Page 13 of Lessons in Cruelty

“Funding you desperately require in order to remain enrolled at this college?”

This time, her voice is little more than a squeak. “Yup.”

My lip curls into a sneer.

Fucking broke-ass loser.

“So what led you to believe skipping yesterday’s orientation was wise?”

I’m not smirking anymore.

I’m glaring.

Dude needs to lay the fuck off. He’s about to make her cry. I can see her eyes shimmering.

If anyone’s going to be making Haven’s life hell, it’s me.

“Do you need a copy of the coursework, Professor?” I butt in.

Poor Haven glances my way with a grateful smile that disintegrates when I give her disheveled clothing and messy hair a condescending scan.

Rooke looks over at me like he forgot I existed, and wished I’d stop breathing. Permanently.

Fuck.

He is pissed about the phone thing.

I’ve seen plenty of moods on Rooke. He’s currently at level five, irked, but if Haven keeps annoying him, we’re both headed straight for peeved.

He nods. Snaps his fingers.

I open his satchel and rifle through it, looking for the black folder where he keeps his notes. I find a stapled page and yank it out, sliding it over the desk with a shove of my fingers.

Rooke cocks his head to the pages, and Haven gives me a nervous glance as she picks it up from the desk.

I keep my expression neutral now that Rooke’s aware of me again.

Last thing I want is him picking up on any issues between me and Haven. He’s an emotional bloodhound. I once saw him instigate a fight between two frat bros in his class that almost turned into a fistfight.

The remaining notebooks are within easy reach, so Professor Rooke picks one up himself instead of snapping his fingers at me to do it.

He hands it to Haven, and you’d swear it’s a bomb, how gingerly she accepts it. Especially when he doesn’t release it straight away, like he’s tethering her to him.

“I’d prefer you hand this back to me at the end of the semester instead of…” his voice drops as he studies the bright pink notepad Haven’s hugging to her chest like it has a chance of protecting her against him, “…that.”

“Okay,” she says. Quiet. Uneasy.

It’s my second lesson as Professor Rooke’s TA, but I spent the whole of last week with him prepping for the start of his course. I’ve also taken his course twice since I started at AHC. It’s not the first time I’ve heard a student struggle to get their words out around him.

It’s the first I’ve heard Haven sound like this, though.

Sure, she was shy when we met in the woods as kids. We both kinda were. But pretty soon she was yelling and screaming and laughing right beside me as we tore through the trees on whatever mad escapades we were on.

That’s the Heavenly I remember, with her sun-bleached hair and curious smile, nose wrinkled as she squinted in the sunlight, tree branch ready as backup if I failed to kill the dragon I was fighting. Before she became the girl who abandoned her only friend without a fucking word.

So who the fuck is this mousy, bedraggled bundle of nerves?

At least she’s picked up some weight. She was way too skinny as a kid. Guess that’s bound to happen when your dad spends more money on drugs than he does on food.