Page 72 of Heartless Legacy

“I’ve been looking for you since the day you disappeared. You were a ghost, Thea. Completely off the grid.”

“You were looking for me?” I scoff, whirling around to face him. “I’m supposed to believe that, you lying sack of shit?”

His hand snaps out, gripping my arm, his touch shutting down my tirade. My body goes rigid. “Let go.” I rasp out.

He either doesn’t hear me or isn’t listening. My chest tightens. It’s getting harder to breathe. “Le- Let.Go.”

He releases his grip and I back away, pressing my back to the wall, a knife held between us. “If you need to say something, you say it without putting your hands on me. Now why should I believe you were looking for me?”

“You’re my girlfriend and you were missing, so I did what I always do to find you. I hunted you.”

The pounding of my pulse in my ears makes it hard to hear what he’s saying. I try to make sense of his words. “So you treated my absence like a game and were hunting me?”

“Not a game, but you weren’t here, and I wanted to find you. All my search results came up empty.” I hold the knife higher when he takes a step toward me. “Do you know how that made me feel, Thea? Knowing you were alluding me? How absolutely insane I was going without you? And now you’re back and lying to me.”

“I’mnotlying. I was in jail, and you don’t give a shit about me being gone. You had companions to keep you company, so why don’t you go play your games with them?”

“Games?” He barks out a dry laugh. “This is so much more than a game, Thea. This is our life.”

He takes another step. He’s gonna grab me again. Sliding over to the right, I say, “I’m not doing this with you this time.”

“Do you think I’m giving you a choice?”

“It’s my choice to make, and what you can give me is respect. Honor my choice instead of forcing me to file a harassment report against you, or stab you.” He dips his chin and steps aside, giving me a wide berth to pass. He calls out to me when I’m halfway up the stairs. “Iwillfind out where you went, Thea.”

My thoughts are on my run-in with Holden, which is why I stop at the first table I come to, instead of moving to the other side of The Circle, like I usually do. I hear Eloise before I see her. Her words tell me she saw me first, because there’s no way she’s so obsessed with me she that she talks about me when I’m not around.

One of her lackeys says, “My mother said, the parents are having a meeting with the Dean of Admissions. If he can’t guarantee our safety, then they’ll call for his immediate resignation.”

Eloise answers, “As they should. It’s not safe with criminals roaming the campus. If Dean Gibson isn’t interested in keeping us safe, then he needs to be fired. It’s just that simple.”

That’s rich. How am I a threat when I’m the only one on campus who keeps getting attacked? If I weren’t living this nightmare, I’d think this dialogue was a part of a bad plot to a predictable movie. They want to fire the dean because I was arrested. But they thought he did a great jobnotlaunching an investigation into students breaking into my room, destroying my shit, or drugging me and locking me in a burning coffin.

My skin itches. I can feel them looking at me. I force myself to ignore them, as I wait for LJ. They’re entitled to their thoughtsand opinions, and just because they’re gossiping loudly doesn’t mean I have to respond. Especially when my response would prove they have every reason to fear me.

Stabbing Michael is what got me into this mess. I’m not about to do something stupid, like adding another attempted murder charge to my record. With all these witnesses around, I doubt Alexz could pull enough strings to get me off, and I’m not in The League of the Daggered Raven’s good graces, so they’ll probably let me rot in prison. Or ship me back to Rockridge.

I won’t be safe in either of those situations, so I literally sit on my hands to keep from doing just what I’m imagining, and fill my thoughts with happy thoughts. Those thoughts are basically images of Wolfe’s face when he smiles, when he scowls, and just does anything. His face is a work of art, his body a masterpiece, and he’s truly one of my favorite people.

The table where Eloise is sitting finally thins, leaving just her, two other girls, and a guy. I get a text message from LJ saying she’s running late with her morning errands and won’t be able to meet me for lunch. Austin and Connor are off campus with some kind of football team event, which means I’ll be eating alone.

Still in my averting conflict mode, I walk along the sidewalk instead of cutting through the grass by Eloise’s table. Unfortunately for me, she isn’t in conflict resolution mode. She and her little group step onto the sidewalk in front of me. Fuck if it isn’t taking everything in me not to reach for my blade.

“What are you staring at, psycho?” Eloise snarls.

What I’m staring at is her throat, and I’m picturing a crimson slash across it. The image of the screams, gasps, and gurgling sounds are so real that I have to blink twice and look down at my hands to make sure I didn’t actually do it.

I’m not well. I know this. I’m plastered together and functioning, but sometimes the plaster cracks and the insanity in my head slips through. Reality and fiction often bleed togetherlike it did in that room. Which means the students and their parents have a right to be worried. Not that I’m gonna volunteer that info.

I ignore Eloise’s question, and zero in on the guy who’s stumbling over his feet to get next to her. She’s eating the attention up. Shouldn’t she be dissuading his interest, since she has a companion?

I try to remember all the rules, which admittedly I didn’t pay attention to. But I remember some bullshit about serving the dude you’re assigned to, and Pax telling me I was basically his property. I also remember he wasn’t a big fan of me hanging out with anyone who wasn’t him, Holden, or Finn. I guess that was just more of his power tripping over me, because Eloise doesn’t seem to be suffering from lack of friends or male attention.

His eyes widen when he notices me staring. Great. He probably thinks I’m about to stab him or bite his dick off. I decide to do the opposite of what I usually do, and smile at him.

He gives a startled blink, looks behind him, then looks at me again. I take advantage of his confusion. Biting my lip, I make a show of dragging my eyes down his body, then back up again, letting him know I’m totally checking him out. He smiles back and watches me walk away. I turn to make sure nobody from Eloise’s group is sneaking up on me, but he doesn’t realize that. He thinks I’m staring back. And because Eloise is glaring at me, I continue to walk backwards, throwing out a little wave at him, before facing forward again.

Mission complete. I have no interest in that guy, but I had fun dragging his attention away from Eloise for those few minutes. Maybe it’ll make him question if the shit they were saying about me is even true. Some of it is, but it would be nice if people judged me based on getting to know me and not the rumors the Zeta Nus and legacy families are spreading around campus.

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