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Her guru or whatever. Guilt raked claws through me because I’d kind of tuned her out. Yes, she was still at the Sunshine Retreat, and she’d been there for months. Hopefully, it worked; she sounded happier.
That was something, right?
* * *
I’d gotten my speed and my distance back even as I worked on staying focused. Jackie said they were ordering another battery of tests for Pen. We needed to know if this course of treatment had worked.
The fact they weren’t sure was making me insane. How could they not know? They figured out the first round of treatments wasn’t as effective, but she wasn’t that far from athirdbirthday, and we still didn’t know if all the treatments were working.
* * *
“We want to discuss the terms of a new contract,” Teddy said via the conference call. “You will be graduating soon, and you’ve had a two-year cooling-off period—if you want to get serious about your music again, well, now would be the time to do it.”
I glanced at Aubrey and she lifted her shoulders. Neither of us knew what we wanted to do.
* * *
We were closing in on finals week and the whole school had turned into a seething mass of chaos and tension. Running kept me sane.
“Ace,” Lachlan said as he fell in next to me. I could pretend I had the music cranked up.
But I didn’t. “Lachlan.”
“You have time to talk later?”
“We’re talking now.” I managed to even get the words out without huffing.
“You’re also running. I was thinking we could sit down—”
“No.”
“Ace—”
“I said no, Lachlan. Based on what you did to RJ, I’m going to assume you really do know what the words mean.” I slid to a halt and faced him. “So, no. I don’t want to talk to you later. I don’t want to talk to you all. In a few short weeks, I’m out of here and we never have to see each other again.”
“You’re still mad at me.”
I just stared at him. Not his brightest moment.
Blowing out a breath, he raked a hand through his hair. “I want to try and explain. Could you maybe trust me a little too—”
“Trust you? The last time I trusted you, I ended up in a room where I not only got to see, but hear a girl being sexually assaulted on a video thatyouset up to punish RJ. I’ve had nightmares about her cries for weeks, and you want me to trust you?” I stared at him. “I have two words for you, fuck and off.”
“Yeah, you’re still mad at me. I thought if I gave you some space…”
“Well, you might go back to the space thing. That was working for me.” With that, I turned and went back to my run.
Douchebags. They were all douchebags.
Daddy loved them best.
Then again, he was the biggest goddamn douchebag of them all.
* * *
“I finished another song,” Jonas said, his tone quiet. I hadn’t said a word when he came out, just made my coffee. I still made him his. Just like he still brought me food. But we didn’t talk.
This was breaking the rules of our armistice or whatever you wanted to call it.
