Page 23 of Butterfly

“He’s not available,” I said shortly.

God. I was a mess.

She pursed her lips. “Girl, you have to get your shit together,” she said, like she’d read my mind and agreed with me. “That is not the man you tug along on a string and expect him to follow. Lock him down, or someone else will.”

And with that advice, she finished up applying her lip gloss, blew herself a kiss in the mirror, and left the bathroom.

What did I want? Did I want Mason? I obviously didn’t want anyone else to have him—a whole can of worms I was afraid to open. My body wanted him, but that was so wrong. He was my stepbrother, and we loathed each other. Which brought up another issue. What if he was just messing with me, and I was falling for his game? I had to protect myself from him, which meant not talking to him. It would be a little hard to avoid him—Tabb wasn’t that big of a school—but I was determined not to be alone with him again.

My shitty morning got progressively shittier.

Even though I wanted to avoid Mason, Fate had other plans. She was a petty bitch who obviously wanted me to be confused and miserable and confused some more. Fuck her.

I went to the freshmen cafeteria to grab breakfast before my classes. I played the Moana soundtrack to hype myself up for my first day of classes, because nothing said courage like the song “How Far I’ll Go.”

Lost in the music, I didn’t have an eye on where I was going and bumped into a hard body at the entrance to the ivy-covered building.

Stumbling back from the impact, I would’ve fallen on my ass if the person I bumped into hadn’t grabbed my wrist and squeezed. I looked up as I removed my headphones, ready to apologize, and froze.

I really had to stop stumbling into this asshole. Literally.

Mason, dressed in a white vee neck tee that emphasized his pecks and six-pack, stared down at me. He loomed over me, reminding me how tiny I was in comparison to him.

How vulnerable.

“Mason, I—” I began, but the look in his eyes stopped me. Instead of the heat and frustration from yesterday, there was laughing cruelty. It reminded me of the guy I’d met this past summer, the one I’d run away from.

The one I should run from now.

Shoving me away, not gently at all, he laughed, mockery clear and sharp. “Guess even butterflies can be clumsy,” he said.

Butterfly had never sounded so ugly coming out of his mouth, and I wanted to slap the mean nickname out of his mouth. Rage—and misplaced hurt—boiled in my chest. I didn’t want him calling me anything.

His friends, probably all on the hockey team with him, laughed, too. They continued inside, leaving me behind before I could come up with a retort.

Inside the cafeteria, I grabbed cereal and a banana, wishing I had at least one friend to sit with. I wasn’t usually envious of Mason, but I’ll admit I felt a small dose of green envy at the sight of him sitting with his friends, surrounded by fawning girls, hips jutted out, giggling as they stood around his table. I tried to rationalize my lack of friends versus his large group of them: Hockey started in October, so he’d likely come early to campus to train, not to mention they all lived together…not to mention that Tabb was a huge hockey school, so of course he’d already been crowned king. Unlike me, who knew no one, except for him, Emory, Chris, and Lucy, the girl from this morning.

I didn’t envy his popularity, per se, but I deeply and desperately wanted to belong, and right now, I had no one and nothing. That would change once I started my dance classes, it had to—unless Mason somehow wielded the kind of power that would make me a social pariah.

As if he could feel my eyes on his back, he turned to look at me and winked—just as he pulled the girl closest to him into his lap. Her giggle echoed throughout the dining hall and as he dropped a kiss on her neck, I fisted my hands, wanting to disappear.

Which was stupid. Once again, I was feeling territorial about a man I had no claim to—nor did I want one. Why the fuck did I care what he did with girls? He wasn’t mine. I didn’t like him. If anything, this was better. I didn’t want his attention, his words whispered in my ear, his hands on my body, his?—

Get your shit together, Leslie.

Whatever had happened yesterday had just been another game to him. Of course it had. Nothing had changed; he’d just homed in on a new way to torture me. I refused to give him the satisfaction.

But as she stroked a hand through his hair, I turned around and stuffed my cereal and banana into my bag to eat later. I’d lost my appetite.

10

LESLIE

Even though I’d had plenty of time to make it to my first class, A History of Desire in American Lit, I’d been so flustered by my reaction to Mason in the cafeteria that I got lost three times, despite asking multiple students for directions. Needless to say, I was five minutes late, and unbelievably embarrassed. Punctuality and first impressions were important to me. Just one more thing my stepbrother was fucking up. I doubted I was going to make a good impression on my professor.

So far college was off to a great start.

The back door to the classroom was locked, so I had no choice but to walk in through the front—right next to the professor. For a moment, I contemplated ditching class entirely. For a moment, I contemplated packing up and quitting, admitting defeat.

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