by Eden Beck
We’re staying together. My family; my real family.
I can’t help but feel a twinge of pain that Astor isn’t part of the family. I always wanted him to be, but that dream is long gone. After what he did, and after what I did, too.
There’s a moment where I’m sitting on that same couch Wills almost threw and he and Blair and Dana too are all laughing and reaching for a bottle of champagne, and suddenly, it’s all too much.
I don’t know how it happens exactly, but suddenly I’m standing out on the lawn.
The last of the winter snow glistens darkly under a cloudy sky. The only sources of light are the rows of lamps lighting the paths to my left, and the soft glitter of light upon the semi-frozen surface of the lake.
I didn’t think to take my coat out with me, but I’m too distracted to notice the cold. For the first time in what feels like ages, my mind is clear.
I’ve been so stupid.
I’ve been so stubborn.
I’ve been—
My own thoughts are interrupted by a rustling in the dark.
I turn and spot another light in the night. It’s small; a single orange-yellow pinprick attached to a shaking hand. A figure is hunched down behind one of the trees. I can’t see who it is, so I creep forward, careful not to let my feet make any sound as I move across the snow.
As I move closer, I recognize the light as the lit end of a cigarette. It takes me another moment to see who holds it.
“Victoria?”
The figure gasps mid-smoke and breaks out in a fit of coughs. I move closer, one hand hovering in the air above her like I’m about to help, but I don’t. I stand there awkwardly until her coughing fit subsides and she tilts her face up to look at me.
She’s almost unrecognizable.
“What do you want?” she snaps, her voice thick and gravelly. This is clearly not the first time she’s snuck out for a smoke in the last weeks. Her face turns to look at the lake, and she puts the cigarette back between her trembling lips. “Here to gloat?”
Two weeks ago, my answer would have been yes.
I was riding high on the last few months—not least of which was defeating her at what now seems like a stupid high school dance. That’s all it was, after all.
And still, looking down at this disheveled version of Hawthorne’s once-queen, it was all it took to break her.
To her obvious surprise, I slump down to the tree beside her. I lean back, feeling the press of the rough bark through my sweater and the wetness of the snow seeping through my pants.
I hold out a hand, and after a brief moment of hesitation, Victoria passes me the cigarette.
I turn it over in my hand once, then take a slow drag. The taste is bitter, followed by a slight head rush.
“Look at us,” I say, quietly. “All this … for what?”
I motion out across the lawn, then glance at her as I pass the cigarette back her way.
She holds it limply between two fingers.
The gloss is gone from her hair, leaving it as limp as the addiction in her hand. It may be dark, but I can still make out the dark circles under her eyes and gauntness of her cheeks. When we came back from break, I hardly noticed she was gone. She slipped under the radar, hiding in her shame.
I should have worried about her; thought, at least once, how this sort of thing would affect her.
I’m strong. I was strong. No matter how much they bullied and tormented me, I never really broke.
But Victoria, she never had the same strength. I see that now.
“What you did was unforgivable,” I say, and she glances my way. There’s no malice in my voice, no accusation. “But I made mistakes too.”
She laughs bitterly. “He didn’t cheat, you know.”
“What?” It takes me a second to realize what she means.
She laughs again, looking out into the night. “He’s more chivalrous than he lets on, that Astor.”
I shake my head. “I still don’t get—”
“He and I, we broke up months ago!” she snaps. She flicks the ash off the end of the cigarette aggressively. Her eyes have taken on a ferocity I haven’t seen in a long time. It’s comforting, somehow. “He promised not to tell until after we graduated.”
She laughs again, and it’s darker than ever. “You’re not the only one who has to meet the terms of her trust fund, Teddy Price.”
“It’s White now,” I say, my head still struggling to wrap around what she says. “I signed the paperwork last week.”
“Then it all really worked out for you, didn’t it?”
Astor. He and Victoria …
I leap to my feet.
Everything is imploding inside me. Astor was willing to give me up to do the right thing? All these weeks, these months … he’s been suffering the same as me.
“Just promise me one thing,” Victoria says to my shuffling, retreating footsteps. I don’t know where I’m heading. I don’t even see anything.
I stop and glance back, only half listening now.
“And what’s that?”
Victoria throws her cigarette on the ground and smothers it beneath one of her designer boots. “Don’t make the same mistakes I did. I tell you this … the blacklist is no joke. If I’d known, really known …”
Then she laughs again, and I’m starting to worry I really broke her. “Who am I kidding,” she says. “I knew how bad it was, and I did it anyway. I just never thought I’d end up on it.”
I won’t apologize to Victoria, not after all she did. What I did in comparison was nothing, but that doesn’t stop the ache inside.
I might find it in my heart to forgive her one day, but for now, I have to finish something I started long ago.
I don’t know how I find myself standing under his window. I don’t even know how I know which window is his.
I just do.
I kneel down and pick up a rock on the ground. I’m weighing it in my palm, trying to gauge how hard to throw it against is window without actually breaking it, when I hear another sound echoing to my left. I ignore it this time, determined to do this while I still have the guts.
But again, right before I can throw the stone, I hear that soft tap again.
That sounds. It’s almost as if …
I stop and squint into the dark. It takes a second, but I think I make out someone else standing at the end of the building. It’s a popular night for sneaking out.
While I watch, this second figure picks another rock off the ground, looks up, aims, and throws it up to tap against the window at the very end.
My window.
I take a hesitant couple steps towards the dark figure. As I do, the shadow shifts slightly so the light from one of the downstairs windows falls on his face.
“Astor?”
My voice carries across the empty, snow-covered ground like a whisper spoken between lovers.
He freezes and peers back at me, his eyes unbelieving.
“Teddy?”
I take a couple more steps, and then stop. “What are you doing?”
He glances back up at my window, and then shoves his hand, and the next stone he picked out, deep into his pockets. “I think that’s obvious,” he says, then he squints hard at me. “The real question is, what are you doing here?”
I look down at the rock in my hand, then hold it up for him to see.
“I think we both had the same idea,” I say, breathlessly.
This time when I look at him, I don’t see the man who betrayed me. I see the man I once cared for, the man I came to love. I see a man who was willing to give everything up to protect a girl he didn’t even like.
Even if it meant hurting himself in the process.
“Victoria told me,” I say, finally. The words come out easier than I thought. “Astor … what were you thinking?”
He looks away. A muscle bulges in his jaw as it works.
“I told you,” he says, quietly. “This world’s never what it seems.”
I shake my head. “But you hurt me, Astor. You hurt yourself. All of this, protecting her, was it worth it?”
Now he looks at me, really looks at me. “I don’t know, Teddy,” he says. “I’m not sure I’ll ever know.”
I can tell it takes everything in him to do it, but he straightens himself up with a steely resolve. “I know it’s too late for me. For us. But I hope, at least, that you understand why I had to do it.”
I hate to admit it, even to myself, but I kind of do.
Up until a couple months ago, I would have said no. I didn’t know the power, the draw, the responsibility that comes with money.
Now I do.
And if somehow being with Astor is one of the terms of Victoria’s trust, it was actually quite selfless of Astor to be with her through everything. The easy thing would have been to screw her over. It’s what I would have done.
“Can I ask you something?” I ask.
“Anything.”
The gap between us feels like a chasm.
“How did you do it?”
There’s a pause. “I don’t know what you mean,” Astor says.
“I mean … how could you stand by and let it happen? After Wills left, then Blair?” I shake my head. “It killed me to watch you three separated. I can’t imagine how it made you feel.”
Astor lets out a long stream of breath. It billows from his mouth like steam from a dragon’s mouth.
“It didn’t hurt as much as letting you go,” he says. “I knew they’d be all right without me. I knew you would too. Eventually.”
“And you?”
Astor laughs darkly. It must be something in the air tonight.
“Teddy, don’t you see?” he says. “This was never about me. My happiness, what I wanted … it was never part of the equation.” He closes his eyes and shakes his head. “For just a little while, when we first met, I let myself just be. With you, I was happy. I was just … me. Not Astor. Not a Hawthorne.”
I stare down at the ground now. “Not an heir with overwhelming responsibilities.”
Silence follows.
That chasm between us only grows wider by the minute.
There’s a choice now, and I see it. I can either bridge the gap … or I can close the door on Astor Hawthorne forever.
He won’t be the one to try to cross it. He’s tried, and failed, too many times before. It’s my turn.
“Astor,” I start, and suddenly, the words don’t come so easy. “Can we just start over?”
And then, just as suddenly, there isn’t a gap between us anymore. My hands are in his, his eyes boring into mine.
“Only if starting over means starting up exactly where we left off, last year, before I ruined everything,” Astor says, his voice barely daring to go above a whisper.
I look up into Astor’s face, the face of the boy who tried to ruin me. The face of the boy who tortured me, bullied me, made me an outcast—and yet still, a boy who I cannot help but love.
“Yes, Astor Hawthorne,” I say. “Let’s start back where we left off.”
There’s still a long road to redemption, for both of us, but that’s a road I’m willing to take.
Because, for the first time, we’ll be doing it together.
Epilogue
I’d nearly forgotten how it felt to be wrapped up in their arms together; all three of them. Wills, Blair, and Astor too. There’s a wholeness, a missing piece returned.
But here I am, looking down at their sleeping faces with their bodies sprawled out around me on the bed of my new 5th avenue condo in Manhattan. Of all the things I inherited from my father, it’s by far my favorite.
It’s more than the sweeping cityscapes and private elevator; it’s what it represents.
In just a few short months, all three of my boys and I will start college in the same city. NYU might not be Columbia, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s pretty damn close.
Literally, and figuratively.
For Victoria’s sake, we kept the new development between Astor and I under wraps until after graduation.
It wouldn’t be so hard if I didn’t have to keep it from Blair and Wills too, but neither of them is particularly good at keeping secrets. The moment I told them, in the flurry of falling hats raining down at us after the commencement ceremony, I’ve never seen them so happy.
Three friends, closer than brothers, reunited.
They were separated because of me once. Now, looking down at them, I promise myself I’ll never let that happen again.
I never imagined, when I started this whole journey, that this is where I’d end up. Everything about me has changed, even my name.
I know that this is all just the beginning to a long journey, but I know one thing for sure.
Never again will I do it alone.
Astor stirs in my arms, and looks up at me with those big, dark eyes of his. They’re still glazed over with sleep, but that doesn’t stop a rare smile from spreading across his face.
“Good morning gorgeous,” he says. He reaches up and runs one hand over my bare shoulder. “I just can’t seem to get enough of you. I hope you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind at all. We’ve got a lot of missed time to make up for.” I lean forward and kiss him softly and slowly.
The motion, however gentle, causes the other two to turn over in their sleep. I freeze and put a finger to my lips. I wait for them to settle before I glance back down at Astor, brushing away some of the hair from his face.
“There was something I wanted to ask you, before they wake up,” I say. I wonder how he will respond to what I’m about to ask. I’ve thought about this for a long time.
“Anything,” he tells me, sitting and I bite my lower lip.
“It’s about Victoria.”
I hold up a hand quickly, quelling any protests that might follow. “I know we swore not to talk about her anymore, but I have one last request. It’s about her spot on the blacklist.”
His eyes grow cold. “She deserves it, Teddy. After everything she did.”
“She does deserve it,” I say, running my fingers lightly over his body, “but … that’s not the point.”
He sits up, nearly waking Wills in the process. “Then what is it?”
I take a breath and plunge in. “I want you to get rid of the entire blacklist. I think that everyone deserves a second chance. I’ve had second chances, and it’s made all the difference. She doesn’t deserve it, but maybe it will help her become a better person.”
He closes his eyes and sighs heavily, and then looks at me. “Do you know what she’s going to do when she finds out I’ve deleted the blacklist? She’ll come after us again, especially you.”
I shake my head as I slide my leg over him and sit on top of him.
“Then don’t tell her. Just do it in secret. In time, Victoria will figure out that the reason she fails at everything is because of her own actions, instead of some blacklist.”
I can tell he’s wrestling with the idea. It’s his crown, his power; and I’m asking him to give it up.
But then he looks back at me and reaches up to cup my face in his hand.
“You really are going to make a better man out of me yet, aren’t you?”
I nudge him playfully. “Not if you have anything to do with it, apparently.”
“For you, Teddy, anything.” He kisses me then, hard and deep. When we break apart, he’s looking at me with a need I’ve come to know very well.
I reach for him, and he for me.
Blair and Wills might still be asleep, but they won’t be for long.
My boys.
The Holy Trinity.
Together, with me, at last.
A Note From The Author
Thank you for reading Dirty Revenge, the third and final book in the Hawthorne Holy Trinity series.
If you enjoyed Dirty Revenge, please consider leaving a review on Amazon!
If you are experiencing bullying in your life, please reach out for help:
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br /> https://www.stompoutbullying.org
https://www.stopbullying.gov
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (1-800-273-8255)
Xoxo,
Eden
