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“Your terms. How has this got to work to make it happen?”
Her hands fell to her sides, her eyes were rolling a little. “I—I—I don’t, I guess I need to know you are absolutely going to leave me alone after this. Just stay away from me entirely.”
An interesting response. “I could draw up a document if you like. I, Axel Jordan Bennett, swear to leave Aileen Jayne Anderson alone entirely, including potential interactions with her father or her father’s intellectual property, so long as I can get a good long look at her tits.”
She looked a little bit horrified and a little bit intrigued. “You would actually… write a document like that?”
“Well you probably won’t want it to get signed by a witness, so it won’t be worth much, but it’s something you can throw up to me if I do cancel on you. Call me a cheat, a criminal, if you have to.”
There was a strange intimacy in the way she was looking up at me now, a lack of fear even though I was close enough to see a little way down her school shirt and we were discussing her being even further exposed to me. “All the things you’re out to call me and my dad, you mean to say?”
It amazed me, how quick she was. I had to break up this sparring party before I started to enjoy it too much. Before I really did sell myself short.
There was a group walking near us on their way back to class. I raised my voice to capture their attention. “So Aileen and I have just made the best damn trade of my life: she’s going to let me see her tits in person if I promise to stay away from her from then on. Now who’s a lucky fucking bastard, huh?”
I got some awkward turned heads and a few of them practically running away, but they’d all been looking at that photo. This probably just looked like some extra-weird courtship shenanigans. There were a few grins and thumbs-up, and not just from the guys either.
Aileen’s jaw had dropped. “You—you never intended to deal with me in good faith here, did you?”
What to say to her? “I think that’s what I’d say about you, and you do tend to get what you give when it comes to business.”
Aileen’s lips quivered, and then she fled. The bell rang, and I made a point of following her almost exactly, though slowly, on my way back to class. She was going to think twice before she screwed me around like this again, that much was certain.
Chapter Eight
As much as anything I was frustrated that it was his brutal turnaround that had almost made me burst into tears—in front of him, as well.
I didn’t understand it at all, but when he’d started talking about looking at my body like that, my head had started spinning on its axis and I’d…
Not decided to go along with it, but I couldn’t help playing with the idea. There was something about the thought of having a guy that eager to see me, to know what I was really like underneath all that stuff I had to do every morning to convince myself I thought fashion and beauty were all rubbish, that…
Well, it had completely erased any common sense from my mind for a while. And I had a feeling he knew that was what would happen. He’d—what was that thing Mr. Henderson talked about in our computing class? Social engineering. He’d done some social engineering on me, and I’d acted exactly how I was supposed to act according to his plans.
I hated it more than what he’d done with my photos. At least I’d had no part in that happening to begin with, it was just an unpleasant surprise. This time, he had taken my own feelings, had made them into exactly the shape he wanted, and then turned them on me like a weapon.
I was on the right path to becoming exactly what Callie and Tamara had become… which was just fine for them, but I wanted better. I needed more in my life than to be some handsome bastard’s toy.
Mrs. Hitchens called me in again over lunch to talk about the new photo that had surfaced. Yes, I said, I knew who was responsible for that, and I would be very interested in pursuing consequences through the school, so long as it went no further. Then Ms. Miller got me alone and tried to get at my feelings, which were mostly ‘uncomfortable that she was so interested in my feelings’. She was eager to validate my desire to avoid dealing with this through the police—she understood how that could be confronting, that I might be grilled unfairly or not believed.
I would have hoped the police wouldn’t believe me, because I was lying my face off about some of the details. If Axel wanted everyone to believe I’d sent him pornographic photos, then good for him. I’d wear that reality. But I was going to make sure it really stuck to him. I was going to send him off from school in total disrepute for what he’d done.
For the rest of that school day I just had to bear with the muttering and snickering. Mrs. Hitchens had said I could go home, but I didn’t want to alert Dad that something was up yet. I’d asked her not to call him, and she’d been hesitant to go along with that as if not respecting my wishes would improve my current situation, but because I was eighteen I was able to make a compelling case for being technically independent of the guy who paid my school fees. That photo was going to be around forever so I’d have to talk to him about it, but I didn’t need anyone at my school getting involved in the when or how.
I was gritting my teeth and concentrating so hard on everything happening in class I didn’t actually take in a thing, but I got it over with and managed to meet up with Callie and Tamara out the front of the school for a war council of sorts. Unfortunately, our council somehow also involved Lucas and Steven, which I knew from the start was going to make for a bigger fight.
It was a fight I was up to, though. “I need the two of you to stand up for me when I say Axel spread those photos.”
Tamara already had her hands fisted on her hips. “I thought you said you never gave him any photos.”
“Wait, she didn’t?” said Steven.
“I didn’t, but it doesn’t seem to matter right now. And if Axel wants to go with a doctored version of the truth, I’m happy to roll with that as far as needed to get him the punishment he deserves. I just need someone to back me up, because you know nobody’s going to believe Axel did anything wrong, as popular as he is.”
“You’re popular too,” Callie pointed out, a little sulky.
“Well that’s true…” I thought about how many people had been willing to approach me today and say they were sorry about what had happened, offer their support. They weren’t even willing to not look. “It’s different for me though, isn’t it? A popular guy is on track to become the prime minister. A popular girl is probably up t
o something.”
