Page 34 of Ramsey & Emerson

I wasn’t done with these three.

Not by a long shot.

I turned back towards Emerson, and the agony that consumed my body was paralyzing as I watched her wobble forward, then squat down to pick up her shoe. I watched in silence as she put it on, and then the anguish really took hold when she squatted down again to pick up her panties. She fisted them in her right hand, her left hand still holding her shirt together.

Liam finally moved, going over to pick up her backpack that’d been tossed down the hallway. He walked up to her, then placed it at her feet. Emerson looked up at him and just stared wordlessly.

“Emerson…” he said but stopped. Neither of us knew what to say. Oh, we knew that we were going to kill those motherfuckers, but we had no idea what to say to Emerson.

I followed suit, walking up to her. I wanted to take her in my arms and make whatever she had experienced go away, back from the first time that she’d ever seen her father hitting her mother. I wanted to take itallaway.

“Em-” Her silver eyes shot up to my brown ones, and the pure fury in them shut me up.

Emerson’s eyes scaled down my body and back up again in complete, utter loathing. When her eyes met mine again, she said. “I guess there really is no limit to what you’ll do to win, huh?”

Sonofa-fucking-bitch.

Emerson thought thatIhad orchestrated her attack.

She thought Jamie, Ricky, and Roman had gone after her at my urging.

That knowledge sliced through the heart that I didn’t even know that I’d had.

“Emerson,” I said, my voice low and forceful, “I wouldnever-”

“Save it, Reed.”Reed?She turned her eyes of wrath towards Liam. “What I don’t understand is why you bothered to stop them, Liam? Isn’t that going against your master’s wishes?”

Liam’s spine snapped. I could feel the rage and confusion radiating off him in waves. “Ramsey’s not my master, Emerson. And no matter what we’ve ever done, rape has never been a part of it.”

She didn’t look like she believed him, and worse, she looked like she didn’t care.

“Emerson,” I said, drawing her attention back to me, “they’ll pay for this, I swear.”

I was expecting her to tell me to go get fucked. I was expecting a reaction of rage and pain. Instead, she finished me off with a knife to my gut to match the piercing that I felt lodged in my chest, and I’d never underestimated someone so much in my life.

Emerson’s hand loosened its grip on her blouse. Her shirt fell open, exposing her bra and bare stomach. She pushed it back off her shoulders, then gathered it in the hand that wasn’t gripping her panties. She stood before me and Liam in nothing but her bra, uniform skirt, and white sandals, her chin held high.

I didn’t move or say a word as I watched her scrunch up her blouse, then throw it in my face. Besides the clenching of my jaw, I didn’t react. She had every right to lash out, and she threw her wadded-up panties at me next. They hit my face, then tumbled to the ground, landing next to her blouse.

Her eyes volleyed back and forth between me and Liam as she said, “I would rather have had them rape me than owe either of you anything.” I felt her words like a kick to my chest. “I may be trash, but at least I’m not a rapist or a bully. If you think that you guys are going to get credit for putting out a fire that you guys started, you’re not. The both of you can go to hell.”

She walked past us, half-naked, leaving us to suffocate on her words.

Chapter 20

Emerson~

Ishowed up at school Friday morning full of scrapes, scratches, and bruises, and I wore them all unapologetically.

After I’d left Ramsey and Liam standing in the hallway yesterday, I’d gone home, thanked God that I hadn’t run into Bailey, thrown away my uniform and bra, then had soaked in my tub for over an hour. I’d had to replace the cool water with scalding hot twice before I’d finally felt clean enough to crawl into bed.

In all actuality, I wasn’t upset over the attack, so much as it had upset me that I hadn’t seen it coming. The worst that I had expected was keying my car, maybe flattening the tires, maybe even actually getting into a fistfight with someone.

I hadn’t expected gang rape.

Had I had any inkling that Ramsey’s decree would result in something like that, I’d have taken better precautions to not get caught slipping. I would have worn my uniform pants, instead of the skirt. I would have made sure that I walked to my car while other students or teachers were around. I just would have done more. I had underestimated just how entitled these kids felt, and I had nearly paid the price for that small slight yesterday.

The entire time that I’d been soaking in the tub, I had replayed Jamie’s words in my ear. While Ramsey may have left me unprotected, Jamie’s actions hadn’t come from a place of trying to please Ramsey. No. They’d come from a deep, serious, abiding hate for him. Jamie had not only tried to hurt me yesterday, but he’d been trying to hurt Ramsey, too. He was jealous of Ramsey, that much was obvious.

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