I incline my head. “For the few days I’m on my friend’s couch,” I correct her. “Scouts’ honour.”
“You won’t tell anyone?”
I roll my eyes as filthy thoughts swarm into my head. “Believe me. I’ve got more interesting lines of conversation than Esme Margaretta Black.”
Her voice claps back, shiny and hard. “You won’t tell anyone.”
“For the next few days, I promise not to say a bad word about you to anybody. I promise not to tell them the shitty thing you did to my mother. I won’t tell them how you lied to the police. Even if they ask, I won’t tell them how you tried to buy me off before you welched on the deal.”
She doesn’t seem to understand the rich arseholes who attend this place wouldn’t give a shit about anything I have to say to them. It’s alarming how little understanding she has of her own people.
But that lack of insight could be because she’s aligned herself with a scholarship girl, one of the poorest students in the entire school. Nearly as poor as me.
She made herself best friends with the only person who might care about what I have to tell her. The irony is rich and delicious on my tastebuds.
And I’ll abide by my word.
I won’t say a thing while I’m staying on my friend’s couch. Not in the two days I have left until the promised boarding room is vacated by its last—newly expelled—resident.
Esme traps herself in the same cage that always captures her. She supposes she knows me, knows my family, knows how I’ll react, what I will or won’t like, what I will or won’t do, where I do and don’t belong.
And like always, Esme doesn’t know shit.
“This has to be the last time,” she murmurs, eyes cast down like a demure princess instead of the nasty freak she is and always has been. “After this, I never want to see you again.”
But if she thinks I’m agreeing to that when I’ve already struck my bargain, she’s the insane fuck-nut in this situation.
“Never say never,” I whisper, so low I don’t even know if she hears me. One thing’s for sure, I don’t care. “Turn around. Put your hands on the wall.”
“No.” Her head jerks up, pupils contracting to pinpricks in her bulging eyes. “Not here.”
“Why not? It’s a room, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. Somebody else’s.”
I reach out, pinching a few strands of her hair between my fingers and rubbing it, feeling the softness, marvelling at the shine. Even when she wasn’t taking good care of herself, she’s always had the most fantastic hair. The most fantastic eyes. The most fantastic body.
“If you want to take me to your room so we can do it there, that’s okay too,” I offer, eyes drinking in the shock as she realises showing me where she lives is far worse than fucking me in some stranger’s study. “Just let me tell my friend we’re leaving.”
“No.” She scratches at her throat, frowning. “Okay,” she whispers in a small, defeated voice. “We’ll do it here.”
I’m tempted to force her to take me to her room in the student housing block, to see how much it pains her, then let the idea slide. She’s already a bundle of nerves and regret. One more demand and she might dig in her heels, content to go down in flames.
Besides, if everything works out, I’ll see it soon enough.
I put my hand on her shoulders, twisting her around, burying my face in the curve of her shoulder for a second, inhaling her scent. Inhaling her fear.
“Hands on the wall.”
CHAPTERTHREE
ESME
Seb takesthe empty bottle from my fingers and sets it on the floor. His arm slides around my waist while I stand as he directed me, my palms pressed against the thick wallpaper, so soft it’s like resting against velvet.
We’re near enough to the window for me to see his reflection in the glass. The lit hallway throws his face into shadow, but not so much I can’t see his thick brows, his dark eyes, the wide cheekbones. The pouty mouth that he uses to blow air onto the back of my neck, setting a thousand tiny fires alight across my skin.
His hair is longer than the last time I saw him. Falling across his eyes, perhaps on purpose. I can imagine any girl within radius would itch to stroke it back for a better view of those chiselled features.
