Page 70 of The Cruel Heir
Because I wasn’t even sure this place was mine anymore.
I stayed in that stall for twenty-three minutes.
I know because I counted them. One breath at a time.
By the time I came out, I’d fixed my makeup. Smoothed my hair. Swapped out my vulnerability for silence.
But the whispers had already started.
“Did you see what happened in the quad?”
“I heard he shoved her…”
“That’s the girl who dated Kingsley, right? Figures.”
I didn’t respond. I didn’t correct them. Let them guess. Let them judge.
Let them all rot.
I should have dropped out right then.
Instead, I went to class like nothing happened, not allowing others to ruin it. Sat through fifty minutes of macroeconomics, without hearing a word. Until I left.
My phone buzzed, just as I stepped off the quad.
I didn’t look right away. Didn’t need to. The burn in my stomach told me it wasn’t good.
Still, I glanced down.
STB Secrets Feed
@campuswhispers:Clear View girls stay messy. Old money, same trauma. Some of y’all need to be chemically sterilized.
Attached was a blurry photo.
Of me.
Frozen mid-step. Shoulders hunched. My mouth half open, like I’d just been slapped. I recognized the walkway. The angle. Someone had taken it when Chadwick grabbed me.
I stopped walking. The cold spread from my hands to my chest.
Underneath, the comments were worse.
@GhostingTheHalls:That Zara chick again? Thought she got expelled from Clear View for sucking her way up the social ladder.
@DramaDeptReject:If my man ever touched me like that I’d sue. Or film it. Girl looks like she liked it.
@TeaSpiller05:This is why you can’t take scholarship bitches anywhere. Go back to where you came from whore and stop stealing our men!
@FinancialAidFashionista:Scholarship chick isn’t a trend, sis.
@TextBookThief:Can’t afford a book anymore but somehow she’s able to land that hottie?
@StarbucksBecky:Watch her cry that we are racist or something. DEI at it again!
@WifiLeech:Always in the library, she’s probably dodging her room fees.
@CafeteriaCritic:Whole plate stacked in the back. Queen, they just don’t get it.
