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King takes my hand and leads me around the front of the car as the boys fall in beside us. It's almost as if they’ve created some kind of protective shield around me. “Geez, would it hurt you to give us a little smile?” King teases. “It’s just school. It’s not like we’re sending you here to be tortured.”
“Aren’t you?” I grumble.
“Sorry, Ellie,” Grayson says. “I had a meeting with principal Torsney a few days ago to discuss your options, and it’s not looking good. There are only a few weeks of school left, and if you don’t show up and catch up on the work, you’re going to fail. You’ve gotten this far, and after going through so many schools, is failing really an option for you?”
I let out a sigh, knowing he’s right. Ravenwood Heights is my eighteenth school. I went from home to home, suffering a new way at each one, but I toughed it out. I stuck with it because I was intent on making something of myself after graduation. I never got a chance to figure out what that was going to be, but if I give up now, if I allow myself to fail, it will have all been for nothing.
“So, was online learning not an option?” I ask, glancing back at Grayson, just as everyone else does. “Couldn’t Principal Torsney have organized something with the teachers to have them email me the work? That’s what happened when I had to have time off in middle school after my appendix burst.”
Grayson’s face goes blank, and I watch as his jaw clenches. “Fuck. I didn’t even think about that,” he mutters under his breath, looking pissed at himself for now having me here out in the open at school when I could have been home safe all along. “I’ll talk to him. I’m sure I could … persuade him to make the right decision.”
I roll my eyes as Cruz looks over at me. “Is that what you really want though? To be sitting in bed with your computer all day instead of in a classroom around your friends? This is the last few weeks of school. You won’t get this opportunity again unless you want to do the whole college thing.”
My brows furrow. College? Fuck, I’ve always wanted to go to college, but over the past few months it’s been the furthest thing from my mind. I haven’t applied anywhere or even know what I want to study, but how? Going to college doesn’t exactly seem like something that I have the time or ability to do anymore.
I shake my head, dropping my gaze to the ground. “For as long as I can remember, college has been the ultimate goal. If I could have miraculously gotten myself through high school and made it to college, then I know that I would have been alright. I would have been able to break free from the foster system and build myself a proper life, but … I just don’t know anymore. I don’t really think college is an option for me now. Besides, do I really need it anymore? It’s not like I’m going to have a chance at having a career, not with Dynasty bearing down on me. That is my job now.”
King squeezes my hand. “You can’t think about it like that. Dynasty doesn't rule you. You rule it, so if you want to go to college, you go to college.”
“But there’s too much to do. I wouldn’t have time for college.”
Carver shakes his head. “Delegate, Winter. Just because you’re the leader, doesn’t mean you have to give a hundred percent of yourself to it. Hire an assistant to overlook everything. You still have a life and no one expects you to stop living it. If you want to go to college, then we’ll make it happen.”
“Just like that, huh?” I scoff, rolling my eyes at his arrogant confidence. “Getting me into a good college is a little different than enrolling me in your high school. Besides, what’s going to happen? Are you going to follow me around campus all day, making sure I don’t get a papercut?”
Cruz laughs. “We got you off murder charges, didn’t we?” he says with a wink as a cocky smirk lifts the corner of his lips and shows off his perfectly straight teeth. Heat floods my stomach and sends an intense desire slamming through me, and for a second, I have to remind myself that throwing Cruz up against a wall in a school is inappropriate. Though, it wouldn’t be the first time that I forgot my manners in school.
Fuck me. Maybe Scardoni was onto something. Maybe I am a whore. Oh well, I may be a whore, but I’m only a whore for my men. No one else will ever get the pleasure of seeing me like that, not as long as they hold my heart captive.
