by Wendi Wilson
Besides, I was still in love with Mason, and no matter how things went down today, I’d love him still. I couldn’t just turn off my feelings like that. There’d have to be no doubt in my mind that he no longer loved me—or that he never did—for me to start trying to get over him and move on with my life.
And I still held a glimmer of hope that Josh, Simone, and Cooper were right. That his so-called relationship with Charlotte was a farce he’d manufactured to protect Stella after I nearly ruined everything at the Homecoming Dance.
I couldn’t believe that was over a month ago. I played those choices over and over in my mind so much—drinking the punch, laying Charlotte out in front of the Bellamys—it seemed like it just happened hours ago. Not weeks.
The rumble of the Chevelle’s engine raised my spirits like it always did, and I turned on some bass-thumping music to accompany the roar as I sped to Everly Prep. I downshifted and squealed into the lot, gaining the attention of everyone milling around outside.
Go big, or go home.
Spotting three empty, adjacent spaces at the end of the first row, I gunned it in that direction. I mashed my foot on the brake as I jerked the wheel, my rear-end fishtailing as I drifted into the last spot. Pushing the gearshift into neutral, I revved the motor a few times before letting it idle, the beat of the bass still rattling the speakers of the classic car.
I took a few deep breaths, turned off the engine, and schooled my features before stepping out onto the pavement.
That’s right, bitches. I am Chaz-Fucking-Miller, and don’t you forget it.
My internal pep talk added a little swagger to my step, and most of the students shied away as I walked by them on my way to the building. A few guys tried to catch my eye with nods and whistles, but I ignored them all.
As soon as I stepped through the doors, Josh fell into step beside me.
“Bad. Ass,” he murmured.
I had to fight to keep the grin off my face as I replied, “One hundred percent, grade-A, industrial-strength renegade.”
I held up my fist, and he bumped his against it.
“Thanks for sticking by me, bestie,” I said, leaning in close so only Josh would hear me.
“Where else would I be?” he asked, laying a hand against his chest. “I’d never desert you. Besides, this is the most fun I’ve had in ages.”
“My shitty life is fun to you?” I asked, inserting a heavy dose of mock outrage into my tone.
“Girl, please,” he said, pulling me to a stop. “Your life is far from shitty. Sure, you’ve taken a few lumps and some rich assholes are out to pulverize you—”
“That’s pretty shitty,” I inserted.
“—but you have so much to be grateful for,” he continued like I hadn’t spoken. “You have the awesomest mom, an unbelievably kind and generous stepdad, a kickass stepbrother, and the most amazing B.F.F. a girl could ask for. Moi.”
I couldn’t suppress my chuckle as he closed his eyes and laid a palm on his chest as he said the last word.
“And so humble,” I teased.
“Seriously, though,” he said, his face growing solemn as he leaned toward me. “I know it’s been a rough few months, but eventually all of this drama with Mason and his parents will be over. It’ll be nothing but a blip in your memories, and you’ll still have all the good things. And I truly believe in my heart that you’ll still have Mason, too.”
I smiled and nodded, even though I wasn’t sure I shared his belief. But he was right. I did have an awesome life, and once all this was over, it could be perfect.
I just hoped Mason would be the cherry on top.
25
“Stella!”
Mason rushed into the old chemistry lab like a raging bull, his eyes passing over us to land on his sister. She waggled her fingers at him, and he froze, his chest heaving as he seemed to realize the rest of us were there.
“What the fuck is going on?” he demanded. “Where is that pussy bitch Randall?”
So, Seth’s big plan was to have Stella text Mason, claiming Randall Walsely had her cornered in the unused classroom and was pushing himself on her. A little over the top, in my opinion, but hey, it worked.
“He’s not here,” Stella said, her voice calm and strong. “He never was.”
“What is this?” Mason growled.
“This is an intervention,” Theo said, closing the door to the classroom.
We were all there—Seth, Stella, Theo, Josh, Cooper, Simone, and me. My chest hurt at the sight of Mason, but I schooled my features and adopted a badass posture. I needed to at least appear strong in case this all went south, and Mason insisted what he was doing with Charlotte was real.
He would not see me cry.
“An intervention?” Mason repeated, looking confused. “I don’t take drugs.”
“We’re trying to save you from your own bad choices, man,” Seth said.
Mason’s eyes darted back to me, and I got a sinking feeling he considered me one of those bad choices.
Well, fuck you very much, I thought, crossing my arms over my chest.
I’d pretended not to watch Charlotte hang all over him at lunch, though my eyes kept straying to the Rogues’ table time and again. I told myself that it was okay. That this precise moment was coming, and everything would be brought out into the open. That we’d steer Mason off this dark path of madness.
But now, I wasn’t so sure.
And I was getting mad.
Of course, anger was better than crying and begging any day of the week, so I held onto the emotion. And Mason nurtured it with each second of silence that ticked by while he frowned at me.
“I can’t do this,” he muttered.
“Why not?” I demanded. “I deserve to hear the truth. From you. So, hit me with it, asshole. Tell me how you played me. How you never loved me. How you were just having a little fun with the trash-whore from the wrong side of the tracks. Say it. I dare you.”
Apparently, I was holding onto a lot more bitter rage than I knew. The awful words came spilling out, and there was no stopping them. My hands tightened into rock-hard fists, and I struggled to keep my arms crossed over my chest and not let them fly toward Mason’s perfect face.
A face that had gone slack with horror as the venom spewed from my lips.
“Chaz…no,” he stuttered. “I didn’t…God dammit, I do love you.”
His declaration ended in a shout that left the room eerily silent. Of course, I wouldn’t have been able to hear anything over the sound of my heart thumping in my ears, anyway. I felt an unwavering urge to leap into his arms and climb him like a tree, but I fought against it, standing my ground.
This was too important.
“Then, why?” I asked.
“You know why,” he answered without skipping a beat. “My parents aren’t stupid. They knew I was still seeing you behind their backs and were upping their threats against Stella. They had some of the staff search our rooms and confiscated our burner phones. They saw the text messages.”
I sucked in a sharp breath, remembering our little stint at sexting. I felt my face heat as Mason gave me a knowing look.
“Exactly,” he said. “I had to promise them I’d stop speaking to you and commit to a life with Charlotte. She’s been reporting back to them, so I had make her believe it’s real. And I had to make you all believe it was real, too, so you’d have the proper reactions when you saw us together.”
So, Josh had been right. So had Simone.
“I’m sorry I hurt you,” he said, his voice cracking. He cleared his throat, and in a stronger voice added, “And I’m sorry you got arrested for it.”
I shook my head. “Bitches had it coming.”
“It’s been hell for me, too,” he whispered.
My arms dropped to my sides, and I took an involuntary step forward. Mason’s body seemed to sway toward me, as well, then went rigid as the door to the classroom banged open.
“What the fuck is going on in here?�
��
Charlotte Rutherford marched into the room, her two minions following closely behind her.
“Oh, shit,” one of the guys mumbled, but I wasn’t sure who.
My eyes were glued to Charlotte, who stood in front me with a triumphant smile. She wasn’t supposed to be here. She and the others had left right after lunch to go to their acting auditions. Why was she here? And how did she know where to find us?
“You all must think I’m so stupid,” she sneered, looking from me, to the others, then back again.
“Charlotte, what are you doing here? I thought you had an audition, baby,” Mason said, his voice sickeningly sweet as he tried to cajole her.
“Don’t you baby me, asshole,” she gritted out, whirling on him. “Tell me what you’re doing here. With her.”
She jerked a thumb toward me as she growled the last word. Mason’s mouth opened and closed a couple of times before his face screwed up in anger.
“My so-called friends thought I needed an intervention,” he deadpanned. “They refuse to accept that I want to be with you.”
Though I knew in my heart his words were lies, I still felt the sting of them in my soul. It was all I could do not to physically recoil with their impact.
“Ha. I call bullshit,” Charlotte shot back. “We both know it was only a matter of time before that whore pulled you back into her web.”
“No, really, Charlotte. We tricked him,” Cooper said, but Charlotte threw up a hand.
“Nobody asked you, loser. Besides, it doesn’t matter how you got here. What matters is what you said when you did.”
She pulled a small black device from her pocket and held it up in the air. As she pressed a button with her thumb, a scuffling sound echoed from it before Mason’s voice poured from the small speaker.
“I had to promise them I’d stop speaking to you and commit to a life with Charlotte. She’s been reporting back to them, so I had make her believe it’s real.”
Charlotte pressed the button again, and the audio stopped. Her eyes bored into mine, then flicked to the grate in the wall.
The very grate I spied through to record her confession first semester. I sucked in a sharp breath, and she chuckled.
“Thanks for that, bitch,” she said. “I never would’ve caught this loser’s confession on audio without you.”
“How did you even know we were here?” Stella asked, moving to stand beside me. “We all saw you leave school after lunch.”
“Wouldn’t you like to know, Duchess?” Charlotte bit back, rubbing in the fact that Stella would be forced to wed an English aristocrat if this went sideways.
Stella growled and lunged for Charlotte, but Seth had moved to stand behind her and locked his arms around her waist just in time, holding her back. Charlotte laughed, then struck a pose.
“It was easy, really,” she gloated when no one else begged her to divulge her secrets. “Especially since Mr. and Mrs. Bellamy bugged your house.”
Silence fell like a concrete wall at her words, all of us struck dumb with their impact.
Seth was the first to recover. “My house?” he demanded.
Laughter trilled from Charlotte as she popped out a hip and propped her fist on it. “You didn’t think they actually wanted to have dinner with your dad and his trollop, did you?”
The fact that I didn’t rip her hair out was a testament to how shocked I truly was.
“They insulted you all on purpose, you dumbass. They wanted you all to leave them alone so they could plant some microphones. That’s how they knew about Seth and Stella. That’s how they knew about the burner phones. And that’s how I found out my audition was a set up, and you all were planning on confronting Mason. I assumed he’d tell you all to fuck off, that he loved me, and I could let his parents hear it and get them off my fucking back.”
“Get them off your back?” Mason said, his tone saying he thought her remark was ludicrous.
“Yes!” she screamed, whirling on him. “They’ve been hounding me nonstop, demanding that I try harder. Implying I wasn’t a real woman if I couldn’t keep my man from leaving me for a trailer trash whore-bag. Your mother went so far as to tell me I should let you stick your dick in my ass if it would help.”
Holy shit. I couldn’t bring myself to feel bad for Charlotte, but that was some seriously fucked up shit.
“Now, this is how this is going to play out,” she continued, her voice deepening with authority. “I am going to make a new recording, and Mason is going to confess his unbreakable love for me. I’ll send the new recording to the Bellamys, keeping Stella safe. For now. You all are going to mind your own fucking business, and Mason and I will spend our lives together. The end.”
So…extortion.
“If I find any hint that the trash-whore is back in your life,” she added, whirling on Mason, “I will send the real audio to your mom, and Stella will be a duchess before you can fucking blink.”
She pressed the button on the recorder and nodded at Mason.
“I love Charlotte,” he said, but it was obvious his heart wasn’t in it. “She’s the only one for me.”
Charlotte nodded, then sashayed from the room before anyone could react, which was probably a wise decision. If any of us had recovered from the shock before she and her crew left, there might not have been anything left of them for the coroner to identify.
I looked at Mason, whose face was a portrait of despair.
“What are we going to do now?” I asked.
“We have to do what she says,” he murmured. “I’m sorry.”
Then he spun on a heel and walked out of my life. Again.
26
The rest of the week passed in a fog. I went to school, kept my head down and my nose clean, then went home. I spent time with my friends, but most of our hang-out dates ended awkwardly with me cutting it short and saying I needed to be alone.
It would have been easier if Mason had just denied ever loving me. It would’ve destroyed me completely, but I could have rebuilt myself from the ground floor up. I could have healed my shattered heart and moved on with my life.
But knowing Mason loved me, but we couldn’t be together? It was a flaming inferno in the seventh level of hell. There was no healing from a wound so deep.
“Hey.”
Seth’s greeting pulled me from the cesspool of pity I was wallowing in, and I looked up to see him walking into my room, uninvited. He was dressed in a blindingly white t-shirt, dark jeans, and a pair of white skate shoes. His hair had that just-rolled-out-of-bed messy perfection, and I felt a spark of hate for him in my gut.
Because I knew I looked worse than I felt.
“You need to stop,” he said, standing before me with his arms crossed over his wide chest.
“Stop what? I was just in here, minding my own business when you walked in like you own the place.”
“Well, technically—”
“Get out, Seth,” I said, cutting him off. “I’m in no mood for…whatever it is you’re doing in here.”
“Make me,” he challenged.
“Don’t test me, brother,” I warned.
“Ha. I bet your muscles are atrophied from lying in this bed all the time, and you have the strength of a newborn baby.”
“Seth,” I growled.
“No, Chaz,” he snapped, his patience gone. “This pity party has gone on long enough. All the guests have left, and it’s time to clean up.”
I rolled my eyes and buried my head under my pillow. I could wait him out. If I ignored him long enough, he’d give up and get out of here.
The pillow over my head was snatched away, and I sat up with a shout. I watched it fly across the room and crash into my closet door, then I turned my wide eyes back to Seth.
“What the hell is the matter with you?”
“With me?” he shouted. “There’s nothing wrong with me. It’s you who’s acting like a toddler, sulking in your room and shutting everyone out. You’ll be lucky if you have any fr
iends left at all when this is over.”
“They’ll be better off,” I mumbled, looking down at my hands. “I destroy everything I touch.”
“Fuck you.”
My gaze flew back to collide with his, the normal honey brown color blazing like a liquid gold.
“Fuck you,” I said back, but with less confidence.
“You haven’t destroyed anything, Chastity,” he said in a low, angry voice. “Before you, we were living like zombies, following the Bellamys’ edicts. We followed their directions like good little minions, letting them plan out our whole lives like it was no big fucking deal.
“Then came you. Tearing through our lives like a bulldozer. You made us—all of us—feel. The relationship you formed with Mason gave the rest of us courage to go after what we wanted. Because of you, we know we have the right to choose for ourselves. Because of you, we have hope.”
I watched his face morph from angry to grateful as he added, “You saved us.”
My eyes stung with tears, and he must’ve seen them glass over, because he dropped down beside me and pulled me against his chest. I cried until the tears dried up, then pushed away to look into Seth’s face.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
“You’re welcome,” he said. “Now, go take a shower. You stink.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “I do not.”
I may have been wallowing in despair, but after my last bout of depression, I made a mental note to shower daily and not eat my weight in junk food.
“Fine,” he admitted. “You don’t stink. But you’ll still want to shower and get dressed. Josh and Simone are coming over.”
“Another intervention?” I asked, one corner of my mouth turning up as I climbed from the bed.
“Naw,” he said, waving a hand over me. “I told them I had this handled. We’re going to Phantom Estates.”
I stared at him, dumbfounded, for several beats. Phantom Estates was a popular haunted house attraction just north of here that spanned an entire block, complete with a trek through some dark woods. I’d always wanted to go, but had never actually made it out there.
