Page 440 of Tis the Season to be Bullied

It’s a fucking battle, but I win.

Only because Harper walks into the room, though. If she hadn’t arrived just then, I wouldn’t have held out. I’d be sobbing in my father’s arms like a fucking child, and I’d have hated myself for it.He’dhave hated me for it, for being weak, for being a fuckingkid.

“Mr. Dearth, Mom said I had to ask your permission to...” She trails off, stopping somewhere behind me, hidden. “Oh, I...Did I...I’ll come back.”

Dad pulls out of my grip, stands, walks around me to go to Harper. I follow him, a morbid fascination forcing me to watch their exchange. “Harper, did you have anything to do with this?”

She frowns. “With what?”

Dad crosses his arms over his chest. “The drugs in Jude’s locker.”

Harper blinks and says nothing, just her mouth working. For a second, hope blossoms. If she admits to what she did, this would all be over. I’d be back to playing football on Monday. The scholarship would still be mine.

Her throat moves as she swallows. “You thinkIput them in Jude’s locker?”

“Did you?” Dad’s frown turns quizzical. “Harper?”

“No. Of course not.” She glances at me, blushes, glances away. “I was nowhere near his stuff.”

“So you didn’t go into the locker room after the game? Because you disappeared just after halftime. I only saw you again when we were leaving the school.” Dad grabs her arm. “Harper, if you’re lying...”

Her blush deepens. “Yes. I mean, no! I was with a…friend the whole time.”

“Who?”

She licks her lips, her eyes fixed on the ground. “A-Alex.” Her eyes dart up to mine, but whatever she sees on my face must terrify her. “Jude’s friend.” The last is a whisper.

I lean away from her, blinking hard. “You’re lying,” I spit out. “He would never?—”

“We were just fooling around. Nothing happened!” She claps a hand over my dad’s, squeezing him. “Please, Mr. Dearth, I’m telling the truth. You can ask Alex if you don’t believe me.”

Please, Jude.

I growl and shove past them both as I exit the kitchen. My father calls after me, but if I turn around now, I won’t stop at a single punch.

Rosie is in the hallway when I storm up the stairs to my room, and she beams when she sees me. “Jude! Are you better—” but once she registers the expression on my face, she falters. “Jude?”

I sweep past her, throwing out a hand to stop her in case she tries to follow. I slam my bedroom door so hard, one of my certificates falls off the wall and shatters. I rip my phone off its charger and call Alex.

He doesn’t answer.

I barely rein in my hand, but I still end up slamming my phone on my desk hard enough to shatter the screen. I start pacing like a caged animal, my hands curling in and out of fists, my breath more of a pant than anything else. But this room is too small, and there are too many things in here that can break. That Iwantto break.

So I rip open my bedroom door and trot down the stairs, ignoring Rosie’s trembling, “Jude?” when she calls out to me from the living room. I jog down the basement stairs and step into the gym, heading straight for the weights. There are spare sweats and towels next to the sauna, but I don’t bother withthose. I pick up a set of dumbbells and start with reps, not even bothering to warm up.

Ineedto feel pain. Maybe then I’ll stop thinking about all the ways I can hurt Harper.

There’s no pain, though. Not yet. But I do manage to focus. And with that focus, I work through every moment of my life since I met my stepsister. I sift through those memories like someone hunting for turds in a box of cat litter.

Harper’s smarter than I thought possible. Crafty, like a little fox. I need to find something so incriminating, sodamning,the only logical place to send her would be a fucking nunnery in Tibet.

I move onto the rowing machine, then the punching bag. But it’s only when I collapse into the sauna an hour later, sweat streaming over my aching muscles, that it comes to me.

My head shifts forward. My eyes open to lazy coils of steam. I blink, cock my head, think it throughreallycarefully.

And then I smile.

Chapter 48

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