Page 98 of Liar

“I’ll say it again. You’re a selfish SOB. One that I care about, but still. If you want Ember to talk to you again—and I’m sensing from this conversation that you do—you need to put your own imploded life aside and focus on how you can help hers.”

I scoff. “How can that work? She despises everything I stand for.”

“Look, no one’s perfect. So why don’t you own your flaws? And apologize. And mean it. She’s a good girl. You may be surprised what happens next.”

Good girl. My good girl. I want her back.

It’s that jealous streak of mine that gives me the most pause—I can’t trust myself not to stake my claim on her the moment I get her in my sights.

And punish her for ever doubting me.

Chapter 31

Ember

Aurora corners me in the bathroom.

“You fucking bitch,” she says as she shoves me into a standing sink. “I hope you get gang-banged like your father for what you’ve done. You’ve ruined everything, including your own future, you dumb skank—”

She doesn’t expect the knee to her vagina. I kind of didn’t, either, but I’m pleased when she doubles over, clutching her center and stumbling back. I take my chance and slip past her, resisting a final kick to her forehead.

She’ll suffer enough once the FBI is finished with their investigation and she’s left with a normal, cloak-less life where she actually has to work to stay on top. For a girl like her, that’s some swift punishment.

Savannah isn’t anywhere in Winthorpe that I can see, likely sequestered with her parents until her abduction is all sorted out. I’m grateful, since the guilt of spreading her personal information weighs the most on me. She’s scary and a little psychotic, but she’s a victim in all this, too.

I’m stared at, whispered about, and considered persona non grata for the entire stressful day. News spreads as the minutes tick by, and more officers enter Winthorpe’s grounds. Dupris spends most of the day in her office, lawyering up and refusing to talk to the police.

By last period, I finally relax, content with the realization that Thorne didn’t come to school at all today, probably dealing with his father’s arrest and interrogation instead. I’ve completely ruined his plans to defeat his father and truly wasn’t looking forward to running into him.

For many reasons.

I shut my locker after stuffing the day’s books in, relieved to have survived my first day at Winthorpe as a traitor. I don’t expect to be enrolled here after next week.

Phone in hand, I turn—

“We need to talk.”

—and come nose-to-nose with Thorne’s chest.

It takes a disproportionate amount of effort to control my facial muscles and keep them from frowning, collapsing, my eyes leaking tears. In all these days, I didn’t factor in how much it would hurt to look at him.

“I don’t have anything to say to you,” I say while staring at his tie. A perfect Windsor knot. His whole life as he knew it collapsed, and he was able to execute flawless tailoring this morning. The bastard.

“You have a whole hell of a lot to explain to me, Ember.” His voice thrums with pent-up anger, rippling the shrinking air around us in a way I’ve never heard before. My very soul shivers at the impending danger.

“Either we do it in front of the entire school where I choke the life out of you,” he continues, “or you let me drag you to the rec center by your fucking hair, and I strangle you there. Your decision.”

I hiss through my teeth. He gets what he wants when my eyes snap up to his, furious and hot. “You can’t touch me.”

He responds by sliding two of his fingers into his mouth, tonguing them. My head falls back in shock, pinging against the lockers while every student lucky enough to witness this falls into a frozen, awe-inspired hush.

Knuckle by knuckle, he pulls them out. I’m so thrown by the oddness of his maneuver that I don’t think to keep my jaw tight and angry. He uses that opportunity to shove those same fingers in my mouth, slipping through my teeth and hitting the back of my throat.

My body seizes, my hands coming up to defend the onslaught, but he catches them like a fly, flattening them against my chest as he digs his fingers in until I gag.

“You betrayed me,” he murmurs in the kind of tone where he’s handing in a late assignment rather than pinning me up against a locker by finger-stabbing my throat. “You’re lucky I don’t kill you where I stand.”

I can’t respond with words. I glare around his hand, drool dripping from my pried open jaw as his fingers stroke the back of my tongue. Any slight movement and I’ll bite down on him so hard, he’ll lose digits. He knows it, keeping his fingers steady in their assault.

---