Page 476 of Filthy Elites

“She offered, but I told her I was fine just to go straight to Kingsacre.”

“Oh honey, I don’t want you moving in to your college dorm alone, let me book a flight and I’ll come with you and help you settle in.”

“It’s fine, Dad, I promise. You can’t take time off the boat at this time of year and I can carry my own shit, I’m only taking one case with me anyway.”

“I’m worried about you, honey,” he says solemnly. “Remember there’s an open-ended return ticket in your name saved on the airline account, all you have to do is pick a flight and you can come on home whenever you need to. You don’t need to wait for the holidays, you can just come home, because this is your home and it always will be.”

Tears fill my eyes and I launch myself at my dad, throwing my arms around his neck and clinging to him. “I love you, Daddy.”

“I love you too, honey.”

In the years I’ve been living in Maine, my dad has become my rock. He never once doubted my feelings or actions, his belief in me is unyielding, and that means more to me than he could ever understand. Living here has been great. We moved to a cute two-bedroom apartment overlooking the harbor about six months after I decided I was staying, and I spent the remainder of my high school years at the local public school.

The kids here are nice, and for the first few months I tried to make friends, but when the girls I started to get close to suddenly got friend requests from The Elite, and expensive gifts through the post, I gave up. The fear that Sebastian would swoop in and take away any friendships I made kept me from forming any real bonds with anyone. In the grand scale of things, the short time I spent as Sebastian’s unwilling girlfriend shouldn’t have impacted me as much as it has. But he fundamentally changed me, shattered my trust in the people who were closest to me and morphed me into the closed-off, emotional cacti that I am now.

The only important person in my life is my dad, because despite Sebastian’s best attempts, whenever he turned up to lure me back to Green Acres, he could never influence my salt-of-the-earth working-class fisherman father.

It may sound lonely to never make friends or have a boyfriend at my age, but I’d rather be alone than have to watch my family or friends abandon me in favor of a pretty rich boy with a winning smile and a golden tongue. What hurts the most is that he didn’t even have to try that hard to steal Mom or Court from me. Mom switched from team Starling, to team Sebastian the moment she stepped into his family’s massive house, and Court was gone with a hint at the popularity I had no idea she was coveting so hard. I’d rather be alone than constantly worry that the people around me are just waiting to betray me.

“Right, come on then, honey, let’s get you to the airport,” Dad says, coughing to disguise the emotion that’s filling his eyes with tears and reluctantly releasing me to grab my case.

A shudder of fear rolls through me the moment I step off the plane and into the Florida sunshine. Coming back here was awful last time, but at least then I knew it was only for a couple of hours. Now, I’m here to stay and it’s unlikely I’ll get a chance to go home until Thanksgiving.

Closing my eyes for a moment, I inhale a deep, affirming breath, then roll back my shoulders, pick up my case and move to the line of people all waiting for cabs. Mom wanted to pick me up, she kept saying that she deserved to be able to take her only child to college. I almost agreed, until she told me that Harry and Evan were looking forward to helping me get settled. Hell no, I’d rather Evan have no idea where my dorm room is. Not that I think my stepbrother will want to have anything to do with me.

Evan, Clay and Hunter were all nice enough to me, but they’re his, and I don’t want to be a part of anything that will bring him back into my world. The cab drops me at the bus station and I thank the driver and grab my case from the trunk. It takes an hour to get to the closest bus stop to Kingsacre, and then it’ll be about a ten-minute walk dragging my case to the college campus.

Being a private college, I can pretty much guarantee I’m the only freshman who’ll be arriving by bus and the closer I get to the place, the more worried I feel. I hate this world. I hate the rich and elitist, and here I am again, putting myself into a position where I’m going to be forced to interact with them and live with them for the next four years.

Of course, in a place like Kingsacre, there’s no way any of the rich kids that attend could imagine sharing a bathroom with thirty others, so instead of shared dorms, the kids live in houses on campus, where each room has its own bathroom. It’s pretentious as hell, but I wasn’t exactly going to say no to a private living space rather than having to share air with a stranger. My dad offered to pay for an off-campus apartment, but with no car and the campus being twenty minutes away from the closest apartment up for rent, it didn’t make sense for me not to take advantage of the free room and meal plan that was part of my scholarship.

My cheeks are red and there’s a fine layer of sweat coating my skin when I finally arrive at the huge arched gates that signal the entrance. Like I expected, there’s not another person on foot in sight apart from the ones climbing out of Ferrari’s, Porsche’s, and I think that might be a Bugatti. I’m stepping back into rich-kid hell and for the hundredth time since I got off the plane, I consider using my return ticket and just going back home. There’s nothing wrong with community college… right?

The honking of a car horn behind me startles me, and I realize I’m literally standing in the middle of the road. Hauling my case off the street and onto the path, I lift my hand in a silent apology to the car whose path I was obstructing as I turn and start to walk to where the valet—of course this place has valet parking—is pointing people in the direction of student registration. The megarich can’t park their supercars just anywhere, obviously.

“Hi,” I say to a guy around my age wearing a white shirt and a navy-blue vest with Kingsacre university embroidered in gold thread on the pocket.

“Good morning, miss, let me take your keys and I’ll give you a ticket. When you need your car again you can take the ticket to any of the valet points around campus and someone will collect your vehicle and bring it to you.”

“Oh, er, I don’t have a car, I was just hoping you could point me in the direction of freshmen registration.”

The guy stops, stares and then blinks at me. “You don’t have a car?”

“Nope.”

“Did you come in a car service?”

“Er, no,” I laugh awkwardly, furrowing my brow.

“Then how did you get here?” He sounds baffled, like he has literally no idea how anyone could possibly get through the gates without a car or a car service.

“The bus.”

“The closest bus stop is like twenty minutes away.”

“I thought it was only about ten minutes, but I’d say it took me closer to fifteen. Although I was kind of power walking so I didn’t just turn around and go back to the airport.” I have no idea why I’ve got verbal diarrhea with this guy. Normally I limit my conversations with people to polite and concise, but something about his sheer shock is keeping me from shutting up.

“You caught the bus and then walked here alone, with your case?” he says slowly.

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