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“Nephew. He’s not my kid. His parents died in a crash.”
I sank down lower in my chair, avoiding Mr. Watts’s surprised expression, and then another look came over his face. A look of understanding as to why I was so fucked up. Like we weren’t all fucked up in that place. Having two parents was a luxury.
My uncle stood up and pointed his index finger into Mr. Watts’s startled face. “I’m not going to prison for this fucking kid. You’ll go because I’ll tell them you said it was legit.”
Speechless, Mr. Watts sat motionless, staring at my uncle, and to this day, I wonder how he managed not to roll his eyes.
Well, that’s my fucked-up past, and here’s to my screwed-up future. I lie back in my tiny-ass bed with my feet hanging off the edge and stare up at the ceiling of my dorm room. There are no cracks in the plaster or watermarks where the pipes leak. Instead, the smell of fresh paint is still in the air. I tap my cigarette out on the windowsill. Maybe I shouldn’t smoke in here. It might ruin the clean smell of the place.
I excel at ruining nice clean things. Charlotte’s dorm room is literally across the hall from mine. It’s like I planned it, but I didn’t. Eventually, I found out that there were a lot of kids from New England on this floor. Maybe the school grouped us all together so we wouldn’t be homesick. Homesick? More like being sick of home. I’m miles from my comfort zone and staying put.
Chuckling to myself, I open the window until it won’t lift anymore and toss the cigarette butt out. I look down at the thick evergreen bushes below. Fuck. Maybe I shouldn’t have done that. I really don’t know how to treat anything right. And boom, I’m thinking about Charlotte again. Even if she had grown up in Weymouth, she would never have belonged at Monarch Academy.
She was no saint, but she was too sweet for that cracked place. I could’ve been decent, but the Monarch girls hated her, and if I had shown interest, they would’ve really fucked her up. Besides, rich girls don’t want poor boyfriends. I dated a few who thought I was good-looking. But after they find out how broke I was, they ghosted me. They all thought I was joking until I had to explain it in simple terms—I didn’t have money to buy them shit.
Monarch girls didn’t mind if their gifts were stolen, but girls like Charlotte? They care. Look at what she did to get money instead of stealing.
I would’ve gotten her stolen stuff back if she had taken me seriously. She’ll take me seriously now that I’m here at her expensive school. What the fuck is wrong with me? I sound like one of her people.
There’s a knock on my door, and I sit down on the windowsill. “Come in.”
Chapter 7
Asher
Jaxon walks into my room, frowning and waving his hand in front of his face. “Dude, are you in here smoking?”
“Why do you care?” I scowl. “I’m trying to quit.”
He smiles, but he’s sussing me out. “Really? Because you sound like you smoke a pack an hour.”
I take the bullshit with grace. “Fuck off, vegan man. Besides, I have to quit, so I can buy books.”
Jaxon laughs. “Don’t smoke that shit. Come on, we’ll smoke before the party.”
Okay, so there’s one genuine cool guy in this ass-kissing dorm. We head down the steps and out of the building, but before we can go anywhere, we run into Jaxon’s roommate, Hudson. I’m not sure about that guy, except that I don’t trust him. When he said he had attended Stonehaven, I wasn’t surprised. I could tell he went there. If you place him next to Charlotte, they look like a matching set of all-American youths. His blond hair is darker but glows like hers. And his teeth are so fucking white that I need sunglasses when he smiles.
I don’t want to like him. Hudson is the type of guy that I’m sure Charlotte would hook up with while I’m jacking off alone to her sexy AF account on my phone.
“Hudson, you know Asher,” Jaxon points his finger like I’m a fucking stray tagging along.
“Hey, how’s it going?” Hudson grips my hand and shakes it like he wants to break it. Then he looks at Jaxon. “He’s coming with us?”
Ha. The feeling is mutual and shared. Hudson doesn’t trust me either.
“Look at him. He’s cool,” Jaxon shakes his head in disbelief. “Does he look like a trust fund baby boy? You know he smokes. Smell that leather jacket.”
“Trust fund,” I scoff, “I had to beg, borrow, and keep on stealing to get into this place.”
Hudson looks at me hard. “I thought you were from Rockingham?”
And there goes another fuck-up slip of the tongue. “Not everybody is rich there.” I grin with bullshit confidence. “Do you know Ludington?”
“I know Ludington Lane, man. I’ve been in the sketch parts of town.” He laughs but not at me. “Don’t let my wholesome good looks fool you, my fellow Rockie.”
He laughs, and we join in, but I’m not buying his bullshit. Charlotte smiled the whole time she spoke to him at the icebreaker. And he watched us the entire time I talked to her. He would be the competition if we were competing. But she wants nothing to do with me, because I went too far. I don’t know why I didn’t think about other guys pursuing her. Charlotte doesn’t need the baggage I’m hauling around when she can be with someone rich and sort of sane.
We walk away from the school and keep going past the buildings to the end of the path. After a while, we follow a dirt path and end up in nature. The whole campus is surrounded by freaking trees, grass, and shit. The birds are chirping like crazy as we cut along the long grass toward the largest oak trees I’ve ever seen. The trees have room to grow, and their roots aren’t pushing out of concrete sidewalks.
