AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Penance?” she asks, narrowing her eyes at my ruler. “For what?”
“For being a slut,” Rylan snarls.
My face burns with humiliation. I’d sit here for the rest of my life, let them pour bronze over me and make me a statue to immortalize the lesson in all this, if it meant I could keep Rylan Woods from seeing me this way. But of course I don’t have that choice.
“That’s the real reason she’s on her knees,” Duke says. “She’s been there so often, she forgot how to stand.”
The whole table laughs, but Harper frowns down at me. “Lo? Come on. Let’s go smoke.”
I grit my teeth, refusing to even glance at Baron. I know he’s waiting for a reason to do worse, and I’m not about to give him one.
“No,” I say calmly, my voice as smooth and normal as if I were sitting in my regular chair, my throne. “I’ll see you in class. I have to sit here in case my kings require my services.”
“Why?” she asks, looking at me like I’m crazy.
“So I can be allowed back at the table.”
I hate lying to her, but there are things you can’t say, not even to your best friend. Things like why she disappeared from school last year without a word, never answered the hundred texts I sent. She never told me, and I never ask, just like she never asks about Dawson. Someday, maybe we’ll tell each other, and I’ll tell her that I don’t have a choice about this any more than I had a choice about the things I did as queen. I am still Baron’s toy, my every string clutched in the greedy fist of a sadistic puppet master.
That’s the answer he scripted, so that’s the answer I give when everyone asks. I was a bad queen, so I’ve been demoted to whore, where my job is to grovel for a place in their court. Until they grant it, I’m content to sit at their feet and obey their every command, no matter how demeaning. I pretend I’m not burning with shame, that I’m not picturing what will happen when my face grows so hot the skin peels off and drips into mylap, igniting my cheap synthetic skirt, turning me into a human torch.
They’d all sit there laughing while it happened, but I’d have the last laugh when the outside layer burned away and the fuse was lit, the one that detonates the bomb in my chest where a heart should be. They wouldn’t have time to stampede out of the café, crushing each other to death. It would be over before they could even rise from their chairs. For years afterwards, people will drive by and shake their heads about the tragedy, and they’ll put up rows of headstones in the barren crater where the imposing Willow Heights Preparatory Academy once stood.
“Ms. Walton?”
I jerk myself out of my fantasy and find myself facing our hot new librarian. “Yes?”
He frowns down at me, and I force myself not to drop my gaze. He’s standing over me while I’m kneeling on the floor, a position I am all too familiar with, and I’m afraid we’ll have an awkward eye-to-dick situation if I lower my head. That would be mortifying enough with any other teacher, not a dreamboat with piercing bronze eyes, a jawline that could cut glass, and an inquisitive frown creasing his strong brow.
“You need to be in a chair,” he says.
Go away, go away, go away!
“I’m more comfortable here,” I assure him, offering a tight smile, my heart racing as I pray he’ll walk away and not interfere with the Dolce boys.
“Yeah she is,” Duke crows.
Cotton and DeShaun snicker, waiting for me to explain to a teacher that I’m their whore.
“You’re impeding the flow of students in a walkway,” he says. “Take a seat.”
“Is that in the handbook?” Baron asks.
“Excuse me?”
“Is there something in the handbook that says students have to sit in chairs in the café?” Baron asks, like he’s explaining something to a child.
“Someone could trip over her if they’re not looking where they’re going,” Mr. Delacroix says, frowning at the elite table. “She or they could get hurt.”
“So there is no rule, but you’re on a power trip, trying to encroach on the rights of students to sit where they like during a free period,” Baron says.
Duke makes a tsk-tsk sound with his tongue. “And here I thought you came from a family of lawyers. I’m sure Dad would like to know his attorney’s son can’t even remember a high school handbook, let alone the legal rights of his students.”
Baron snorts. “He is teaching at a high school.”
“Not even teaching,” Duke says, laughing. “He’s just a librarian. How lame can you get?”
“I’m surprised he didn’t send you out of Faulkner in disgrace,” Baron says to Mr. Delacroix. “Maybe Dad should reconsider who represents him. Clearly your entire family lacks intelligence.”
