“Careful? Why?”
“You’re twenty-three. He’s forty-four. This relationship will always be imbalanced, and not in your favor, Avalon.”
Her posture almost instantly goes rigid, taking on a defensive posture. “You don’t know—”
“Anything about your relationship, I know,” I finish for her. “I’m saying this out of worry and love for you. Be careful.”
Avalon relents, then nods. “Okay. I mean, I don’t even know where all of this will go.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“No, not right now,” she sighs. “But, I do want to talk about something.”
I lift a brow. “Oh? Do tell.”
“What I’m about to tell you, you can’t tell anyone.”
The seriousness in her voice causes me to halt when I reach for the apple. Slowly, I nod, taking a bite of the sweet fruit. “I promise.”
“Last night, after sneaking back into our building, I was trying to be careful not to be seen. Well, I saw Lila.”
“Where did you see her? She’s usually asleep by nine.”
Avalon nods. “She was arguing on the phone with someone in one of the hallways. She saw me, and well, then she spilled everything.”
“You’re just keeping me in suspense for the sake of it now.”
“When did you meet Lila, exactly?”
I frown. “Our first year, why?”
“Isn’t it weird?”
“What is?”
“Well, I’m a scholarship student. Everyone else attended Saint Valley High School, at least. Isn’t it weird that you’ve never met her before?”
“Not really,” I shrug. “There are a handful of schools in the US, and a few across Europe.”
“Yes, but she’s also from New York.”
That makes me pause, my brows rising to my hairline. “What? Then it’s impossible for her not to have gone to the same high school as me.”
“Okay, do you remember that scandal from a couple of years ago? About that wealthy family having a troublemaker daughter. She’s had some issues, bullying people, partying, and she was just known to be an awful person?”
A frown appears on my face as I close my eyes, trying to remember. There’s been one too many similar incidents, and I never truly paid attention to those, unless the people are within my own.
“Wait, isn’t that the Astor family? They used to own a chain of banks, and although they’re still in as good standing as they were back then, their reputation never really recovered."
“Yes!”
“So, how does this correlate to Lila? Is she one of the victims,or?”
“She’s the bully!” Avalon hisses, tossing a pillow at me. “Come on, use your brain.”
I catch the pillow, then put it aside. “What? That sweet little angel who goes to church every Sunday is a bully?”
“Looks can be deceiving.”
