Page 28 of Cruel Dominion

I pushed a lock of her hair back behind her ear. She laughed softly, lying back down on the blanket. Her hand came to my shoulder, just inside the neckline of my shirt so she could feel my skin against hers. She absently ran her fingers over the thick scar I had there.

“I don’t want to go.” She sighed, pushing her face against my shoulder.

“Then don’t. Stay with me. We can get up early and you can be back home before?—”

“That’s not what I meant,” she said, sighing. “I mean, it is, but I meant I don’t want to go to stupid freaking Yale. I don’t want to leave when summer ends.”

My turn to sigh.

In truth, I didn’t want to think about it. We still had some time until the end of the summer, a little more than a month, but every day, we were getting closer to the day when this would be over. When she would leave and forget I ever existed, too busy with white-collars, pretentious vocabularies, and fatter wallets.

Her dad wanted her to get into Yale on a law school track since she was born. She would be a legacy applicant which would strengthen her application. He was also one of the most powerful politicians in California which wouldn’t look bad in that application either. I shrugged.

“Then don’t. He can’t make you go, can he?”

“He’s more persuasive than you think,” she said.

“You’re eighteen this year. He can’t make you do anything.”

She fell silent and I wondered if I said the wrong thing. Maybe she just thought I wouldn’t understand. I wanted to, but I knew there was a gap there. We were close to the same age and neither of us ever wanted to be at home but that was where our similarities stopped.

Her home was one of the palatial mansions that dotted the coastline in the ritzy neighborhood up the beach. Meanwhile, there had been three drug-related deaths in my neighborhood in the past two months. Her father was Hudson Vaughn, career politician who was running for governor this year. My dad was a violent drunk whose only qualification was his marriage certificate.

But when we were out here, that stuff didn’t matter. We both got to forget what was waiting for us at home. We were just Carter and Anna.

“What do you want to do?” I asked her.

“Ideally, if I didn’t have to care about what my dad wanted, I’d want to take some time off.”

“Off of your busy schedule?” I asked, teasing.

“Just not start college immediately. Maybe take a year to be a little independent for once. Travel. After that, I’d want to go to school for photography.”

“That sounds great. You’re an incredible photographer. I still have that negative you gave me. Tucked away safe. You’d definitely get in if you applied to CalArts,” I said.

“Thanks,” she said, biting her lip in that way she knew drove me mad. “I was thinking…I mean, I could look at schools here. Some of them have photography programs.”

“Really?”

I tried to hide the rise of hope from burning through every inch of me. I could never tell her I wanted her to stay. She deserved greatness. She deserved far more than I could ever give her.

“Yeah. Really.”

“That’s not Yale.”

“Yes, but I thought we’d already established that I don’t want to go to Yale. I don’t have to be what he wants me to be.”

“You trying to convince me or yourself?”

“I want to stay here,” she said, cutting her gaze my way, her green eyes blazing with certainty. Her throat bobbed. “I want to stay…”

She trailed off, as though there was something else she wasn’t saying.

Don’t say it. It’s so stupid. Don’t fucking say it.

“With me?” I asked, glad it was too dark for her to see me turn red.

I could practically hear her smiling.

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