Chapter 10

“W-what are you doing, Stephanie?” Roger asks me, his face much paler than it was just seconds ago.

“Nothing. Just talking.” I grab the waistline of my skirt and pull it up further, to the middle of my stomach, showing my lace panties to him, and when Roger backs away, his back hits the wooden cabinets, slamming one of the doors shut.

“What’s wrong?” I ask with a laugh. My stomach is in a knot and I feel like I’m going to pass out any freaking second, but I feel amazing and powerful at the same time. Adrenaline, it must be. I love it. I want more of it. I step even closer and reach for the zipper on the front of my shirt.

Roger covers his face. “Stop it, Stephanie.”

Fuck this, he’s actually a loyal puppy like I thought. Knowing this adds to the burn of my jealousy.

“Come on, Roger, don’t be such a—”

“Stephanie! What the hell are you doing?” Olivia’s voice fills the kitchen.

I look over to the doorway to see her leaning there. She changed into pajamas, flannel ones with blue lining. She’s pissed.

After a few seconds, she turns to her husband. “Roger?”

“I don’t know, babe, she just came in here and started trying to take her clothes off.” He tosses his hands up in the air in a frantic plea for his wife to see how crazy her slutty sister is.

She turns in my direction, glaring a hole through me. “Get out, Stephanie.”

“You didn’t even ask me if it wasn’t true,” I tell her, getting pretty pissed off about that fact. I toss my purse over my shoulder and pull my skirt back down to cover my body.

“I know you,” she says matter-of-factly.

She knows me? She doesn’t know me at all, actually. If she did, she would know better than to be such a selfish cunt.

“And . . . ?” I look at Roger, and he inches back like I’m a snake. Like he can judge me? If he wasn’t afraid to get caught, I guarantee he would have me bent over their shiny granite counter.

“Well, did you try to come on to my husband or not?” Olivia’s mouth is trembling; she’s holding back tears. I should deny it, flip the script on both of them and blame him. He’s pathetic enough that she would believe me. I can cry on demand, too, and if I wanted to, I could convince her of anything.

Oh, please.

“You’re such a spoiled bitch!” she yells at me, and Roger crosses the kitchen and wraps his arm around her shoulders.

I’m a spoiled bitch? Is she serious? She gets everything she fucking wants, and it’s bullshit. I’m sick of being the runner-up to her. She’s lucky I didn’t do something worse. I could have hurt him, or her, in a far more serious way. Even some of the thoughts I’m having now are surprising me . . . and I like it.

“Get out, Stephanie.” Olivia shakes her head as her husband rubs her trembling hands.

I do just that. I won’t have to put up with any more of this shit soon.

I’m going to college soon.

And once I’m there, I’m going to run that fucking campus.

part two

DURING

Hardin

He was misguided, moving through life with minimum expectations of himself. He was getting too used to life in that foreign place—even believing that his accent was slightly washing away with each night he spent away from home. He nailed his life down into a robotic loop of the same actions, same reactions, same consequences. The women were blending together, their names becoming an endless loop of Sarahs and Lauras and Jane Does.

He wasn’t sure how his life could continue this way, day in and day out.

And then the first week of the next year, he met her. She was strategically placed at Washington Central by someone or something more powerful than him—to taunt him. He—or it—knew who he was, the kind of person he was known for being, and he had an agenda. He was set to steal another innocence, to ruin another girl’s life. It won’t be so bad this time, he figured. He wouldn’t go to the same extremes as before. This was different, more juvenile. This was all just in fun.

And it was, until the wind caught her hair and it whipped around her face. Until the gray of her eyes haunted his sleep and the pink of her lips drove him mad. He was falling hard for her—at first it was so fast that he wasn’t sure if he was actually feeling it or imagining it. But he felt it . . . he felt it rip through him like the roar of a lion. He began to rely on her for his every breath¸ every thought.

• • •

One night in the middle of it all, the snow falling, blanketing the concrete, he sat alone in the parking lot. His hands were gripping the steering wheel of his old Ford Capri, and he could barely see straight, let alone think straight.

How could he have done this? How did it go so far so fast? He wasn’t sure, but he knew, he felt it deep down inside of himself, that he shouldn’t have done it, and he knew that he would regret it. He was regretting it already.

She was supposed to be an easy target. A beautiful girl with an innocent smile and odd-colored eyes that weren’t supposed to hold depth or meaning behind them. He wasn’t supposed to fall in love with her, and she wasn’t supposed to make him want to be a better person.

He thought that he was fine before.

He was getting by just fine before—before he made the beautiful mistake of allowing her to become his entire world. He loved her, though, he loved her so much that he was terrified of losing her—for losing her meant losing himself, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to bear such a loss after going his entire life without something to lose.

As his fingers gripped harder and his knuckles turned white against the black steering wheel, his thoughts became more jumbled. He became more irrational and desperate, and he realized in that moment, with the silence of the empty lot drowning his fears, that he would do anything—absolutely anything—to keep her forever.

He had her, lost her, and had her again over the months that followed. He just couldn’t quite get it. He loved her. His love for her burned brighter than any star, and he would highlight passages from ten thousand of her favorite novels to show her that. She gave him everything, and he watched her fall in love with him, hoping he would stop letting her down. Her faith in him made him want to be good for her. He wanted to prove her right and everyone else wrong. She made him feel a type of hope that he had never felt before. He didn’t even know it existed.