I burst out laughing, the last of the awkward tension dissipating in an instant.
He slings his arm around my waist, and I grab hold of his wrist to secure it in place. “I’m sorry I made your life a misery.”
“And as a reward, I’m now heading into eternity, stood next to a taxidermied bear.”
He sweeps me closer, bending to give me a kiss that’s entirely inappropriate in front of his mother. Something she appears to think also, given the loud throat clearing that commences.
“We weren’t going to do apologies, remember?” I whisper as he finally succumbs to family pressure and pulls away. “Who wants to wade through all the heinous stuff we did to each other when we could make up for it in far more fun ways?”
“Not me.”
A call comes through on the landline and Jocelyn excuses herself to go answer it, coming back from the kitchen a minute later with a concerned expression on her face. “That was from Pierce, down at the park corner. He says the police are on their way.”
Almost the moment she says that, lights flash in the windows. Absent sirens but I’m not sure if that’s a good or menacing sign.
A few other vehicles arrive soon after. Some more might be police units but the one my eyes fix on has the name of a television station emblazoned along the side of the van.
“The media’s here, too,” I whisper, my trauma response going into overdrive.
The entire world and his dog will see me being arrested, see Seb and me being led away in cuffs.
It feels worse than the video making the rounds at school. At least that was private, something contained to the hallowed walls of Kingswood College.
But it could be the eyes of the world aren’t a bad thing. It’s time to take the lesson Jocelyn taught me—that even the most powerful can bend when they’re threatened with consequences—and use it again.
And it seems like Seb is a few steps ahead of me. His gaze calmly travels over the collection of people outside and he gives a tight smile. “Everything’s going to be all right,” he assures me with that outlandish confidence of his. The confidence that in this moment seems to be catching. “This is all part of the plan.”
“There’s a plan?”
His arms circle me again, pulling me against his hip, while he stares down at me, smiling. “Of course. The plan was to make too big a mess for the police to sweep under the rug. A bunch of rich people getting battered before a mansion burns to the ground in an obvious case of arson. Bit hard to cover that one over, don’t you think?”
I turn in time to see another news van arrive. The first is already set up, camera lens aiming straight towards the front door of Jocelyn’s home.
“Okay,” I say, trying to gather courage from any internal source I can find.
The little girl who thought she could fool her primary school, so they didn’t make her go back into a home when her mother died.
The teenager who’d once watched the most spectacular display of masculinity in an open-air shower, then cursed herself all night for not making a move, even though it appeared her interest was reciprocated.
The girl I was in the moments before the head came into the cafeteria to tell me to follow her to the office.
Seb’s girl.
Before I can lose it again, I stride to the door and fling it open, exposing the heated discussions between police officers happening on the doorstep.
My eyes dismiss them with a jerk, instead focusing on the crowd gathered on the other side of the street. A few local people gawking at the free entertainment, the media, scrambling to get themselves set up to get the best shot.
I think of how passive I’ve been. Out of necessity, yes, but that doesn’t make it feel any better on the inside.
Time to go on the attack.
I nod to the female journalist standing nearby with a fluffy mic held in her hand like a gigantic ice cream cone. She doesn’t pause, accepting the invitation and jumping over the front fence.
Meanwhile the police sort themselves out, a burly man with flashes of ice chips in his blue eyes stepping forth. “Esme Black?”
The reporter lands on the front porch, a step behind him, microphone extended to pick up every whisper.
“No,” I say, stepping forward, speaking as clearly as I can.
