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My Prey.
I ignore Adriana, but she doesn’t move. I look up, annoyed. “What?”
“She isn’t interested in you, Valen. Be a good boy and take what’s right in front of you.”
“I’m not interested,” I say in a flat tone.
“Aren’t you too old for her?”
“Aren’t you too old to act like you’re in high school? Desperate for the popular guy to notice you.”
Her face turns red, and she storms off, looking around, hoping no one heard me insult her. Adriana’s father is in the Order, but a low-key member that helps export whatever the fuck we want in and out of where we see fit. She’s a kleptomaniac. She steals for fun and only pays if she gets caught.
Professor Owens walks in, looks at the podium, and picks up a paper I didn’t see there when I walked in.
“Miss Price,” he calls, looking around the room.
She raises her hand. “I’m here,” she says and lowers her hand.
“Would you read it to the class? It’s part of the assignment.”
I see her stiffen. She hesitates for a split second.
She remembered the assignment. I wonder what she wrote about one of her summers. I told her to let me see it before she turned it in, but she didn’t.
She doesn’t trust me.
I wonder what she did that I’m not privy to. I want to know what she likes. Her college applications said she aspires to be a writer, which is one of the reasons she is enrolled in this class.
She gets up and takes the paper. She goes back to her seat, making it a point not to look at me.
Her gaze sweeps the room. Everyone looks in her direction. She looks down at the paper and begins:
“For some, summer is warm. It can be a time when you fall in love. The nights are longer. When you’re asked out by someone who says you're special, you look up at the dark sky, see the stars, and hope you can burn together and become one. You trust him because he said you could. He’s my person in him. It’s one of those moments you think is perfect. The kind that you replay in your mind before you fall asleep. The kind that gives you dimples on your skin from goose bumps. The kind that makes you feel liquescent, glistening under the stars.
But my last summer wasn’t warm. It was cold. Wounds would turn into deep scars, bandaging my heart. He wasn’t my person. He was a lie. There were no stars in the dark sky. No wishes to burn as one.
There was laughter. He expressed how he thought of me. How ugly I looked. How nasty I felt. I would do anything to fit in. Reminding me that everything I thought about love was a lie. My body was just currency for a sick, twisted game.
I looked up, not knowing what was happening all around me. All I remember is how my breathing stopped. How my hands shook when he laughed about the way I looked without my clothes. It was the summer I would never forget because I lost so much. You see, I was so desperate to live life and fall in love. I didn’t know everything I wished for would be taken from me. My confidence. The spark behind my eyes when I looked in the mirror. The beauty I thought I possessed. The love I thought I had. I fell.
I fell into a dark hole, and now I’m here.”
She puts the paper down. My hands are numb from how hard I’m gripping the edge of the table.
Silence stretches throughout the room.
Professor Owen clears his throat. “Thank you, Miss Price.”
Garret glances at her and then at me. My eyes land on the back of her head, and I know after hearing about her summer, she won’t turn around. How could she? Someone hurt her, and it wasn’t just one asshole. There were more.
She couldn’t breathe.
Her hands shook.
How ugly I looked.
How nasty I felt.
