I try to hold her gaze, try to hold myargument, but it’s clear she’s right. Someone should already have called us in, if only to answer questions. A dozen students saw Esme being hit. The same number saw me assault Joseph afterwards.
It’s unacceptable. There are a thousand things I don’t understand about Kingswood College, about the people who go here, but this is the most confounding one yet.
I spring to my feet. “I’ll check what’s happening.”
“Please stay with me,” she says in the tiniest voice.
The plea is so opposite to what she’s repeatedly told me, I hesitate.
“If you force the school to act, they’ll expel you. Joseph will get his friends to back him, or his dad will pay the staff not to care but you don’t have those resources. They’ll expel you for doing the same things everyone else does without thinking.”
“If that’s true, then good. I don’t want to go here if that’s how they act.”
Her face is a mess of confusion. “Yes, you do. You earned your place here. You deserve to get the advantages they hand out to every other student, regardless of whether or not they’re worthy.”
“Not if this is the price. You’rehurt, Esme.”
Her eyes take on a sharp glint. “I was hurt at my last school, and I don’t remember you begging the principal to come down harder on the boy responsible.”
CHAPTERTWENTY
ESME
My mouth fillswith bile and my heart fills with guilt as I watch my words land, digging into him, the barbs setting so they’re not easy to take back.
His expression is shocked. His mouth opens and closes a few times without sound emerging. Although I know what I said is one hundred percent correct, I also hate to throw it in his face.
He’s trying. He’s changing. He’s actively fighting to be a better person, far more than anyone else in these surrounds.
To treat him to an extra-large helping of reality is cruel.
Then his retaliatory anger surges. So large and sudden it’s finally my turn to see unfiltered expressions on my partner’s face. “But they should’ve,” he argues. A ridiculous position as I’m sure he knows.
I pull a face as I throw back another simple truth. “But theydidn’t.”
“That’s even more reason I should call your parents, then. If the school isn’t acting in your best interests—”
“Don’t you fucking dare.” My hands fist with rage, fury pouring off me in waves so hot the air in the room shimmers. “Just because you unilaterally decided that I’m now your new favourite project doesn’t make it true. You’re not the boss of me, you’re not in charge of me, and you sure as shit aren’t in any position to lecture me on what I should and shouldn’t do.”
The fury rips out of me, tearing along my side, reigniting the agony of Joseph’s punch, the pain eating deeper and deeper into me rather than receding like it should.
Even pressing my hand to my side doesn’t ease it. I reach for my glass and see it’s empty. I glance at the bottle, but Seb gets their first, snatching it out of easy reach.
“You’re angry,” he says as though someone begged him to guide them through the land of the bleeding obvious. “I understand but—”
Mocking laughter erupts from my mouth, a lava flow that can’t be called back. “If you understand, then fill me in, why don’t you?”
He sinks onto the bed beside me and the shift in position hurts but so does the knowledge I’m torturing him. I should never have let things get this far. He sees a lot. I want to confide even more.
The same reason I ran last time. Not from the abuse but from when he cornered me in the shed, fucking me in a blatant demonstration of how good sex could be when someone cared.
Even though he mostly only cared enough to hate me.
His large hand cups my cheek and I lean into it because of all the ways Seb touches me, this is my favourite. When he pulls my head against his chest, his palm so huge that it shelters the other side of my face completely. His thumb stroking the hair back from my forehead as his other arm snakes around my shoulders to hug me tight.
My eyes close, pressing pause for a second so I can luxuriate in the sensations.
I thought we’d have longer, maybe even stretching my luck all the way to the end of the year, but I can feel us rushing towards an inevitable end. My life set to explode in his face.
