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Shock made me forget my sadness for a second, and I stared after him with wide eyes.
What the fuck just happened?
“What…?”
I didn’t finish my question, but Finn answered anyway.
“He just needs a minute, Tal.” He squeezed my hand, which he’d picked up while I was talking to Gregory. “He’s pissed as shit. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Mason’s a hard guy to talk out of things.”
A noise that was almost a laugh fell from my lips. “Yeah. I figured that out.”
“He thinks it’s his fault this happened to you. The wreck,” Cole said, his voice low.
A sudden memory sprang into my mind of Mason and him murmuring late at night in my hospital room. I couldn’t remember everything they’d talked about, but hadn’t Mason said something like that then?
“Why?”
Elijah shook his head. “What we did to you was fucked up, Talia. We basically gave the whole school the go-ahead to mess with you. We told them to do it. And Adena has always been one of the worst. She went after you so hard at first because she was trying to get in good with Mace. Trying to win him back, I guess. When that didn’t work, when he started paying more attention to you instead of her, she went after you out of spite and jealousy.”
“Yeah.” Finn snorted. “Although she’s not doing it to try to win his approval anymore. Not since what he said to her after she pushed you down the stairs.”
There was something about his tone that made my brows draw together. I assumed whatever confrontation he was talking about had happened after Mason had left my dorm that day. And judging by the way he spoke, whatever Mason had said to Adena had been… not nice.
“Just give him a little time,” the blond boy added. “He’s just mad. At himself more than anything.”
Then he wrapped an arm around my shoulders, pulling me toward him until my less injured side was tucked tightly against his body. I breathed in his clean, citrus scent and felt my muscles relax a little.
“I’m sorry, Legs,” he murmured against my hair, pressing a kiss to the side of my head. “I really am sorry.”
“Adena won’t mess with you again.” Cole’s jaw clenched, and for a second, I thought he’d follow in Mason’s tracks by punching a wall and then bolting. But instead, he stayed planted right where he was, his sky-blue gaze burning into mine. “We’ll keep you fucking safe.”
Chapter 6
Jacqueline noticed the hole in my wall the second she stepped into my room the next day, as if it were a blinking red beacon instead of just a small, ragged indentation. Her eyes widened before her gaze flew to my hands, checking my knuckles for signs of damage.
There wasn’t any, obviously. But I didn’t say anything about what’d happened, and she didn’t ask. She just shook her head sharply and walked out. Maybe she thought I was turning into a crazy, vicious psycho like my mother had—but I’d rather let her think that than tell her Mason had done it. My grandmother could carry a grudge into the next lifetime, and she already hated me. I didn’t see any reason to put him on her list too.
The remaining week before spring semester seemed to simultaneously rush by and drag out.
Truthfully, I needed the extra time to keep resting up and healing. Two days after Gregory Nichols called, Philip drove me back to Roseland Medical to get my stitches taken out. The skin on my shoulder and chest where the seat belt had dug into me had been badly abraded, but it hadn’t been the kind of wound that
could be stitched up. There had been several deep cuts on my arm and side that had needed sutures though.
Doctor Garrett seemed pleased with how everything was healing, although the wounds were still pink and raw looking—their appearance seeming even worse somehow without the stitches covering them up. He was happy with how my leg and ankle were looking too, although I couldn’t even bring myself to glance down at the puffy, swollen flesh when he took the cast off to examine it.
I was quiet on the way home, and Philip didn’t press me to talk, which I was grateful for.
As much as I hadn’t wanted to go back to my grandparents’ house, I found myself sort of glad that I’d been forced to. Even though things had been getting better and less tense between me and my grandfather before all of this, we’d still felt like strangers in a lot of ways. But he felt more like family now, and I liked it.
Jacqueline was all set to have her driver take me to campus on the Sunday before school started, but the Princes offered to pick me up instead, and I accepted their offer immediately. It might’ve been more comfortable in the back of the big black SUV, but I was a little worried my grandmother would try to come with me, and I’d rather be lowered face-first into a pit of lava than be alone in a car with her.
I heard the sound of someone at the door around one o’clock and hopped off the bed as quickly as I could. Jacqueline had sent one of the house staff out to buy me clothes I could wear with my cast—lots of shorts and baggy pants—and I’d packed them all up in a small duffel, along with my medications and bandages. At least it would be easy enough to wear the cast with the Oak Park uniform, since the girls were all required to wear skirts.
As I was trying to maneuver the bag’s strap onto my good shoulder, a knock sounded at the door at the same time it swung open. Cole let out a noise like a growl and strode toward me quickly, plucking the bag from my grip and draping it over his shoulder.
“Ready?” he grunted.
“Yeah.”
