I stride away, barely seeing where I’m going. I manage to yank myself to the right when I notice the twins already out on the larger green. A burning sensation spreads behind my eyes and down my throat to sear through my ribs.
I have all I need, I repeat to myself, clutching the mantra.I have all I need.
There’s a dark, quiet nook around the bottom of the back stairwell. I shove past the door and throw myself into that shadowed space.
My knees give. I collapse in on myself, arms braced against the tops of my bent legs, hands pressed to my face.
No tears. Not so much as a whimper. Everyone will wonder. I can’t let anyone suspect there’s something wrong.
But there is. So much is so wrong.
How can I build the defenses I need back up, see these men as rivals and adversaries rather than the lovers they became? How can I stop their cruelty from gutting me?
I don’t remember anymore. I opened myself up too much, and now there’s no stitching the gaps shut.
A quiver runs through my shoulders. And the last voice I want to hear carries from behind me. “Elodie? What are you doing?”
Byron sounds much more hesitant than he did telling me off minutes ago. Of all my classmates, why didhehave to follow me?
He probably figured I was up to something to get back at him and wanted to confirm.
I clench my teeth and haul myself upward, pushing the burn of tears as far back as it’ll go, even though it feels like my grief is scalding my stomach now.
When I turn to Byron, my chin raises to a snooty angle. “Are you stalking me now? Strange from a guy who was just saying how much hedidn’twant to be around me.”
Byron’s face ticks with a suppressed flinch and then hardens. “And that’s a perfect reminder why.”
He stalks out of the building, leaving me alone and feeling as hollowed out as the illusions I conjured in the other Byron’s embrace just a few months ago.
Nine
Byron
With each step up the front walk, my nerves twitch harder. I keep my back straight and my head high, expelling as much of the tension as I can with a long but quiet exhalation.
Ever-entitled Elodie Devine shouldn’t have gotten under my skin like this. She’s had everything else in her life handed to her—I’m not giving her the satisfaction of rattling me.
Imusthave misheard her. I’ve never slipped up, never even given away a hint that my parents picked up on.
Of course, that’s almost worse. She was simply mumbling to herself about radiants know what, and I went off on her?
Well, I didn’t yell or make a scene. I kept most of my cool, as I always have. No one heard me but her.
She probably deserved it one way or another. When are the Devines and the rest of lucent high societynotscheming about how to one-up someone else?
The moment I step into the house, I can’t think about Elodie or what she might or might not have said under her breath anymore. All three of my parents are already home, Mom adjusting Dad’s bowtie by the staircase’s gleaming mahogany banister, Pa bustling around the front hall flicking through something on his phone.
“There you are!” Mom says when she sees me. “You took your time getting home. Hurry up and get your tux on. This isn’t the kind of event where fashionably late applies.”
Event?
A sketchy memory comes to me of some mention of another benefit gala coming up. Either I didn’t catch the date or it slipped my mind.
A renewed jitter runs through my nerves. I curl my fingers just slightly, the words I most want to say forming on my tongue.
I forgot it was even happening. I’d rather skip this one. It won’t make much difference whether I’m there, will it?
Before I can decide whether to say any of that, my sister dashes into the foyer, her cloud of tight curls bobbing around her face. “Damn it, damn it, damn it.”
