Page 7 of Liar

I no longer have the touch I’ve been dreaming about for weeks.

Damn him.

I power-walk to the door, lips pressed together and pretending this is the end of my time with him. There’s an entire semester of having Thorne beside me, peeling back my layers and exposing all the softness he remembers stroking. Then shredding.

Unable to resist, I look back once. Just once.

Thorne’s watching my departure, inscrutably still.

While Zeke stares at me with slitted eyes as if he heard the entire exchange

Chapter 3

Ember

Savannah isn’t in any more of my classes. I discover through the hallway grapevine that she’s primarily taking eleventh grade classes due to missing out on the entire year, with Headmistress Dupris allowing her to resume one or two of the senior subjects she excelled at before her kidnapping.

Kidnap, abduction, and taking are used with surprising ease by the student body today, and it’s around lunchtime that it finally makes sense as to why. These are the richest, most privileged children in the nation, even the globe. Kidnapping threats and ransom demands are probably factored into their parents’ living wills and trust fund stipulations.

Forget secret societies and the underground drug trade run by the most powerful man in Raven’s Bluff—the very real and obvious threat of being held hostage for money is regularly debated at the family dinner table.

Yet another reason I feel so detached from the world I’ve walked into.

Lockers slam and laughter rings out as the final bell rings. I huddle closer to my locker, students pouring into the hallway from every direction and brushing past me without a glance.

When I first came to Winthorpe, I wished I was invisible. Now that I am, I feel insignificant.

I blow out an exhale, shaking myself out of my self-loathing. There are more important things than popularity and friendship, like figuring out the Nobles’ or Virtues’ involvement in Damion’s drug running and how much Thorne knows about it.

Calling Thorne a liar is one of the nicer names I can think up. But to accept that he tailored his lies specifically for me, that he might’ve sanctioned my near death by lacing my water with cocaine and fentanyl before a swim meet … that makes it hard to swallow.

I felt something with Thorne, dark and addictive, and it still grows inside me like vines doused in oil, slick and cloying. Even now, it creeps into all my vulnerable spaces, between my ribs and into my heart, where it started to beat for him.

And he doesn’t care if I’m dead.

Forget the touches he steals, the scrape of his nails on my skin. When it came down to it, he chose his family line. He stands with Savannah, holding up his end of the Briar heirship.

I’m so deep in thought that I don’t notice the gaps of silence between other students’ voices, becoming longer as the time between the end of classes and outside freedom ticks by. The cacophony of footsteps fades into single pair of echoing heels, and then nothing.

A prickle of unease spreads between my shoulders at the thought of being alone in a Winthorpe hallway. I hurry to spin the combination lock to my locker.

The locker door bangs when I pull it open too hard, the sound ricocheting up to the vaulted ceiling.

Well, if anyone was in hiding and waiting to pounce, I’ve given them my exact location.

Swinging my backpack to my side, I heft out textbooks with the intention of transferring them into my locker before heading out. Swim practice starts now, but I’ve been kicked off the team and have no reason to linger on Winthorpe grounds longer than I have to.

My stomach swoops with disappointment. I’m not a troublemaker, always seeking approval and thriving off pleasing others. That’s reflected in my attitude, my activities, my GPA. To be cut from a team and accused of cheating the system… I’m about to cry and be sick at the same time.

I have to put it aside. Damion’s drugs were in my system. His minions put them in my water—and one of those is his son. Both set me up to fail, and if I want to get out of Winthorpe, I need to rise above people pleasing and be the cause of fresh bruises instead.

Shutting the locker, I turn toward the middle of the hallway when a blurred figure moves in the corner of my eye.

A rough hand grabs my elbow. Instinct has me immediately recoiling, but he drags me into the corridor and slams my back against the brick wall before I have time to so much as screech.

I bring my furious gaze up. “What the—get off me!”

Hot, minted breath coats my cheeks. Eyes the color of whitened ash stare down at me.