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He doesn’t remember.
There are no words to describe the emotions that well up inside me as that revelation sinks in. Relief is too weak to describe the way I think I’ll fall out of my chair in a puddle of shaking hysteria at the realization that he can’t betray our secret. Frustration isn’t even a shadow of the screaming beast of fury that claws at my insides, ripping my sanity to shreds. Devastation is too mild, a lukewarm version of the soul-rending agony that twists the bars of my golden cage.
Someone speaks to me, and I smile, just like Jackie.
I have no idea what they said. My brain is moving at light-speed behind my placid, painted-on face. I can’t focus on a thought before it’s gone. I can’t control an emotion before it’s replaced with another.
Colt doesn’t remember.
He doesn’t remember Bye Week last year, the fateful morning I gave him a ride home. He can’t tell them the things we did in Cotton Montgomery’s pool house. He doesn’t know that for a moment, we emerged from our cocoons and let our butterfly souls dance through the sky together, that we bent the bars of each other’s cages and let each other out.
He doesn’t know we let each other in.
And that’s a good thing.
He can’t expose me or get himself killed for it.
Which means I can’t either.
If I want to survive this year, I have to forget it as thoroughly as he has. I have to lock myself away even tighter, so tightly there’s no room for memory or sorrow, for desire or fire, for wings that beat like a heart. I have to carry on like nothing happened, just like he is.
I’ll do it, even if it kills me. I’ll do it, because if I don’t, they’ll killhim.
Somehow, we make it through the first session, though afterwards, I have no memory of what was said after his confession. I only know I kept my face on, even when I was blacked out in an anxiety attack for an entire afternoon.
Only when we’re walking out, and Colt stops at the door to let me go ahead, his fingers skimming my lower back, do I return to my body with a jolt that’s so harsh it draws a gasp from my lips.
I catch Baron’s glance our way, and I bite down on my tongue until I taste the warm, salty blood of my animal body. It brings me back to myself, and I scold myself for letting my mask slip even for a fraction of a second.
Pull yourself together, you worthless cunt.
“Don’t touch me, you freak,” I warn, curling my lip at Colt in a snarl.
“What, you think this is contagious?” he asks, holding up a hand that’s so scarred he can’t even fully straighten the fingers as he wiggles them at me.
I shrink away in disgust, and he laughs.
The bastard has the nerve to laugh. Atme.
“Don’t worry, Princess, burns don’t work that way. And you might as well get used to looking at my scars, since apparently we’re going to be spending a lot of time together this semester.”
“In your dreams,” I snap, glaring at him with all the hatred I can convey, hoping he’ll get the message and back off.
He’s not being careful because he doesn’t know he needs to.
But Baron knows.
A shudder wracks my body, and I play it up, pretending it’s a reaction to Colt.
Baron knows.
There’s no other reason he would want to be in a group with Colt. And he doesn’t just know that something happened between us. Surely he has some evil plan brewing in his sadistic mind. He wouldn’t give up the prestige of working with two powerful families just to study us under the microscope of his mind. True, he has an unhealthy fascination with people who possess the ability to feel human emotion, but that won’t be enough. He must want something to come of it. But what?
It doesn’t make sense. He already has all the power.
If he wanted to destroy Colt, he would. No one would even try to stop him.
If he wanted to destroy me, he could. People would glory in my downfall. Everyone loves to see a queen toppled from the throne. And they may not know it, but I hold no power.
