As tempting as it is to strip back out of my clothes, I don’t. The guilt that will hit me later for not even trying will be unbearable, so pocketing my phone, I grab my keys and my bag that I abandoned in the hallway when I got back yesterday.
I feel like death as I drive through the city. There’s a little nagging voice at the back of my head which tells me that I shouldn’t even be behind a wheel. But it’s too late now.
Pulling up at the Starbucks closest to school, I order myself the biggest, strongest coffee they have and two paninis before continuing toward Knight’s Ridge.
Despite being too hot, the coffee is long gone before I pull to a stop in the car park and stuff my face with both of the paninis.
It has little effect on the darkness and the pain that festers inside me, but at least my stomach is no longer growling to be filled with something other than vodka.
Students sit around the sixth form building before me, enjoying the sun. I watch them laughing with their friends, enjoying life. It’s as if everything is right in the world. I guess it is with theirs.
But how? How can something so life changing happen to me and yet it passes everyone else by? Why am I the only one who’s suffering right now?
Calli is… fuck. I scrub my hand down my face. The less I think about what Calli is doing, the better. She’s fucking Daemon. Daemon. Out of all of us, I never in a million years would have suspected that Daemon would have been the one to corrupt my little sister. Honestly, I thought it would have been Toby. But it turns out not even Alex, the life-long flirt, was the one to catch my sister’s eye. Oh no, that was the darkest, most dangerous and twisted one of the lot of us. Daemon fucking Deimos.
I’m pretty sure Calli needs her head testing. Alex I could understand. He’s a fucking puppy dog. I can actually picture them together. But his evil twin… nah. Honestly, I’m waiting for someone to tell me it’s a joke. Although right now, I think that’s about as likely as someone telling me that Dad isn’t really dead.
I didn’t have to be there that day to know it’s true. I felt it, the bone-crushing loss of him. I felt it right down to my fucking toes.
When people start moving, I figure my hiding time is up.
I only have one lesson left of the day. English lit.
It’s the subject I was most resistant to when I was forced to reconsider my options after I failed my first attempt at A levels quite spectacularly. Although, I don’t really think it had much to do with the subjects, more the alcohol, weed and pussy I spent more time focusing on. Studying took a back seat, something which I’m now severely regretting.
If I didn’t fuck that up, I’d have finished at this place last summer. I could have had a year working with Dad under my belt. I might have been in a better position for whatever is next for me.
Of course, it goes without saying that I want his job. I want to continue his legacy and fulfil the role that was allocated to me at birth.
But do I deserve it?
Fuck no. I’m far too young and inexperienced for the job, but right now, I’m anything but reliable. Damien would be a fucking idiot to trust me with anything other than keeping myself alive.
Everyone has disappeared by the time I finally summon myself to climb out of the car, the final lesson of the day having long started.
Ignoring the main entrance to the building, I walk around the side, toward the rear that will lead almost directly into my class. The fewer people I’m at risk of walking into the better right now. The bitches who walk these hallways would have a field day with the state of me.
I walk past the huge wall of windows that line the building, realising my mistake when more than a few heads from the classrooms inside turn my way.
Great plan, arsehole.
But it’s not until I get to the final one, my English class, that I actually look up. And I have no idea why I do but something—someone—forces me to look through the windows.
And the second I do, my eyes lock onto a person that I shouldn’t be seeing in this part of my life.
My legs stop dead on the spot as I stare at the woman sitting behind the teacher’s desk, watching intently as Mrs. Hendrix goes over something ready for our exam in a few weeks. I have no idea what that might be, because my eyes never leave her.
Brianna Andrews.
The light in all my darkness.
The angel in all of my dreams who takes me away from all this bullshit is sitting in my classroom.
Why?
“Bri’s a student teacher,”a familiar voice says in my head, forcing me to squeeze my eyes shut and picture the moment Jodie told me that little nugget about her best friend.
“No,” I say out loud as I stumble back, slipping behind a thick old oak tree while my heart beats out of rhythm.