guy looming over me.
“Sorry,” I said flatly. “Did you say something?”
“Harleigh,” Celeste hissed under her breath, but if she thought I was going to cower just because a bully like Marc Denby was standing before me with a wicked glint in his eye, she was sorely mistaken.
Even if the gnawing pit in my stomach threatened to consume me.
“You heard me, bitch.” He snarled. “You think just because daddy decided to pull you out of The Row and—”
“Hey,” Celeste’s best friend Miles appeared. “What’s going on?”
“Marc was welcoming Harleigh to DA,” Celeste said in a saccharine tone laced with warning.
“Yeah, relax, Mulligan. I was offering Harleigh a warm welcome. Isn’t that right?” His eyes drilled into mine, daring me to speak up and out him. But I wasn’t looking to play games—with Marc or anyone else.
“Yeah,” I said. “Marc was doing his good deed of the day.”
His jaw clenched, and I suppressed a smug smile. Miles sat down at our table, keeping one eye on Marc, who eventually left mumbling something about practice.
“He is such a douchebag,” Celeste said.
“What did he really say?” Miles asked.
“It doesn’t matter.” I glanced back, and sure enough, Marc was glaring right at me. His eyes seemed to say, ‘Watch your back, bitch.’ But his icy reception didn’t surprise me. In fact, there was something oddly comforting about the fact that he remembered who I was and where I came from.
I didn’t want special treatment because I was Michael Rowe’s daughter. Even if he was one of the largest donors to DA. Especially because he was.
What I really wanted was to blend in and be left alone, but I guess that was never going to happen. My arrival at The Rowe-Delacorte household was the hot topic on everyone’s lips. After all, it wasn’t every day a kid got plucked from The Row and thrown into DA even if she had spent the last six months in a facility on the outskirts of Albany. Of course, that wasn’t common knowledge. It would be most unbecoming for Michael Rowe’s daughter to be an emotionally unstable nut job. So to the outside world, I’d spent the remainder of my junior year in Albany with my grandparents, Thomas and Geraldine, coming to terms with my grief from losing my mother in such dire circumstances.
Michael and Sabrina had spun a web of lies around me so tightly that people believed them. They didn’t question why, until recently, I’d never appeared at family functions or why I never left the estate.
It was hardly any surprise that all morning I’d been greeted with a mix of expressions ranging from curiosity to pity to downright hostility.