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“Excuse me. What?” I gasp when I don’t have a cup of water in my lungs. “You did what?”
“We got you enrolled at SSU again,” he says matter-of-factly. As if they hadn’t spent the last six months trying to get me toleave.
I want to ask more questions likeWhy?AndHow?Andwhat the actual fuck?But if I start asking those types of questions Desi will want to know why I’m putting up such a fuss, and I can’t very well tell her they’d made my life hell, they’d finally gotten what they’d wanted and now they’re inexplicably bringing me back. If they think they can do this only to go back to treating me like shit…
“I don’t want to go back,” I say through gritted teeth.
“Ro,” Ezra starts slowly and I can tell he’s choosing his words carefully. All of them are with Desi in the room. “It’s the best place for you. We’ll be able to help you now.”
“Now?” I say. “I thought you were helping mebefore.”
“We were, but circumstances have changed, and the best place for you is at Septem Stellae, with us.” Gideon sounds firm, just like Fielder had.
“But Morganknows.”
“So the fuck what?” Hardin asks. They don’t need an explanation of what exactly she knows. That my father went crazy and killed a man while trying to save me.
“We won’t let her say anything,” Ezra assures me.
I arch a brow and open my mouth to respond, but Desi gets there before me. “How are you going to keep her from saying anything? From what Ro told me, she doesn’t strike me as a person who sees reason.”
“We just won’t.” Fielder doesn’t expand on that and I know exactly why. He doesn’t want to tell my sister, who he’s only recently convinced to like him, that they will blackmail or threaten Morgan to keep her from telling my secret.
“Well,” Desi says, crossing her arms and tilting her head in a way that is so familiar it makes a pang in my chest. “That sounds suspiciously threatening.” She looks at me. “Does he typically make simple statements sound so violent?”
I shrug a shoulder. “Fielder can make the most benign sentence sound violent. He just has to glare at you with those hard green eyes of his and visions of pain fall through your head like rain.”
“That’s not true,” the man in question protests.
Desi purses her lips, and goes back to considering the boys in front of her, her jaw tight. Sure, they’d won her over somewhat, but she isn’t about to just hand me over to them without fully considering everything.
It doesn’t take long. I guess that’s my fault, since I didn’t exactly tell her everything. She doesn’t know that they are the ones that made my life hell the last few months. I didn’t tell her their names. “You boys know the dicks who have been treating Ro like shit?” She asks, watching them closely.
Not one of them flinches, not one of them looks away from her. Gideon nods slowly. “We do.”
“Did you ever try to step in to help her?”
“We helped her as best we could given the situation,” Ezra hedges.
“If she goes back with you, will you keep them from doing it again?”
Hardin answers this one. “You can bloody well count on it.”
“And will you make sure that they pay?” My sister’s voice is uncharacteristically blood thirsty, full of vengeance.
“Desi!”
But Fielder doesn’t even hesitate. He just nods once. “You can believe that they will be making it up to Ro for the rest of their lives.”
The next day, I make them leave. I make them go far away from me, and give me space to spend time with my sister. Or at least I think I do, but I catch sight of them on more than one occasion as we wander around London taking in the sights. It’s painfully obvious that they’re tailing us, keeping an eye on me to make sure I’m safe.
Desi seems delightfully unaware of them, though, so I guess I’m thankful for that.
I guess I should also be thankful that they’re at least giving me the illusion of space, even if I grit my teeth every time I catch sight of one of them.
The day before my vacation ends and I have to head back to the shit show that is my real life, I stop seeing them all together. I have no idea where they go or why they’ve vanished, and I halfway wish I hadn’t deleted all of their numbers from my phone when I left SSU. Because now that I’m used to seeing them all the freaking time, I’m worried about them.
After half a day free of the Effers, I cave and ask Sam for Hardin’s number. Though once I have it… I’m not really sure what to say. Can I just send a text asking if they’re okay? If I let them know that I’ve noticed their absence, will that send the wrong message?
