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Father:Isabella, your mother and I need you to attend the Sisters of Indiana benefit coming up.
I nearly droppedmy cell phone. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
Emily slammed her empty coffee mug down on the table. “What?”
“My parents actually think I’ll go to a charity event for them!”
I showed Emily the text message, and, like me, she was equally shocked. She had always been a proponent of leaving my family behind, for good. She always said they were the anchors that were going to cause me to drown.
“Who the hell do they think they are?”
I wasted no time in squashing any hope they had of me helping their reputation back home.
Me:I know you’re joking, Dad. You guys cut me off, remember? Why do you think I would go to that?
Father:We cut you off as punishment, Isabella. Get your act together, and maybe we’ll help you out again.
Me:Nope, I’m doing just fine!
I droppedmy cell phone next to Emily’s mug.
She raised her brow, as to ask, what the fuck? But she didn’t even need to see it. It’s like we could reach other’s minds.
“Who the fuck knows,” I said, wishing Blade were there with me. He’d tell me to power off my cell phone and ignore the text messages. Hell, he might have even got onto the phone to have a little bit of a conversation himself. As much as I enjoyed the idea of Blade Eggleston telling my parents off, I knew it was better to not get him involved.
Unfortunately, my father wasn’t finished.
Father: Lest we remind you that most of your college education has been paid for already. Showing up to this event is the least you can do.
A smile playedacross my face as I replied back.
Me:Fine, Dad. I’ll be there.
After finishing my coffee,I went upstairs and started my homework. If my parents wanted to guilt me into going to some dumb charity event, then I’d one-up them by showing up with Blade. It’d mean we’d have to come clean about our relationship with everyone, which wasn’t something I thought I’d ever do, but my parents had finally pushed me too far.
It’d do me well not to give a shit about what other people think, anyway. So if the upper crust of Exley wanted to look down on me for dating a man-whore, then that was their problem.
I met Blade in one of the common rooms on campus later that afternoon. He had his head down sitting in an oversized blue bean bag, pushed right up against a purple wall.
“The colors in here could wake up the dead,” I said before plopping down in a hot pink bean bag.
Blade leaned over to kiss me but then stopped. “Sorry, bad habit. I have some great news.”
“Oh yeah?”
He proudly handed me his tablet, displaying a 95% on a recent physics exam. “If it weren’t for you, I’d be failing every class right now, especially physics.”
“I am so proud of you, Blade,” I said, and it felt good to mean it. It felt good to not have to pretend to be happy for him because he was paying my tuition. That’s the way it always was with Jason. I had to show him admiration and adoration for the smallest things so we wouldn’t end up in a boxing match of words where he’d berate me into submission.
The work wasn’t finished yet, though so we got straight into studying for Blade’s philosophy class.
He may have projected the image of a dumb jock, one whose sole purpose in life was to play football and get girls. But the more time we spent hitting the books, the more his intelligence came out. In fact, the only reason he was struggling in classes was because of a mental block.
In Blade’s opinion, he didn’t need to know anything other than nutrition and physical fitness. The only reason he went to Exley was to follow in his father’s footsteps, just like I had with my parents. If it were up to him, he’d have attended a college closer to home with the hopes of going professional.
Blade stood up to use the restroom and I absolutely ogled his muscular ass as he disappeared around the corner. He knew how to wear a fucking pair of jeans, that’s for sure, but I pictured him in a grey suit as he accompanied me to the charity event in a few weeks, the same one I had yet to invite him to.
When he returned a few minutes later, I decided that it was time. “Can we talk about something else for a minute?”
