Page 223 of Lessons in Cruelty

Every bruise he’s left on me pulses like a heartbeat.

His hand is at his throat, like he’s about to drag his bowtie off and storm the stage. Or like he’s remembering his hands around my throat…and he can’t wait to do it again.

How long did I sit in my car up there at Lookout Point that night, tracing the marks he left on my skin after he choked me in the library gardens?

Fuck him too.

“Just because I’m unbreakable doesn’t mean I know what I’m doing.”

I drop my head, taking a slow breath in and out. Every word feels like stripping naked. Like that dressing room. Like under Melissa’s bed.

Maybe that’s all I’m good for. Public humiliation that makes men hard.

At least this time I’m doing it to myself.

“It’s like someone’s put me in the cockpit of a Boeing and told me to fly it. And through sheer stubbornness, I’ve gotten it airborne, but now it’s falling, and I have no idea how to stop it.”

The crowd’s silence sucks at me like gravity. The woman beside me—I’m assuming she’s the dean—shifts her feet, her hands clasping a little tighter in front of her, like she wants to interrupt this trainwreck of a speech before I make more of a scene.

So I make my voice low, calm. Peel my fingers off the podium and stroke them down the wood instead.

Elegant. Graceful.

Everything I’m not.

“I know I don’t belong here. And some of you would probably prefer that I leave because I make you too uncomfortable. But, with all due respect…learn to suck it up.” There’s a wave of indignant gasps and huffs, but I ignore them.

“I’ll never get an opportunity like this again. To rise above what I was born into.”

To be more than Riverside trash. To make these fuckers see me as more than a hole to fuck or a problem to solve.

My eyes flick to Kai, and even from up here, I can see his mouth thin into a line. His frown.

…get out…

…he’s coming for you…

Someone tried to warn me. Guess they didn’t know it was old news.

Kai’s had it out for me ever since I went from his innocent, naive best friend to the trailer trash whore he inexplicably sees me as now.

I should have pressed him harder. Forced him to tell me why he has such a low opinion of me.

“So, poor or not. Unbreakable or not. Accepted, it not…I’m staying.” I lean in closer to the microphone. “And I’m gonna make every second count.”

Movement in the back catches my eye.

Bastian, leaning against the wall like he owns it. Like he owns this whole room.

Like he owns me.

My nipples harden under the silk, and I quickly force my gaze away.

Straight back to Kai, my enemy.

But his eyes aren’t on me anymore. He’s staring behind him, head bobbing as he searches the crowd.

…for whomever I was looking at.