It almost makes me want to step in. I turn my head just enough to see her wrap her fingers around her pen in an iron grip. Her blue eyes swing my way, and the hatred I notice in them makes my blood burn. All of this is her fault. I’m not coming to save her. She created the mess; she can clean it.
“He attacked me the first day he was here,” Blaze adds.
Mrs. Nauly shakes her head. “I, along with every person in this faculty and classroom, have no desire to continue listening to you spreading lies. Frankly, we’ve all had enough of hearing it.”
Blaze throws her hands up and slams them on the desk. “I’m not ly—”
“Another word out of you, and you will be sent to Headmaster McGill’s office.” Mrs. Nauly turns back to the whiteboard, then stops. “Your attitude is equally unwanted, Marie.”
“My name is Blaze,” she grumbles.
The teacher sends her a warning glance, and she doesn’t bite back, slumping down in her chair and crossing her arms like a petulant child.
People like us can cry wolf when there is one, and no one would bat an eye even if we never lied. The only difference between her and I is that my father will step in to protect the family name, and hers will step in just to score some cash from her.
Blaze is silent for the rest of the class—apart from her incessant tapping and leg bouncing. But I can feel the rage radiating from her in waves. It only fuels my own. I’m in here because of whatshedid. If anyone has the right to be angry, it’s me. I’m the one who’s pissed. I’m the one who was betrayed over and over again.
If there’s one thing that will never disappoint me about Blaze, it’s her predictability; right now, she’s stripping down any walls she has. Whatever shred of control she’s got is being incinerated. All that remains is pure, unfiltered compulsion. It’s only a matter of time until she acts.
I glance at the clock above the whiteboard. Pulling out my ring from my blazer pocket, I drape my arm off the side of the table, twisting the ring between my fingers. My grandfather gave it to me when I was eight. It was the last gift he ever gave me before I found him on the floor of his estate, dead from a drug overdose while I was staying for the summer. He told me that one day I’ll be a man worthy to have theOin my initials. My grandfather was a good man and the only person who ever saw Kiervan and Father for the snakes they were.
So when I was fifteen, I used my allowance to engrave my name into the band. As I see it, the Osman name died with my grandfather.
I fidget with it just long enough to get the klepto’s attention before letting it clatter onto the edge of the desk. The artificial light reflects off the silver varnish and glints off the small sapphire stone in the corner of the square-shaped signet ring. If I look hard enough,I can see theK.O.I engraved on the back, and my first name wrapped around the inside of the band.
We’re dismissed as soon as the bell rings, and I wait five seconds before grabbing my books and stationary. Once I hear the chair behind me scrape against the floor, I lean down to shove my belongings into my bag, and a pair of long, pale legs and knee-high socks walk past just as I do.
When I sit back up, Blaze is gone, along with my ring.
The tension lining the fibers of my muscles ease. Since I got here, she’s been acting like she’s better than the things I own. Back at St. Augustine, she would steal something from me on a weekly basis. The little thief had a whole shelf in her room dedicated to everything she thought I didn’t know she tookandthe things I let her take—not that she knows any of this.
For the better part of the past two weeks, I’ve been trying to coax her with the bait she used to always fall for, like scribbling random shit on drink bottles, fidgeting with a lighter in front of her and leaving it out just enough to make it look like an easy challenge, as if it’s just begging to be stolen. Or “accidentally” leaving my backpack half open, or dropping something and looking for it in the opposite direction.
But the little shit hasn’t fallen for any of it.
She hasn’t taken a single thing from me, and it pisses me off to no end.
We both know she isn’t miraculously cured. She isn’t above petty theft either. She’s debatably worse than the macaques at the Monkey Forest in Indonesia.
I didn’t want to part with the ring, but I had no choice. She’s been leaving me no other options for years.Nowshe’s acting above whatI have—like she’s better than me. As if there are different guys she’d rather wrap her fingers around.
I yank the zipper of my bag down, remembering the picture of her sitting on Duke’s lap, and all the times Elijah touched her right in front of me.
I bet she’s stolen from that asshole. I bet she’s swiped from every unassuming person in herebutme.
I’m fucking sick and tired of waiting for her to stop being psychotic for two minutes for once in her life so she can open her goddamn eyes. I’m done being patient, and I won’t sit by and watch her show non-homicidal interest to everyone but me. This shit is going to end. She’s going to get in fucking line, or else she’s going to see what happens when I feel cornered.
Until then, my son of a bitch Father has signed me up to play football, guitar, and fuckingchess, and I’m about to spend the next two hours surrounded by a group of men who have all lost 80 percent of their brain cells.
“Hey, Kohen.”
I snap my head in the direction of the voice.
Fucking hell, what does Sarah want?
“We haven’t been formally introduced—well, you know, we talked in history the other day, but that wasn’tformal-formal, if you know what I mean.” She laughs at her joke and waits for me to do the same. I don’t. “I’m Sarah.” She sticks her hand out, and I just stare at it.
There isn’t a single thing on this earth that will make me have any desire to touch her or even speak to her.
