Cold. So cold.
My insides freeze at her words; the demanding tone, the smug look on her face, and the control that she clearly gets off so hard on. She can think again; I would rather be skinned alive than ever let Juliette Kingston tell me what to do.
I yank my hands out of her reach and push her back hard as her back hits the desk. “Touch me again and I’ll fucking kill you.”
I don’t give her any time to respond to my threat. I stalk out of the classroom quickly, because being in proximity with her for longer than five minutes makes my skin itch and my blood boil beyond measure.
I loathe Juliette Kingston.
Chapter TWO
J u l i e t t e
Ihate her. Despise her. She’s just walking away from me. She has been doing that for so long, but it never ceases to infuriate me.
Adaline Emery.
I still remember the first time I laid my eyes on Adaline. She had walked… no, she had stumbled into my science class.
The sound of rain was still echoing in my ears when I first saw her. The uniform she was wearing was scuffed. Her trousers were entirely too long for her and her shoes were filthy. She looked like an absolute mess, until I saw her face.
That damn face.
I wish so awfully that I could make fun of her face, but I simply cannot. She is a vision to look at, with her flawless tanned skin, bright jade green eyes, and perfect, jet-black hair. She stands out so vividly.
I wish her button-like nose was crooked so I could poke fun at it. I wish her tight, lean body was morbidly disfigured. I just wish she wasn’t so conventionally attractive to look at.
She didn’t even go through puberty properly. Where the rest of us were dealing with acne and every other normal thing that felt like the end of the world, she was still as perfect as ever.
She’s so aware of it, so audaciously aware that everyone in this school wants her. Thankfully, they wouldnevergo there. She might be attractive, but she’s still an outcast, not to mention, I’ve made it perfectly clear that she’s off limits.
She’s m—
Myresponsibility.
Since the moment my eyes first caught a glimpse of Adaline Emery, fire has fuelled deep inside of me. This was only fuelled further when I found out that she was bisexual.
As if it wasn’t enough that she was a charity case and that her brother was in jail, now she liked girls? No one else cared about this, but I did.
This news rattled twelve-year-old me. I couldn’t let it go. Eleven-year-old Juliette would have comforted Adaline; I would have stopped being mean for a few seconds and assured her that everything would be okay.
However, a lot changed for me within that year, therefore by extension, it had to change for Adaline too.
Even if she didn’t like girls, Adaline is still absolutely infuriating. I’ve revelled in putting her in her place these past five years. Ridiculing her and playing this game with her has been one of the most consistently, enjoyable part of my life.
“Do you ever get tired of annoying her?” Kai asks me, leaning on his locker, his dark brown mono-lid eyes staring down at me.
“Never.” I smirk because it was true. I could get tired of a lot of things, but annoying Adaline Emery? I could never get tired of that.
I live for that.
“You are insufferable,” Kai retorts, shaking his head as he opens his locker and grabs his books.
Not the first time I’ve heard that and although he’s joking, most people aren’t. I’m a Kingston after all, the heiress to one of the biggest multimillion empires in England.
I find that if people don’t worship me for my money, then they usually will do so for my looks. If not, they’ll just berate me for both, because God forbid that a girl is both pretty and rich, seeing that they cannot class me as a gold digger or a bimbo—both terms which men coined to further demean women.
“You love it,” I retort, playfully shoving my best friend’s shoulder.
