by S. Massery
“Safe and sound,” he says once we hit the other sidewalk.
He drops his arm, and I… I just need comfort—in any form I can take it.
My hand slips down his arm and into his hand, squeezing once. His fingers lace through mine, and suddenly we’re walking and holding hands.
It’s bizarre but not unpleasant. My own hands are icy, but his palm is warm. I force myself to focus on the ground in front of me, although I want to take a peek at Mitchel.
He’s a stranger. The first boy to actually pay attention to me and not be completely scared away by Liam.
Liam has a way of doing that, doesn’t he?
“Are you going to freak out if someone gets mad at you for holding my hand?” I ask. “Not that someone will be mad. It’s just that, chances are likely that I have a stalker and he doesn’t take kindly to, um, affection? It’s fine, though. He doesn’t control my life. He just tries to—”
“Skylar,” Mitchel interrupts. “I think I can handle Liam Morrison.”
I frown. “I didn’t say it was him.”
“It was hard to miss him when he forcibly removed me from my seat the other day. Although I’ve been referring to him as your unwanted bodyguard. Stalker works, too.” He shrugs. “You held my hand. That should save me.”
“Right.” My skepticism must show through, because he winces.
But his attention isn’t on me anymore—it’s on the devil we were just talking about.
I groan and try to pull away, but Mitchel holds fast.
“How is he ever going to leave you alone if you keep caving?”
It’s hard not to cave when he breaks into your apartment, but I digress.
“Mitchel,” I warn.
“You should call me Mitch.” He’s speaking normally, like an angry bull isn’t striding across campus toward us.
I swallow.
“You look like you’re chewing glass,” he whispers.
He has my hand hostage, and I’m suddenly sweating.
Instead of stopping in front of us, Liam sails by. He doesn’t so much as glance at me, and Mitch grins.
“See? Not so scary.”
“Uh-huh,” I manage.
“Let me buy you a coffee. To make up for the trauma I think I just inflicted.”
I force a smile. “Sure.”
He gets both our coffees and hands mine over, and we head to our math class. I should be unsettled by… well, all of this.
First he’s saving me from near-death, then holding my hand, now buying me a coffee?
What sort of alternate universe have I landed in?
Girls like me don’t attract the attention of guys like him. Or, if we do, it’s usually the bad sort. I have gray hair and a nose ring, and the way I dress strays toward Gothic. It’s such a drastic change from who I was in high school, if I were to meet my past me I wouldn’t recognize her.
I’m the one who went to all the parties, stressed myself out buying all the ‘in fashion’ clothes, keeping up with the latest trends. I was a cheerleader. I had the most popular girls in school as my best friends, through thick and thin… until my fall from grace.
And somehow, I’m still falling.
“How’d you do on the homework?” he asks, jarring me from my thoughts.
“It wasn’t too bad. We’re probably going to end up with a pop quiz on it.” The numbers make sense in my head—I can’t explain it. I was never a math whiz, but it’s soothing.
He throws his head back and lets out a loud groan. “Stop that. I don’t need your sort of negativity.”
I shake my head. We travel the rest of the way in silence. I’m impressed with how easy it is to walk beside him. He jostles my arm and lifts his chin. I follow his subtle pointing to a group of girls in our class. They’re gathered outside the door, and a few of them keep turning around and staring at me.
“Got yourself a new friend, freak?” one of them calls. “Did you tell him you can’t keep a secret?”
I roll my eyes. “Real original. Where’d you come up with that, twenty-eighteen?”
I grab Mitch’s arm and drag him into the class, scowling. Those girls… I would’ve been friends with them. I would’ve been the one calling out to a poor girl, flaunting her mistakes.
“You okay?” he asks.
“Do I look okay?”
“Well, your face is kind of red.”
I flip my hair over my shoulder. “It’s because I’m angry, not upset.”
He studies me for a moment, then nods. “Okay, so, how are you going to fix it?”
“She can’t.” Liam stands behind Mitch, arms crossed. “Not until she repents, but I wouldn’t hold my breath for that.”
The bruises and cut lip he sported last week are gone, and his face is… well, handsome and extremely annoying. Especially because he’s smirking at me like he’s won something.
He hasn’t won shit.
“I apologized,” I say in a low voice. “Remember?”
“You know what remembers everything to ever happen? The fucking internet.”
Oh, how I’d love to hit him.
The professor—and Mitch—may frown on that, though. Although no one blinks an eye at Liam’s violence. He wasn’t even asked to leave school. Or, if they did, he didn’t listen. He went home at the height of craziness, but he returned a month later like nothing happened.
Except…
Things weren’t bad while he was gone. I kept my head down, ignored the whispers, and did my work. Classes, meals, and back to my room. I was the definition of low profile.
Everything changed when Liam came back. The hate grew.
Maybe it just took a month for students to realize Howl wasn’t coming back, and that’s when they directed their anger at the person who had managed to silence it.
Me.
I slide into my seat and ignore Mitch and Liam.
Because you know what? Fuck them.
8
Sky
I slip into my apartment and lock the door. I only have about an hour before I have to go back to campus, but the temperature is dropping. By the time my long class gets out later tonight, I’ll be frozen.
My finger hovers over the alarm keycode.
It’s off…
“Whitney?” I call, dropping my bag by the door. I toe off my shoes, too. I’m not exactly sure what I would do if an intruder was in my apartment, but sneaking up on them seems like a better idea than announcing myself.
She doesn’t answer… probably because she’s not here. She has three classes back-to-back today, and I’ve never known her to willingly miss one just to sit at home.
The kitchen is dark and empty, and the living room is likewise silent.
Goosebumps crawl up my arms. I turn down the hall to our bedrooms. Her door is shut. I creep past it and crack my door open.
Someone stands at my desk, their back to me.
The door creaks on opening, and I suppress a groan.
Liam sets down my notebook and turns around, sticking his hands in his pockets.
We regard each other.
Finally, I ask, “What are you doing here?”
My gaze jumps to the window. Maybe I can shove him out of it—the three-story drop wouldn’t kill him, but it would send the right sort of message. That message being: stay out of my damn apartment.
“I came to see if you were okay,” he says.
I almost believe it.
Instead, I move away from the door. The room is a mess, clothes draped over the cushioned chair I had bought on a whim for reading. Plants are squashed together on my windowsill… I guess Liam’s fall would take them out, and I can’t have that.
I resist the urge to pick up. Who knows how long he’s even been here, anyway.
“Skylar,” Liam says.
I glance at him and raise my eyebrows. “What kind of girl do you think I am, Liam? Gullible?”
He narrows his eyes.
“And what kind of pissing contest have you got
ten yourself into with Mitch? He’s nice, unlike you—”
He lunges for me.
I yelp, but I’m not fast enough to avoid him. One hand wraps around the back of my head, and the other covers my mouth.
“What kind of girl do I think you are?” he whispers. “Does it matter?”
I shake my head, trying to dislodge him. I grab his wrists, but his grip only tightens over my mouth. Pain lances through my skull as he tugs my hair, pulling my head back.
“Stop,” I say against his palm.
“No.”
I growl again.
He’s never been this physical with me—not until last week. Or, rather, not until the night the video got posted.
Sometimes I wake up tangled in my sheets and the panic is so deep, I can’t get back to sleep.
Sometimes I dream of Liam hovering over me, tracing the rope on my wrists.
I remember that now, as he holds my mouth shut.
The brilliant blue sky over his shoulder, and the agony…
Wait.
I blink.
“Get off.” I shove him with surprising force, and he does—he steps back.
Breathe, I order myself.
The boxes in the corner of my mind are rattling. The monsters in them want to be set free.
I double over and lean my elbows on my thighs, struggling to take a breath.
Liam gathers my hair back, and it takes me a second to realize he’s not only collecting my hair but running his nails along my scalp. It’s a stupid thing my mother used to do when I was scared.
“What was that?” My voice trembles, but I’m more shocked that it brought out a childhood memory than anything.
And who’s to say it was even a memory?
I straighten, and his hands slip away from my hair. A wild feeling builds inside me, like adrenaline. Maybe it’s more like fear.
He tilts his head. “Have you forgotten all of it?”
“Dr. Penn says amnesia surrounding trauma is normal.” I realize I’m being defensive, but I don’t think I can scrub the tone from my voice. “And we’ve worked hard on coping with it. I don’t remember what happened, just that something did. I’m lucky my brain didn’t shatter into a million pieces.”
He contemplates me. “We never spoke of it, so… it makes sense.”
“Spoke of… You were there?” I glare at him. “You know something.”
“Sit down, Sky.”
I’m tempted to say no again, but the way he’s looking at me sends chills through me. We’ve always been hot and cold. Able to talk to each other or unable to even be in the same room together.
I blamed it on him, his fickleness, my one-time crush…
But maybe it’s me.
Maybe he couldn’t stand the fact that he remembered while I forgot.
And I can’t even fathom what the hell it was.
“Did we suffer together?” I ask quietly. “Or did you…”
He jerks his head to the side and exhales. “I won’t do this with you. We’ve gotten off track.”
“Off track?”
“I came here to tell you to stay away from Mitchel. And when he turns out to be a bigger asshole than me, you can’t say I didn’t warn you.”
I frown. “Warn me? You’re just trying to bully me away from someone who’s actually nice, for a change. Unlike every other guy at this school.”
“Every other guy, huh?”
“Yes. At the end of the day, you’re not special. You just sit on your make-believe throne with your friends and pull everyone else’s strings. I’m not a puppet, Liam.”
Amusement flickers over his expression, and he steps forward. “What would that make me? Your master?”
I scowl. “Definitely not.”
“I sort of like the sound of that.” His gaze is unnerving.
For the first time, I wish I wasn’t so tuned in to him. If I wasn’t, I might be able to block out the irrational side of my brain—the part that’s saying he’s here because he’s jealous, that he cares. That he secretly likes me.
Ha.
He’s possessive.
Infuriating.
And a dick.
Great combination.
Now, I finally follow his directions and sit on my bed. I do feel better once I’m seated, but the room is a bit tilted. “Let me just… get this straight.”
He lifts his chin, which I take as a sign to continue.
“You broke into my apartment again, snooped around my room, just to tell me to stay away from Mitch?”
“Maybe.”
I grimace. “Why else?”
He comes over and lifts my hair. “Do you miss the blonde?”
“Excuse me?”
“If you hadn’t leaked that video, if I didn’t force you into becoming someone else, would you have still dyed your hair?”
I contemplate that—and not the way he rolls a lock of my hair between his finger and thumb. I definitely don’t think about how this ounce of affection (if we can call it that) does things to me. Does things to my heart.
It’s rapidly beating, an uncontrolled gallop.
He tugs my hair, and I meet his gaze.
“I don’t know,” I finally say. “I was on the path away from perfect way before that.”
He grunts. “Because of Amelie.”
The queen bee of Emery-Rose Elite, our high school, was my former friend. She led the charge against me, kicked me off the cheerleading team, and I never understood why. She was mad about something but never actually aired her dirty laundry with me.
Never gave me a chance to refute it, either.
“That was my doing,” he whispers.
I jerk away from him. “You’re lying.”
“I had to concentrate, and I sure as fuck couldn’t do that with your eyes on me every game.”
He leans in, but I don’t shy away from him. My mind spins.
“The game was my ticket to a scholarship, remember?”
Liam’s family was hit with some hard times—it was one of the reasons he even ended up as my neighbor in Stone Ridge. Liam kept a scholarship to Emery-Rose, and Jake went to Stone Ridge High, the public school. No one batted an eye at Liam because of who he was friends with. Caleb, Theo, and Eli would’ve chewed up and spit out anyone who so much as thought about Liam’s lack of money.
I still remember the party his parents had at his house to celebrate his college financial aid package. Ashburn had given him the best investment in his future, but now I’m wondering if part of it was a lie.
Some things aren’t as good as they first appear.
My parents and I went over before everyone else showed up, when Liam and Jake were still setting up the tent in the backyard. Mom shooed me out the door to help them, a box of gold and silver streamers in my arms.
Jake had grinned, going on and on about who Liam was going to meet at Ashburn, how lucky he was to play for a division one team, the school itself, Boston.
Ashburn might be small, but their football team was mighty.
Who knew a tiny college in the heart of Boston could put up such a fight?
But what about me? When he got me kicked me off the team, my whole world fell apart.
I push him away. “You’re an asshole.”
He smirks.
He’s close enough that our noses almost brush. I smother the impulse to kiss him. That would send the wrong message, and what the hell? I’m not attracted to Liam Morrison.
No way.
What happened the other night was a fluke.
“I did what I had to do,” he murmurs. He straightens suddenly. “And I’m doing the same now. If you don’t stay away from Mitchel, he’s going to pay for it. His fate is in your hands.”
I narrow my eyes. “What would you do?”
He gives me a feral smile. “There’s one way to find out.”
My mind will twist this into a million different directions. At the end of the day, though, he’s right: I could call his bluff. Mitch sa
id he could handle Liam, but now I’m not so sure. There’s an ocean of history between Liam and me, and sometimes that sea rages too strongly to ignore.
“You should leave,” I say. “Whitney—”
“Ah, yes, your doting roommate.” He pauses. “Did you tell her where the alarm system came from?”
I lift one shoulder. “Landlord must’ve wanted to update the building’s security.”
He chuckles and heads to the door.
I wait a moment, counting to five after my apartment door slams shut. Then I race over and lock it, setting the alarm.
Strangely, it doesn’t make me feel any safer.
9
Liam
Mitchel Norton has a stalker.
Like most rich Cape Code babies, he’s totally unaware of the people around him. It makes him the perfect target.
After he leaves for class the following morning, I slip into his building and jog up a single flight of stairs to his door. The apartment is paid for by his mother, who belongs to an elite Cape society.
I Googled it—you can only get in if you have a particular last name, and I guess Norton fit the bill. Or maybe it was her maiden name that opened the door. All the money seems to be on her side of the family, anyway.
His dad is a deadbeat. Left the Cape when little Mitch was five, held a random assortment of jobs in Boston, then finally relocated to Seattle, Washington.
The distance did its job, effectively pulling the Norton family apart. And the only thing he left Mitch with was his last name.
I use my lockpicks to get the door open.
Breaking and entering isn’t as low as I’m willing to stoop for Sky. Far from it. But my hair stands on end, and I quietly check that no one else is in the apartment. Just a big, fluffy tabby sitting on the back of a white couch. It’s muted orange and white, and it doesn’t even bat an eye at me.
This is why dogs are better, both personality-wise and for protection.
His apartment is quite a bit larger than Sky’s, even though he’s the only one living here. The living room is huge but essentially empty—a minimalist style, my mother would say. Nothing personal, nothing of interest. I go toward his bedroom, unsure of what, exactly, I’m looking for.
