Page 117 of Bad for Me

WOODS

The bourbonon my marble and gold bar cart across the room calls my name. I didn’t even bother changing out of my dress shirt before going straight to the cart. Now I’ve been zoning out on my leather couch for God knows how long. I’ve already had a single, but I’m still cold and I never bothered to buy a blanket for this chilly room. Besides, liquor makes me more contemplative and less of a dickhead, and I want to be pissed right now. I typically save doubles for grading papers, anyway. If I had to do that shit sober, the whole class would fail.

Everly wouldn’t.

“For fuck’s sake,” I growl at my intrusive thought and knock back the amber drink. When the glass is empty, I slap it onto my oak coffee table beside Graveston University’s book of bylaws.

I don’t even know why I think that she’d survive my class over any other student. I barely know the girl or what she’s capable of. All I know is that she made straight A’s in honors classes once she started her private school, that she studies, reads, and writes all of the time, that her favorite books are by Jane Austen?—

“What the fuck? How do I know sofuckingmuch about this girl?” I swipe my face and groan.

She was right when she said that my father talks about her a lot. Before her accident, I didn’t mind it so much, but after, I had to step away for good. It brought up too many bad memories from my own mistakes that I’ve tried to tamp down. I thought I’d tuned him out, but apparently some subconscious part of me latched on to the tidbits of information he’s been giving me all of these years. And now it’s all come to roost in my mind, waiting to be used so I can make my gorgeous, smart stepsister happy.

No! I’ll use it against her. She may not have to leave Graveston, but she’s got to get out of my class.

“I’ll make her leave,” I promise myself out loud.

But, hell, the more I try to tell myself that I’ll get her kicked out or transferred, the less gravity the words carry. If my plan can’t even survive thirty-six hours, how long will it take before I give into temptation altogether?

Having Everly in my arms was like soaking in the sun. She warmed me down to my soul, and all I wanted to do was be inside her. It was a Herculean effort to pull out of her yesterday morning rather than plunge in. And now for the life of me, I can’t figure out why I resisted.

I roll my eyes, only to get blinded by the antique crystal chandelier above me. The pain begs me for the hundredth time to tear the ugly thing down. I have a say in the faculty apartment’s décor, but I don’t have any better ideas or interest in changing the place up.

These apartments aren’t meant to be lived in forever. Most of the tenants are graduate school students with spouses, or brand-new professors with families that are waiting for one of the Graveston mansions close by to go on the market. This living situation was supposed to be temporary for me too, just a stopgap between graduating and finding the right woman to marry and start a family with. But I’ve been here for two years, and I royally fucked up yesterday with the only woman I’ve ever been interested in.

Yeah… this “plan” is bullshit.

Defeated, I slouch into my couch and stare even harder at the bourbon bottle. The football game on my wide screen is background noise at this point. It’s a rerun, anyway, but it was playing when I turned the TV on, so I kept it.

Christ, it’s like I’mtryingto be miserable.

“I’m lonely, alright?” I snap back to myself and nearly jump at my own voice. Those words sound louder when they’re said in an empty room. They echo against the hardwood and back to me like a perverse mockingbird.

Before yesterday, I didn’t realize how lonely my life has become. I’ve pushed away my dad, the only family I had after my mom passed away. While he was a wreck at the funeral, for months afterward, he tried to grieve with me. I couldn’t handle being around anyone but myself back then, though. But at this very moment? Being by myself is the last thing I want to be.

I’m not one to have a night out on the town, not even on a Friday. But Ishouldhave gone to Union Valley tonight like I planned yesterday. I don’t know why I didn’t, to be honest. All I know is that I’m already tired of having to do what Ishoulddo, even though I really fucking want to do what Ishouldn’t. Where Everly is concerned, that’s a huge problem.

After I escorted her through one of the Order’s secret tunnels without a care in the world, I realized my mistake. I nearly fucked my stepsister, astudent,and then I had to sneak her through a tunnel that only the Order uses. With what the tunnels are used for, it could be deadly for any normal student to know about them, and yet I put her in danger twice in less than an hour. All because I couldn’t keep my cock in my pants.

My second class started late yesterday, not only because of Everly, but also because I immediately hopped onto my phone and re-upped my yearly train ticket pass so I could get out of town tonight. The winding, foggy mountain roads take so long to drive into the valley that locals have depended on the railroads to travel in and out since the 19thcentury. I haven’t left Graveston, let alone by train, in months, though, preferring to sulk in the dark here, apparently.

I told myself I’d take the train after my classes today, but then I took too long packing up and missed the pre-five o’clock rush. I promised myself I’d either endure the winding mountain roads to take the long drive into town instead, or I’d wait until tonight to try the train when it was less crowded. But of course, I then poured myself a drink and haven’t moved since.

So now I’m here. By myself. Drinking and scrolling through my phone to avoid rehashing everything I did wrong yesterday morning. Hell, not just then. For the past hour, I’ve moved on to questioning every decision I’ve made over the last five years.

Am I wrong to hate someone for what their parent did? Or what they did when they were just a teenager? Is it childish to take my anger out on her when she was only a child herself at the time? I always assumed my father marrying Veralyn Gable was a betrayal against my mother, but was it? I’ve assumed all this time that Veralyn was using my father’s pain for her own gain. But how could a woman like that raise someone as good as Everly?

And then there’s Everly’s accident.

The vision of her in her hospital bed shocks through my mind again, and I wince as another memory takes its place.

This time it’s not the bright lights of the hospital that blind me. It’s brilliant headlights glittering the rain in its beams and a bent street light split at its base from the car that plowed into it. Instead of beeping, life-saving machines, it’s a car horn blaring on and on and on until the firemen figured out how to turn it off. Instead of Everly’s bruised, serene face, it’s my best friend’s bloody and broken body being zipped up in a black bag.

They were nearly the exact same circumstances. Underage drinking gone horrifically wrong and crashing into a pole. My friend didn’t make it. Everly did.

I was merely a passenger in my friend’s car, but no one knows that because I took the fall. It was partially my fault anyway, because I should’ve just called my dad or mom to pick us up. Getting grounded would’ve been a blessing compared to what happened. But I didn’t tell the police it was my fault solely out of guilt.

Even back then I knew he was just a kid whose reputation shouldn’t boil down to a drunk driving tragedy. By taking the blame myself, I took on his parents’ hatred so they wouldn’t blame him. My father was furious, though. Granted, I suspect that was because he knew better. He tried to have the charge dismissed, but even the Rutherford name couldn’t exonerate me when a death was involved.

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