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I take a threatening step toward her. “Say it again. I dare you.”
Ashley moves back. “You’ve lost your mind.”
I laugh. “And you’re so going to lose your teeth right now.”
With that, I launch myself at her, or try to.
But suddenly, Zach is holding me hostage. His fingers are wrapped around my biceps and my body is flush with his.
“That’s enough.”
Even through the shocked shrieks and gasps of people around me – definitely everyone’s watching – I hear his low growl. It inflames my anger.
“Let go of me.”
“Not until you’ve calmed down.”
I struggle against his hold but all he does is clench his jaw and flex his grip around my arms. “I swear to God, Zach, let me go or I’ll scream this fucking house down.”
His black eyes flash. “That’s the second time you’ve threatened me with it. Keep it up and I’ll give you a real reason to scream.”
Zach appears menacing, glaring down at me. His words highlight the fact that he’s bigger and stronger than he was three years ago. Every muscle in his body is bunched up and stacked, fraught with power. And my front is smashed with his.
I swallow. In real fear.
No one would dare step forward if he decides to do something. Not a single person. Servants don’t have power over the rich.
“Let me go,” I say with clenched teeth.
His impossibly thick eyelashes flicker as he studies my face, my neck – I will the rapidly beating vein on the side of it to slow down, to not show fear – and then, finally, his eyes settle on my chest. Thankfully, it’s covered with the robe.
He lets me go and I take a stumbling step back. My biceps have lost feeling under the force of his grip and I wish I could reach up and rub my nerves awake but what he says next stops me.
“I’ll have your dress replaced.”
My breath gets stuck in my throat, and almost becomes a hiccup. Did he just casually say that he’ll replace the only thing I have left of my dead mother?
“You’ll have it replaced,” I respond in a flat voice.
“It shouldn’t be that hard to find a replacement.”
His lips barely move when he says it. It’s so unimportant to him that his body doesn’t even put the effort into the words.
I’m aware that he doesn’t know the importance of my dress. He doesn’t know that this was my mom’s or how I cling to it every night, foolishly searching for her warmth, her presence. The fabric doesn’t even smell like her anymore; I’ve washed it too many times.
I foolishly think that if I have something of hers with me, touching my skin, she isn’t really gone. She’s here, watching over me.
Zach doesn’t know any of that. And neither does Ashley.
But would they really care, even if they did? Would it really bother them, make them feel guilty that they ruined the last thing that meant the world to me?
“So here’s the thing, Zach, unless you can magically bring back dead people, it’s going to be very hard to find a replacement,” I say with a throat full of so many emotions that I’m drowning in them.
“It belonged to my mom. She died last year in a car crash. My dad, too. They were on their way back from their anniversary dinner. My dad thought it’d be a nice treat for my mom. Seeing as how he never took her anywhere because we didn’t have the money. I’m sure you know that because you and your minions wouldn’t let me forget it.
“You wouldn’t let me forget that I come from the other side of the line. The trashy side. But anyway, he’d gotten a great job, my dad, painting a church in the next town, and he thought why not? Why don’t I take her out and do something nice for her? So they went. But they never came back.”
I’d helped Dad plan the whole thing. Besides, I had good news of my own. I was going to tell them that after graduation, I was leaving on a cross-country road trip. My mom would’ve been ecstatic. She always wanted to get out of this town but never could. So in a way, I was fulfilling her dream.
