Page 15 of Don't Love Me
“Don’t try too hard,” I said, pointing to her clothes. “It will make you look desperate.”
“I am desperate,” she said, smiling quietly.
It was strange, but her smile shifted something in my chest. Pity maybe? It didn’t matter. I had a plan for Ash when she started school and that plan was to keep as much separation between us as possible. Because that’s what Landen wanted. Because I’d been threatened.
Because I didn’t like the force he’d used when he pulled her from the carriage house and didn’t want to give him another reason to touch her like that.
“Night, Ash.”
I didn’t wait for her to reply, just made my way to her door, closing it softly behind me. Not a sound to be heard in the entire house. I wasn’t even a hundred percent sure what compelled me to come check on her. But as I got into bed, I thought again about what Landen had said, about discouraging any attachments she might have.
That’s when I realized tonight was probably the last time George, Ash and I were ever going to have dinner together again.
I refused to acknowledge how that made me feel.
* * *
First day of senior year
Marc
There was no way I was going to say anything. No way I was going to step in and get her out of this mess. Because there she was, in the hallway by the lockers, making a scene already.
She wasn’t a new transfer. People in town knew the Landens. Knew she lived up in her mansion, privately tutored because her father thought his precious princess was too good for the public-school system.
People wouldn’t have known about the asthma unless someone, who knew I lived on the Landen estate, asked me what the deal with her was. If they did ask, I told them what I knew.
She had asthma, although I’d never seen any impact of that other than her taking the occasional hit off her inhaler. And her father was an overprotective asshole.
My opinion was she should have been in school years ago, but what I thought didn’t matter. I had to remind myself, again, I didn’t care. I had my own shit to deal with.
I was less than a year from turning eighteen, from being legal, when my life was going to be under my control finally and nothing was going to interfere with that. Part of having control meant making money. That’s what people who graduated from Princeton did.
So I wasn’t going to let Ash or her issues get in the way of that. Not even with her big, sad, blue eyes. Not even watching her be so fucking desperate for a friend she was literally walking up to her classmates, introducing herself—as if the student body population didn’t know who Ashleigh Landen was—and asking if she could join them for lunch.
Freak!
Everyone was either ignoring her, mocking her to her face directly, or, more commonly, behind her back. But it was the mean girls, who were jealous of Ash’s designer jeans and five-hundred-dollar, Jimmy Choo sandals, who were trying to make her feel how out of touch she was.
I was far enough down the hallway I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I could see Ash’s eyes getting wider and wider. Her too damn big eyes. It was like they needed to be that big so you could see all her pain and hurt.
Fuck! Now I could see tears. And her chest heaving, which meant in three, two one…there went the inhaler.
George had always said Ash’s asthma was mostly under control. That her father had coddled and isolated her too much. Made her believe she was sicker than she actually was. George felt it was hurting her potential. That she wasn’t as confident as she should be, given all her advantages in life.
Did. Not. Give. A. Shit.
Because Ashleigh Landen wasn’t my problem, and I had orders to stay away.
I could ignore her. I should ignore her.
Or I could set her up as someone to be protected.
I knew the politics of high-school power. Soccer team captain, student council. I was, in all likelihood, going to be voted as the King for Homecoming. Which I would accept reluctantly because it was just one more line item on my application to Princeton.
If, right now, I said Ashleigh Landen was cool, it would make her cool. If I did nothing, she would most likely be sentenced to Freak-ville where she might stay for the remainder of her high-school life.
Because Ash didn’t have a filter. She didn’t know how to suppress feelings or pretend to be happy when she was sad. Or fine when she was hurt, like now. The princess in the castle hadn’t learned to put up walls against the people who might want to tear her down.
