Page 119 of Kingmakers, Year One

But I don’t own her. I thought I did. I was like a kid with a toy—careless and stupid. Until I lost her.

“Yes,” I lie. “I’m happy for you.”

I don’t know if I’ve ever lied to Anna before. It doesn’t feel good coming out of my mouth. In fact, it feels fucking horrible.

Anna regards me with a look I can’t interpret. Maybe it’s sorrow. Maybe it’s contempt.

Without answering, she turns around and walks away.

I know I’ve fucked up all over again. But I have no idea how to stop.

23

DEAN

Anna disappears from class for several days.

She’s barely spoken to me since that night in the icehouse.

I’m equal parts furious at her, and desperate to see her.

After Combat class, I sneak into her dorm tower, planning to break into her room again. Before I even put a hand on her door, someone pulls it open from the inside, and I’m met with the petite but stubborn frame of Chay Wagner.

“She’s sick, and she doesn’t want to talk to you,” Chay says.

“Let me in.” I try to push past her into the room.

Chay blocks the way, keeping the door mostly closed so I can’t even peer around it to see if Anna’s actually in bed, or if she’s even inside at all.

“Get out of the way,” I growl at her.

“How about you get out of our dorm before I yell for Pippa,” Chay retorts. “You’re not allowed to be up here.”

It’s probably an empty threat. Pippa Portnoy is likely in class herself at the moment, but I don’t particularly want to tangle with the famously vicious Senior, who wouldn’t hesitateto report me if I annoyed her—or arrange an even more inconvenient run-in with one of her many minions.

“Anna!” I call around Chay’s shoulder.

Chay just scowls at me. “You broke up. Get over it,” she says, and slams the door in my face.

Technically Anna and I can’t break up, because technically we were never boyfriend and girlfriend.

But that’s irrelevant.

I claimed Anna the moment I saw her.

I thought she might run back to Leo as soon as she fled the icehouse. But she hasn’t done that—not yet at least.

I have a few theories as to why.

First, though she’d never admit it, I know that seeing Leo getting a BJ from Gemma Rossi cut Anna deep. The continued presence of Gemma, and her obvious interest in Leo, has been salt in the wound ever since. I’ve seen Anna carefully refusing to look at either of them when we’re all in class together.

She avoids Gemma’s whole cavalcade of Spies—luckily for me, because that nosy redhead Shannon Kelly is the only person who could possibly throw suspicion on what happened that night. Gemma obviously has no idea, and it seems like Leo doesn’t either—he just thinks he was smashed and made a bad choice.

Anna may still be hung up on Leo, but she hasn’t given up on her resentment from that party, either. My little scheme was more successful than I ever could have dreamed.

I assume it wasn’t the first time Leo fucked around with some random girl, but as far as I know it was the first time it happened here, at Kingmakers, and apparently that means something to Anna. She must have thought things would be different once they went away to school together.

Maybe she would have forgiven him if Leo begged and groveled. As far as I know, he never did. He’s probably too proud, the fucking idiot. Or else he knew it wouldn’t work.

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