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“You got somewhere you gotta be?” Emmett asked, still easily keeping pace beside me with his long legs. I wasn’t quite running, but I was putting space between us and Oleander Mansion looming behind us.
We were heading across the yard into the field beyond. I could glimpse a lake in the distance, the surface winking in the sunlight.
I just shrugged and kept heading forward. “It just feels good to get out,” I said. “I don’t like being crammed up in one place for too long.”
He laughed. “You do realize that’s part of the Trials. It’s psychological as much as anything. What did you think you were signing up for?”
I glanced back at him, then forward again. I wasn’t ready to get into that with him right now, if ever. My reasons for being here were my own. I still had my pride.
“Bellamy.” His voice was sharp with that commanding edge. “Stop.”
Huffing in annoyance, I did. And I was as annoyed at having to stop as I was at the fact that I could tell the difference in his normal conversation tone and his… well, his Dom tone was the only way to describe it.
I was also annoyed at the way my sex clenched just hearing it.
“What?” I crossed my arms over my chest. His eyes moved down briefly, registering the gesture. I dropped my arms, frustrated at the way he noticed every little damn thing.
“I won’t demand everything at once,” he said, “but you will give me a little bit.”
I jutted my chin out. “All I promised in this bargain was to give you my body.”
He smiled, and I wanted to smack it off his face. “That’s where you’re mistaken. Now, let’s take a nice, leisurely walk around the lake instead of like a bat out of hell, and you can tell me why you still live in Darlington. When we were seniors, you were modeling and dreaming of being an Instagram influencer. I always thought you’d skip college to go flaunting around Ibiza or something like that.”
Hearing him talk about the past hit a nerve. I couldn’t say it didn’t. And at the same time, it sounded like a completely different universe. A different person.
God, had those really been my dreams?
I shrugged and kept walking. We had slowed down as we came to the lake, walking the perimeter, but I still felt that restless energy that had me wanting to bolt.
“Bellamy?” he pushed, because of course he did. He was like a splinter that wouldn’t let you forget it. “What happened?”
“I don’t know,” I said, waving a hand dismissively. “Life?”
“Bellamy.” His tone said it all. He wouldn’t drop it until I gave him more.
“Fine,” I breathed, shooting him a glare but being careful not to roll my eyes. “Dad died, okay? Dad died right at the end of senior year and it—” Brought the whole house of cards tumbling down. “—sucked.”
He nodded, his brows drawing together. “I remember hearing about that. My dad went to the funeral.”
I shrugged. “Well, they were in the Order together.”
His eyes cut my way. “You knew your dad was in the Order?”
“Mom told me about it after he died.”
I found out a lot about my dad after he passed away. I’d never really known him when he was alive beyond him being a sort of benign absent presence in our lives. Always traveling for “business.” Ha.
“Do you miss him?”
“No.” I didn’t bother lying or putting emotion I didn’t feel into my voice.
I could feel Emmett’s frown without looking. Instead, I looked out at the lake and breathed in the fresh air that blew across it, making small waves lap at the edge of the rocky beach.
“Does your mother know you’re here?” he asked next. “Aren’t you supposed to be marrying an Atlanta banker or something?”
I barely contained my scoff. Oh if only he knew. This was Mommy Dearest’s idea. She still clung to all this blue-blood bullshit. Ironic, considering Emmett was new money. But if he was good enough for the Order, he was good enough for her.
Her father had been in the Order, and I knew she thought if I could just snag me a husband who was Order material, everything would be put back to rights. The nightmare of the last half decade could just poof, disappear!
Because Mom thought that at the end of this, Emmett would fall in love with me and propose marriage, just like the last few Initiates had to their belles.
Ha. Hahahahahahahaha. I could die laughing. I could just die.
Then again, she’d always been easily deluded.
She’d believed Dad’s bullshit for all those years, after all.
I looked him in the eyes and told him the truth. It was in the contract we’d signed that I never lie to him. “She knows where I am.”
His eyebrows went up. I’d surprised him. He didn’t know it, but I was full of surprises.
