I made the biggest mistake of my life in seventh grade when I checked the yes box on a Will You Be My Boyfriend note she’d passed to me in English. But how can a twelve-year-old boy possibly know that the pretty brunette he’d been crushing on all year was a psychopathin the making? I figured it out pretty fast. Took about two weeks to realize she didn’t want a boyfriend. She wanted a puppet. My heart, my actions, every second of my time, my entire future, she wanted to rule them all. All I wanted was to walk down the hall together and brag to my friends. Thankfully, my parents figured out I was in over my head and helped me back my way out of that train wreck.
But she couldn’t let me go. Ever. Every time I got in a relationship bad things happened. Threatening texts to my girlfriends from random numbers, horrible rumors, flat tires. The last girl I tried to have a relationship with was at the end of my junior year of undergrad at UVA. Margo Finnigan, a sassy strawberry blonde, who was pre-law like me. Lasted three months, long enough that I thought we were in the clear, but then one night when we were chilling at my apartment, a girl I’d never seen before showed up, overnight bag in hand, insisting that I’d asked her to sleep over. Apparently, we’d had an online “relationship” going on for a month. She had screenshots of our “conversations” to prove it. Margo left in tears.
I stopped trying after that. Hadn’t had a serious girlfriend since. I’d go out with someone once or twice but that was it. If I moved faster than Amber could find out, they wouldn’t get hurt. Not much anyway. I’d been a fool to think at twenty-seven she was any different. Part of the Dupree Family Creed was “Forgive, forget, and let people change.” As an attorney, I tried to live by it. In my opinion, the prison system should’ve been renamed the Reformation System, because that’s what it was meant to be. At least, when it worked right and people complied. Not everyone deserves to be remembered for the one stupid thing they did way back when. But over the years I’d also learned that, sadly, some people never change. And that’s when you have to set boundaries.
I’d tried to do that with Amber. So many times.
But what can you do when someone takes a jackhammerto your safely constructed walls faster than you can rebuild them?
As I followed her back to the bus, my shoulders slumped, and the darkness tried to pull me down. My brain, which I’d worked so hard to retrain, flipped my positive thoughts upside down like all the cognitive therapy my parents had paid for never even happened. The voices I’d kept down for so long were neon signs in my head.
You can’t stop her. She’s too strong and you’re just a weakling. You’re not up for this. Run. Just go. If you leave, you protect everyone you love. As long as you’re here in Seddledowne, you’re putting everyone at risk.
But the worst voice of all…
You couldn’t protect Savannah from her. What makes you think Christy will be any different?
I’d strode back to Amber’s van full of confidence and fire, certain I’d stop her once and for all. But heading back to the bus, I realized I’d been a fool. Amber had taken one look at me, finally with the woman of my dreams, and said,hold my beer.
fourteen
CHRISTY
There was something Holden wasn’t saying. I mean, yeah, he’d told me Amber was a “literal psycho,” but I’d already figured that out by the way she’d sexually assaulted him with her eyes with me watching. And how she’d tried to make me feel inferior. Mean girl vibes were radiating off of her. Obviously, she had a thing for him. Welcome to the club. But also, get a hold of yourself. We weren’t besties but up until the bus breakdown, I’d thought we were cordial. She must not have known the sis code. Never trample a fellow queen to get to the top. Empower, not compete. There was more to the story than what either of them were putting off. There was a history there. I could feel it in my bones.
For the rest of the day, Holden was quiet, his mind somewhere else. He could hardly snap out of it to help coach. And when I’d tried to kiss him goodnight once we were back in the high school parking lot and all the girls were gone, he sidestepped me, said bye, and told me to go straight home and lock my doors. I didn’t know this Holden, but I didn’t like him. Not at all.
The next morning I woke up and Boyfriend Holden wasback, full force. Fifteen different apology texts, three phone calls, and he brought me lavender roses, which I’d mentioned were my favorite only once, back in the summer when we were just friends. And we had a sizzling make-out session that night. The next few days were a back-and-forth between Boyfriend Holden and The Guy I Didn’t Know. Some kind of tug-of-war was going on inside of him, eating him up, but he wouldn’t talk about it.
I was trying to do what Lemon had suggested and be patient while he worked through it. All I could hope was that Lemon was right and he would be worth the wait. But there were times when I wondered if I was hanging on only to be let down one more time.
Five days later, even though it was Silas’s week to open up the school, I arrived early to prepare for the new tenth-grade transfer student, Tallulah Hawkins. It was her first day and I wanted to give her the school tour. Normally, Mrs. Yancy had a fellow student do it, but Mrs. Yancy had been right. Something was off in her records. She’d been pulled out of her previous school for five months during eighth grade and then reenrolled. She was now a year behind in school. I guess it wasn’t that weird. Things happen sometimes. But there were also notes from the three previous schools she’d attended about her being withdrawn and one mentioned that she’d come to school with a black eye. No one had been able to prove anything and her mother skirted around any talk of abuse. But if there was even a chance that I had a kid coming in who needed extra help, I wanted her to know from minute one that she could come to me. That I was someone she could trust.
When I pulled into the faculty lot, I scowled. There were three cars parked there already. Mr. Jamerson’s, our head janitor, Silas’s truck, and Holden’s car.
Why was Holden here this early in the day?
I hurried across the lawn and into the school. All the lights were on, ready to greet the students. I glanced into the library through the floor-to-ceiling hallway glass. Anna was there, reading a book. She must’ve ridden with Silas. When she saw me, she shot to her feet, her dark eyes wide and…worried? We looked at each other for two seconds. I waved. She waved back, but it wasn’t happy like mine. It was the wave of someone who’s worried they may never see you again. Maybe? She turned away and walked to a shelf, studying the books.
Okay. That was weird. And concerning.
I pushed open the door to the central office and immediately paused.
No one was in the first room, which housed both of our secretaries’ desks and the counter where late students checked in. But I could hear voices.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. You need to calm down before you do something that you’ll regret,” Silas said in a tone that he used whenever someone was panicking. He’d used it on me plenty. It was soft, trying too hard.
“Don’t tell me to calm down,” Holden hissed. “This is exactly what I was afraid of.” He groaned. “I’m leaving. I’m going back to Sophie’s to grab my stuff and I’m out of here.”
What?
“That is the dumbest thing you could possibly do,” Silas said, losing his cool. And it took a fair bit to make him lose his cool. “You have to stand up to her or it will never stop.”
Her?
“It’s never going to stop, no matter what I do. Seriously. My next job will be somewhere far, far away. Hawaii. Guam. Somewhere tropical. I’m going completely off grid. Maybe I’ll get a fake ID and passport. If you get postcards from Epstein Barr, you’llknow it’s me.” It would’ve been funny if his tone wasn’t ripped with pain. That had been his nickname in mycontacts. Of course, I’d taken it down once we were together, right after we had a good laugh about it.
My feet were moving before I told them to. For once I was glad my heels clacked loudly against the tile so I wouldn’t have to announce my arrival. The guys went silent as I moved in that direction. I poked my head into Silas’s office to see my hunk of a man leaning forward, hands on the desk, chest heaving like someone had whipped him with stripes across his back.
