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“It wasn’t unprovoked, and you know it,” he said quietly, emotion gleaming in his stormy eyes.
It hurt to see, and my own heart’s betrayal only made it worse.
“Right, you claim I broke your heart? Like you even have one.” I stabbed a finger into his chest right over said organ. “It’s just an empty cavern in here, isn’t it? Tell the truth. Don’t pretend to feel things like normal people do. I was right, I guess, when we first met, and I called you a parasitoid.”
His face tensed at that, and I could feel the hurt radiating off him. He was sensitive as hell about that word, I’d found that out the first time we’d met. In my anger, there was no weapon within reach that I wouldn’t hurl. It was a horrible thing to find out about yourself. I tilted my face up and stared at him, knowing he was too amped up to speak right now. He was working for calm, but it was slow coming.
“An organism that eventually kills the host it feeds on. That’s you, isn’t it…?”
He took a deep breath, and I saw the moment that he mastered his anger.
A cold smile slid across his full lips. “Careful, Bug. I don’t want to crush you, but I will.”
“I told you, I don’t want your mercy. Go ahead and crush me. Thanks to you, I have nothing to lose.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that. There’s always something,” he said with perfect confidence. The kind that made me nervous as hell.
Despite that, I couldn’t back down; I simply wasn’t able to. My anger was too great, and my pride, and fuck, my disappointment, too. I felt stupid and betrayed and annoyed at myself for feeling anything at all for such a monster.
“Do your worst, Cayden… that’s all you’re capable of anyway.”
I shoved him back, and this time, he let me. Escaping out of the side door, I walked away, my cheeks blazing, tears threatening, and a flurry of loud murmurs following me wherever I went.
Lily
The restof the day after gym passed in a blur of humiliation. I kept my head down and powered through. Luckily, I was pretty used to being ridiculed, though usually it was just girls like Selena who threw barbs my way. Now, everyone was looking, and some of the teachers, too. Hopefully the principal’s story about it being a prank would get around quick.
A kind janitor got rid of the printouts quickly, but I was sure people like Selena had stashed them away to torment me with later.
When I got to my room that night and flopped down on my bed, I felt like a hundred years had passed since I’d left it this morning. I was a different person than the Lily who’d headed off to school, happy and light.
I closed my eyes and dozed, the terrible day pressing me down and wearing me out. I just wanted to sleep and pretend that none of it had happened.
Later, a knock at my door woke me.
“Lily, sweetheart, it’s dinner time,” my mom called through the door.
“I’m not hungry. I don’t feel well. I just want to sleep,” I called back.
She was quiet for a long, torturous moment. “If you’re sure. We’re here if you want to talk.”
Oh God. She knew.My dad must have heard about all of it: the bike, fighting with Cayden, maybe even the journal entry. No, if she’d heard about the journal entry, she’d be having it out with me about California. It couldn’t be that. It had to be the bike thing.
I heard Cayden come to his room later and the door close. It felt excruciating to know he was right next door, feet away, and yet oceans apart. He blamed me, he’d hurt me. He was the first boy I’d ever kissed, and the first I’d ever slept with, and now, he was the first boy to break my heart as well. He was really ticking off all the boxes for me.
He blamed me and wouldn’t even hear me out, but that didn’t change the truth. I didn’t leak anything about that old newspaper article to anyone and I knew Eve wouldn’t have, either. I sat up in bed and reached for my laptop. Opening a browser, I prepared to dive deep into Midnight Falls’ past.
I might never be able to forgive what Cayden had done to me, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t clear my name.
I didn’t out him, but someone did, and I was going to find out who.
* * *
The next few days at school sucked. People talked about me wherever I went, despite the fact Principal Smith had ordered them not to. Thankfully, my father had believed that it was a silly prank gone wrong. That, at the end of the day, was the only thing that mattered. If I felt like my parents had read my words, and believed them, I couldn’t stand it.
My locker was vandalized daily with quotes from my journal, and wherever I went, there was a barrage of notes pelted at me, all with my own words reflected back at me. Teachers confiscated them in class, their faces turning pink after reading them, before ordering other students to stop. Selena and her cronies were the worst of the bunch, predictably – well, all except Winter, who seemed bored by the entire thing, as per usual.
Eve stuck to my side like glue, but she couldn’t be there all the time. My backpack got stolen at least once a day and ended up in all kinds of odd places, like the school roof or the bottom of the pool. I lost assignments that way, textbooks and countless notepads full of my neat rows of words.
