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Stan: Puppet, something has come up with work. I won’t be back for a few weeks. Sylvie will stay with you and cook for you. No clothes for the whole time. That’s an order. I will be abroad and won’t be able to be in touch too much. Make sure you stay good.
A few weeks?
A fewweeks?
My breathing accelerates as my wild, panicked eyes go to Elliot.
“Uh oh,” he says cheerily. “Looks like we have a while before your employer realizes you’re gone.”
No. This can’t be possible.
It’s not hard for Elliot to acknowledge the way he should answer Stan’s message. I’m only allowed to reply to his texts with two words unless there’s an emergency. He can see that from all the other times I’ve replied to him.
“Yes, Daddy,” Elliot murmurs to himself as he types. “Sent.” He looks back at me. “So, excited to go home?”
To go home?
To a place where I don’t belong?
To a place where my own childhood best friends hate me and where people want me dead. I ran away. I made myself look guilty to the Kings.
I have absolutely nothing left in this life. All I’ve done for two years is become the puppet of a man who’s never been refused anything since he’s had power. But at least I was safe.
Ethan and Elliot are throwing me back into shark-infested waters, and they’ll be all too happy to watch as I’m shredded by their sharp teeth.
“Elliot.” Ethan’s tone is annoyed, to say the least. “I don’t like hearing her voice. Stop asking her questions.”
Elliot smiles at me. “You made him grumpy.”
Grumpy is a fucking understatement. Ethan hates my guts. He’s so fucking sure he gets to do that when it’s my heart he broke.
I observe Ethan as he drives. He’s rolled up his sleeves, and his strong forearms tense, the veins swelling the harsher his grip become on the steering wheel.
Ethan didn’t use to be strong and deadly good looking. He used to be the tall, skinny loser who dyed his hair and painted his nails black. Who listened to bands others found strange. He was odd looking, lithe, and strangely quiet. People would say he needed an exorcism. They’d make fun of him and beat him up, and he wasn’t strong enough to fight back.
For three years of high school, that’s what his life was. For two years and four months I dated him and fell in love despite everything everyone said about him. People thought I was ugly, and not worth giving me the time of day then. It was before what my friends like to call myglow up.Before everyone wanted to fuck me.
But I wasn’t an outcast.
They only began including me in their hatred when I started dating Ethan.
Elliot didn’t care as much as he does now. He only protected his little brother once in a while, when he’d show up to school. He had other shit going on at home, where they both needed more protection than at North Shore High. Elliot took care of things. He was already part of the Kings.
Then Elliot got Ethan to join. Ethan met Caden King, and everything changed. They became best friends. Ethan’s appearance changed as he started exercising, lifting weights, building his body. Caden is a fucking psychopath who started turning my boyfriend into a man with no conscience. Ethan earned himself the reputation of being dangerous and deadly. He becamehotby everyone’s standard of physicality. He becamemysteriousrather than weird. And guess who got left behind?
The ugly girl who didn’t fit his new reputation.
The girl who realized that if she never wanted to be left behind again, she had to do the same. Glow up, join the Kings, become fierce and fearless. Turn into areal bitchbecause I knew what I wanted, and I wasn’t scared to go for it. I was never ignored again after that. All I had to do was live with my new reputation: a hot, heartless slut.
I did the same as Ethan. I was just labeled differently.
Having sex with Elliot was just the cherry on top.
And my ex-boyfriend dared hate me after that.
“You don’t get to hate me, you know?” I tell Ethan. “You’re the one who broke up with me.”
Our eyes cross in the rearview mirror and he gives me a scathing look.
