Page 146 of A Deal with the Bossy Devil

He looked like he might say something, but I shook my head, silencing him. It was my turn.

“We dated for six months. I broke it off four weeks before graduation.” I swiped at the corner of my mouth with the back of my shaky wrist as the memories rushed back. “Private school. I was a scholarship student, and my dad worked there as a janitor—that’s how we learned about the scholarship program in the first place.”

Abehill was the best school in the province. It popped out Ivy Leaguers like a gumball machine.

It also had an annual price tag of sixty thousand dollars, but I’d had my greedy sights set on the most competitive law school in the continent, and Abehill was my first step to reaching my goal. It wasn’t just about the education, it was about the connections.

The school was filled with kids from the country’s wealthiest, most influential families. Plus me and the two other scholarship kids, neither of whom were in my year.

“I was a fish out of water there. Spent the first two months eating alone in the library.”

My dad had offered to eat with me every single one of those days, even though I’d set a very strict “pretend like you don’t know me while at school” rule. Because I was a spoiled teenager who cared way too much about what her peers thought of her.

The offer’s always open if you change your mind, he’d Sign back.

I swiped at my wet cheek with a hard fist. What I wouldn’t give to share just one meal with him now.

“Anyways,” I went on, “Josh was my first... friend, I guess. Had two classes together, and one day he asked me to go to the movies with him after school. We started to date, and it was… fine, for the most part. But he was pretty outwardly ashamed of my family’s socio-economic background and grew increasingly disrespectful about it over the course of the relationship. Eventually, I got sick of it, grew a backbone, and broke things off.”

And then everything went to shit.

“He tried to get back together. I refused. He tried some more. I still refused. Then he became mean, belligerent, vindictive. Started messing with my stuff, spreading rumors about me. I had to stop using my locker because he kept putting shit in it.”

Literally. Dog poop, shaving cream, and hair. Every single day for a full week. I kept staying late after school to clean it all out because if I didn’t, my dad would have to. And he didn’t deserve to be caught in the crossfire.

“The administration was aware of what was going on, but Josh’s dad was one of the school’s biggest donors at the time, so no one batted an eye.” They would have let the guy get away with murder if it meant the money would keep flowing in. “I ignored him as best I could. At that point, I had less than three weeks left before graduation, and I told myself that I could stand anything for three weeks. The finish line was so close… everything I’d worked for wasright there. Hell would’ve had to freeze over before I’d risk losing even an inch of it.”

I lifted a shoulder, let it fall. “And then it did. Hell froze over.”

Adrien hadn’t broken eye contact with me once since I’d started talking. And except for the subtle rising and falling of his chest, he stood motionless, listening intently with his brows furrowed.

“Josh wanted a reaction out of me, and when I wouldn’t give him one, he switched tactics.” My throat was beginning to constrict in that tell-tale, painful way, but I ignored it and pushed through. “I was working on my independent research project in AP Bio when I got the video. Josh and a handful of his buddies had broken into the janitor’s closet and pissed in the mop bucket. The video showed…”

I paused, a breath rattling out of my chest. Ten years later and it still burned.

“My dad was born deaf,” I explained. “He couldn’t hear anything. The video showed the guys mocking and taunting him about their stupid prank. But Dad didn’t know what they were saying, he just saw that they were laughing and smiling, so he… smiled back, and waved at the camera, and…”

My breaths were rushing out of me in short, quick bursts now. I took a fisted sleeve to my face, gave it a punishing swipe.

“I don’t remember it,” I said. “Making the decision. Exams were coming up, I was already stressed and pulling all-nighters, and my dad was… When I was six and he couldn’t afford to buy me the limited-edition lawyer doll I wanted, he hand-sewed the outfit for one of my existing ones. And that’s all I remember thinking about when I ran out of class. The outfit wasn’t perfect, it didn’t fit my doll properly, and even at that age, I could tell he was sad about not being able to af-fford the real thing. But he always tried so h-hard. And I didn’t deserve him. He was the best dad you could… I was just so fuckingangry.”

The tears were falling so hard and fast that my hand couldn’t keep up. The world was a smudged and blurred oil painting, and I couldn’t parse out Adrien’s individual features anymore.

I paused long enough for my lungs to settle back down. I thought maybe retelling the story would have gotten easier with time. Apparently not.

“I found the mop bucket before my dad could see what they’d done,” I eventually went on. “Then I dragged it to the school parking lot, smashed Josh’s car window with a brick, and dumped the contents of the bucket onto the driver’s seat.”

And in return, Josh and his dad had ruined my fucking life.

“Your uncle owns one of the biggest law firms in the country. I didn’t stand a chance. Whatever lies Josh fed to his dad about me worked. Kenny promised to bury me for ‘everything I’d done to his son,’ and he did. Charges were pressed, my university admissions were revoked, and I was expelled from school, which rendered my scholarship for the year void. Sixty thousand dollars.”

I patted my eyes dry with my sleeve, sniffling.

Adrien’s expression had tightened with a mixture of disgust and rage, his pulse jutting out of his neck as his breathing grew heavier. And I knew when he put two and two together, because his eyes flared.

For a moment, he was utterly frozen by it. Then his lips peeled apart, and a lungful of air pushed out of him.

“I heard the news. Car crash, right? After a late-night shift?”

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