by Farlow, LK
“Just hang tight, babe. Help’s on the way.”
Chapter Fifteen
Emmy
The sound of dull but furious voices rouses me from my stupor.
“The hell were you doing at a party anyway, Luna?”
Where am I? And who in the hell is Luna?
“Why do you even care?” my roommate asks with more fire in her voice than I’ve ever heard. “You gonna tattle on me?”
“You’re acting like a brat.”
“What can I say? You bring out the worst in me.”
A rough, all-male laugh sounds, filling the space around me.
“Now, are you going to help me get her inside or not?”
“As long as you keep up your end of the bargain, I’ll help.”
Stella huffs. “You might not think much of me, Samson Carter, but I’m not a liar.”
“You don’t have the first clue of what I think of you.”
Two loud slams finally unseal my eyelids, allowing me to take stock of my surroundings. We’re at the dorm building. How the...
I don’t get to finish the thought when a strange man flings open the back door and reaches for me. Panic swarms and I scream at the top of my lungs.
“Stop! Get away from me!” I kick and thrash, all coherent thought lost in my struggle to get away.
“Holy Shit, Luna! Get your damn friend before she kicks out my teeth!” the deep voice booms, making me shiver in fear.
“Emmy!” Stella’s worried voice cuts through my terror. “Emmy, stop!”
“Stella?” Her name comes out scratchy and thin. “What... where?”
“Shh, we’ll talk inside.”
“Who?”
Thankfully, she understands what I’m asking, despite not being able to string more than two words together in a sentence.
“That’s Samson. He’s a... he’s someone I know. He brought us home, and he’s going to help get you inside, okay?”
My pulse hammers at the thought of some random guy touching me, but Stella’s quick to soothe my distress.
“I’ve known him since I was in diapers. He won’t hurt you. Okay?”
“Okay,” I whisper, and she moves out of the doorway, making room for Samson to try again.
I whimper when his broad shoulders obscure my vision. He grits his teeth and asks, “You gonna try and kick me again?”
Just breathe. He’s not going to hurt you. “No.”
He leans into the car and helps me out and onto my feet. “I’ve got it,” I say, even as my knees wobble beneath me. Gritting my teeth, I press my palm into the side of the car and focus on breathing and holding myself up.
“Are you good to head inside?” Stella asks.
“I, um. Yes, I think.”
“I’ll help you.” Stella wraps an arm around my waist, and I wrap mine around her shoulders. Every step is grueling, not because I’m hurt but because I’m tired. Like down to my bones, through my marrow, to my soul tired.
We slowly make our way from the parking lot to the dorm building. At the door, Samson turns to us. “Gonna need your card, Luna.”
“It’s in my back pocket.”
He balks, looking unsure.
“Oh my God!” Stella cries. “It’s a freaking pocket. You might graze a little ass cheek. It won’t kill you.”
“It fuckin’ might,” he grumbles before sliding his hand into her pocket.
A wave of dizziness rushes me, and I sway in Stella’s arms.
“Whoa! You okay?”
I nod. Or at least I think I nod. “Just need to... bed.”
“Are you sure she isn’t on something?”
“Positive,” Stella growls, helping me over the threshold and into the lobby. “Now either call the elevator or go home. We don’t need your negativity.”
“No, just my ride.” He’s all attitude as he swaggers ahead of us toward the elevator. He curls his hand into a fist and pops the side of it against the up arrow.
Inside, he repeats the gesture, hitting the button for the third floor. The contents of my stomach rush up toward my throat as the cables begin pulling us higher. I gag a little as I slap my free hand over my mouth.
“Swear to God, if she pukes on me…”
“Stop being an asshole, Samson!” Stella scolds, already sounding like the teacher she’s studying to become.
I force myself to swallow. “I’m fine.”
In our suite, Stella helps me into my bed with a promise to check on me in five minutes. I wave her away, too exhausted to care about anything other than my head hitting the pillow.
Only, when I close my eyes, he’s there, waiting and ready to torture me some more.
“You deserve every single thing coming your way,” his voice taunts, wrapping around my body like a vise, squeezing and squeezing, tighter and tighter, until all of the air is expelled from my lungs.
I shoot upright, a scream lodged in my throat. “Why is this happening?” I wonder aloud. “What did I ever do to deserve this?”
Muffled voices filter into my room from the crack under the door. After a few minutes, I hear a door open and close, before the sound of the lock turning reaches me.
Followed by, “Emmy, can I come in?”
I groan out my permission for her to enter.
“Are you okay?” Stella asks, crossing the small space to my bed. She perches on the edge of it and reaches down, smoothing my sweaty hair away from my face.
“I-I don’t know.”
“What happened? You literally went from fine to on the floor in the span of a song.”
“St-Sterling.”
A fire lights in her blue eyes, making her look lethal. “What did he do? Do I need to kill him? Swear to God, I know how to get rid of a body, babe.”
“Um...”
“Just say the word. No one will ever find his sorry, no-good, rotten ass.”
“No,” I barely manage to croak the word as I shake my head. “No.”
“What did he do to you?”
I heave out a sad sigh. “Nothing more than I allowed.”
The admission nearly breaks me. It’s a reminder of how weak I am. How weak I’ve always been. I’ve been on this earth for eighteen years and spent a decade of them being abused at the hands of my stepbrother.
I quietly took his mistreatment, over and over, and the few times I tried to speak up, my pleas were cast aside as the whining of a bratty child.
I should have pushed harder. Tried harder.
But I didn’t. I let him victimize me. Over and over and over again. When he finally took it too far and I went to the authorities, I was all but laughed right out of town.
What would a fine young man like him want with a child like you?
Nice girls don’t tell lies. We thought you were a nice girl, Emmalyn. Don’t you want to be nice?
He’s got his whole life ahead of him, Emmalyn. Surely you don’t want to leave a dark mark on his future.
And yet, no one cares about the one he left on me. On my heart... my soul.
“No! Nope.” Stella sounds fierce, protective. “That doesn’t fly with me. He did something to you and I want—no, I need to know.”
“Just mind games.”
Stella stands from the bed. “What drawer are your jammies in?”
“Second from the top.”
She grabs a pair of flannel pants and a tank top and passes them both to me. “Get changed. I’ll be right back.”
I strip out of my wet party clothes but don’t put on my pajamas. I need a shower.
“What are you doing? Are you okay?” Stella asks as I step out of my room in only my undergarments.
“Just need a shower.”
“Okay. Can I... can I sit in the bathroom while you do it? To make sure you’re okay?”
I nod, secretly grateful to not be alone.
We trek into the small bathroom, and I step into the tub and pull the curtain closed. I toss my wet bra and panties out and turn on the water, cranking the
temperature to scalding.
Stella chatters aimlessly as I stand under the hot spray, letting it wash away the scent of cheap beer, wishing it could wash away the memory of his touch.
“Did he pour his drink on you?” Stella asks as I rinse the shampoo from my hair.
“No. Um. That would’ve been... Melanie.”
“What?” my suitemate shrieks.
I’m nearly too tired to tell the whole sordid story, but I know Stella, and she won’t let me sleep until she knows it all.
“I guess they were there together. And she thought I was flirting with him and got really, really mad. She said some not nice things to me and then tossed her beer in my face.”
“And he let her believe that? That you were with him?”
I scoff out a laugh. “He encouraged the notion.”
“That little dick weasel!”
Even though she can’t see me, I shrug. “It is what it is.”
“No, ma’am. It is not.”
“Stella, I love that you want to help, but—”
“But nothing! Tonight, you sleep. And tomorrow?” She pauses for dramatic effect. “Tomorrow, we plot!”
Chapter Sixteen
Emmy
Stella didn’t leave my side for the rest of the weekend. And I mean that literally. We spent Saturday, Sunday, and Monday—which was blessedly a holiday—cozied up in our suite, binge-watching chick flicks, eating takeout, and plotting my payback.
Ultimately, we both decided the best form of revenge against Sterling was... nothing. He’s clearly after a reaction, and if I refuse to give him one, he can’t win.
However, we also agreed I can’t let him steamroll me either. I need to be fierce, which means taking no shit when it comes to him.
“I mean,” Stella says as we cut through the quad, “if he’s an ass to you, just ice him out. Don’t let him know he’s getting to you.”
“Easier said.”
“Lunch after, and you can tell me all about how you shut his ass down.”
“And you can tell me all about Samson,” I counter, already knowing it’s a lost cause. I asked about him at least twenty times over the last three days, but she shut me down each and every time.
“Toodles,” she calls over her shoulder with a finger-wave before breaking into a run toward her building.
I roll my eyes at her antics, but press on toward my destination, albeit slowly. While I don’t want to be late for Sterling’s class, I definitely don’t want to be early either. When it comes to his class, it’s bare minimum and nothing more.
I make it to the classroom with two minutes to spare, marching right past Sterling’s smug, stupid face, all the way to a desk in the very back of the room.
For the next one-hundred-and-twenty seconds, I sit on pins and needles, waiting for him to fling some low-handed, shitty remark my way. But he doesn’t even look at me.
It’s as if I’m not here. Invisible.
And how completely wrong is it—how completely damaged am I—that him ignoring me bothers me?
I don’t want him to torment me, not at all. But after three days of prepping on how best to deal with him, I guess it’s a little disappointing.
Or at least that’s what I’m going with. Because while I am a little weak, I’m not a freaking doormat. At least, I don’t want to be.
At exactly nine, Sterling closes the door. He dives straight into his lecture, still ignoring my presence completely. His eyes skip over me as he speaks and he never once calls on me when he asks questions.
Not that I’m volunteering, but still.
Instead, I busy myself furiously taking notes. Sterling Abbot might be a piece of shit, but he brings the topics we study to life. Once I get back to my dorm after lunch, I’ll recopy and color-code them.
There’s something about the repetition that really cements it all in my brain.
“Quiz time!” Sterling’s voice booms through the room, causing shivers to dance across my skin. A few groans rise up, but he shakes his head and slaps his palms down onto the podium. “I don’t want to hear it. You should have completed the required reading for it, so if you don’t do well...” He allows his words to taper off and shrugs— "That’s on you."
I grin to myself, confident I’ll ace the quiz. I not only read the assigned material—twice—but I also read several related articles and studies just to make sure I had a good grasp on it.
On a scale of one-to-ten, right about now, my confidence is a twenty.
Except, when I look down at my quiz, none of the material on it was covered in the reading.
No, no, no.
I ball my hands into fists and scrub at my eyes, hoping like hell my mind is playing tricks on me. It has to be. There’s no other option. Only, when I reread the page, none of the words have changed.
This can’t be happening.
How is this happening?
After everything with Rob came to a head, I threw myself head-first into my studies. It’s not like I had friends, much less a social life, so preparedness became my bestie.
I know I did the right reading. I know it.
My breathing accelerates as I rack my brain, trying to figure out how I messed this up.
I’m about to fail the first quiz of the semester and it’s all my—oh my God!
My brain rockets back to the email I received last week alerting me to an error in the syllabus. At the time, I didn’t think anything of it. Mistakes happen all of the time.
But why wouldn’t we have gotten an updated version of it in our class portal?
Why wasn’t the update mentioned in class?
Understanding hits me with the force of an arrow plunging into a bullseye.
This wasn’t a mistake at all. I didn’t mess anything up. I was sabotaged.
Anger pulses within me, like the beat of an angry drum. My blood boils and my jaw clenches as I fight the urge to march down to Sterling’s desk and let him have it. But master manipulator that he is, I know he’d only turn it around on me.
He wants me to make a scene. I’m sure of it. So sure, I’d bet every pretty penny of the inheritance my dad left me. He wants me to throw a fit, to beg and plead.
Well, I won’t give him the satisfaction. I refuse.
Instead, I put my pen to the page, and answer the questions to the best of my ability.
I try not to let it get to me as one-by-one, my classmates hand in their papers and exit the classroom. Minutes trickle by until, eventually, only the two of us remain. The smug grin on his face as I stand from my desk and head his way is all the confirmation I need.
“Tell me,” he says, kicked back in his chair, looking as regal as a king. An evil king.
“Tell you what?” It’s a struggle to control my voice. I want to lash out at him, to scratch him with my claws and wound him with my sharp tongue.
“How do you think you did?”
“We both already know the answer to that, don’t we?”
His grin widens, and it takes my all not to knock it from his face.
“You’re a real piece of work,” I seethe, wondering not for the first time how someone that attractive can be so awful. Shouldn’t men like him have some kind of marker to denote the evil in their blood?
You know very well they don’t, my inner voice cruelly reminds me.
He shrugs before adopting a careless pose. “I hear it takes one to know one.”
“For a grad student, you sure sound like a schoolyard bully.”
Sterling tips his head back and laughs. My eyes are drawn to his Adam’s apple, seemingly transfixed by the way it bobs as the tenor of his voice winds itself around me like a toxic fog.
He has the kind of laugh you could live in, get lost in, if only he weren’t so wicked.
“You think you’re so clever, that you can hurt me. But you can’t, Sterling. It’s not possible.” To break me any further, I add in my head.
“Guess I’ll have to try harder.”
“Your loya
lty’s misplaced,” I mutter under my breath. This man here before me, he’s so different than the boy I used to know. He’s sharper, more cunning, colder.
While he wasn’t ever particularly sunny, he was still a bright spot for me, because his presence in our home always meant as a reprieve from Rob’s torture.
“What was that?”
“One day...” I sigh and shake my head. “No, you know what? Forget it. I’m not wasting my breath trying to plead my case to you. You’re nothing more than a lapdog. Newsflash, your master is a sociopath.”
I crumple my quiz and toss it down onto his desk before spinning on my heel and hoofing it toward the door. I’m over him, over his antics, and desperately in need of pizza.
Preferably multiple slices with extra cheese, black olives, and bell peppers. And a side of ranch.
He calls my name just as I reach the door. I slow my pace but keep moving. “Have a great lunch.”
Somehow, his parting words sound more like a threat.
Freaking psycho.
* * *
“Stupid, arrogant, no good jackass,” I swear under my breath as I stalk across the campus like a woman on a warpath.
I’m enraged, barely hanging on by a thread, and in serious need of carbs. God help anyone who stands between me and my pizza.
“I’ll show him.”
“Show who?” Stella asks, appearing at my side, seemingly out of thin air.
“Jesus Christ!” I whisper-shout. “Where did you come from?”
“Uh, I’ve been walking beside you for like two minutes.”
“Really?”
“Yup,” she says with a pop of the P. “I showed up right around no good jackass.”
“Huh.” I must have been deep in my feels to not notice my best friend at my side. Which only serves as a reminder of my lacking self-awareness.
No wonder Sterling was so easily able to pull the wool over my eyes; I may as well have my head in the damn clouds.
“I take it class was bad?”
I groan. “More than bad. It was awful.”
