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She shook her head.
“Cigarette burns. You know who did that to me?”
She shook her head again, her eyes welling up with tears.
“My mother. That’s a little sampling. Those aren’t the only ones,” he said. “When I did show up at school, I was either hungry, angry, or dealing with more shit than you could ever imagine. So, I don’t understand how you can be so fucking naïve by letting your mother walk all over you. Have some self-respect, for God’s sake.”
He ran a hand through his dark hair. His features set hard.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “No kid deserves what you’ve been through.”
Dalton chuckled. “Don’t feel sorry for me, sweetheart. Look around you, I’ve moved onward and upward. All that childhood drama only made me numb. Nothing fazes me.”
She wanted to talk more about his bullying. Wanted an apology, something. But it was all starting to make perfect sense. The things she’d suspected back then were true and then some.
“There’s nothing wrong with being upset about it. You’re only human,” she said.
He picked up an oversized golden key from his desk. “The psychologists in high school called me a sociopath. Now I have the key to the city.” He laughed. “People don’t care about anything but money and what it can buy.” Dalton carelessly dropped it back on the desk.
“That’s not always true.”
“Always the dreamer, aren’t you?” he said. “Have you saved the world yet?”
She frowned. “I do what I can. One thing I’d never do is insult someone for their weight or appearance.” There, she’d said it.
“Still hung up on that?”
Her mouth parted, too shocked to answer at first. “Are you kidding me? You traumatized me all through my high school years. You made me hate my body. I still have self-esteem issues.”
“You know I didn’t mean any of that bullshit, right?”
“What?”
“You’re perfect, Emily. Guess I was so pissed off with the world, I took it out on the one girl I knew I could never get.”
“You could have had any girl.”
“No, nobody wanted the kid from the slums, not really. Besides, what difference would it make when I only wanted one?”
Her breath caught.
He stepped closer to her, and she backed up until she hit the wall.
“But now I get everything I want.” He pressed a hand against the wall near her head.
“You can’t buy love, Dalton.”
“Yeah, no shit. But I can buy your body.”
Her heart rate increased. Dalton was so much taller, his shoulders broad and muscular. He was impossibly close, and he was still determined to blackmail her.
“This isn’t right. I’m not that kind of girl.”
“Maybe it’ll teach you the lesson I’ve already learned. When something breaks you, you move on, you don’t go back like a dog to shit.”
“You’re not me. Why do you care what I do with my life?”
****
