Page 70 of A Scandal in Homeroom
I had let him inside and he’d seen some of the squishy bits of me and he still liked me.
I’d never had that before, and I was afraid of how good it felt.
The sensible thing would be to get dressed, sneak out of here after he was asleep, sneak back into the Sumners’ and pretend like none of this ever happened. Like I wasn’t in danger of actually liking someone who liked me back.
Running sounded like the only sensible option.
Only, I did ache all over and the bed was really soft. The sheets smelled clean, and Locke’s shirt did, too. It also smelled a little bit like him. I lifted the shirt up to my nose and inhaled him.
What if I could just let it happen? Let my feelings happen, let my defenses down? Ask for help because I needed it?
And what did I need? Simple. An answer to the problem.
Moriarty wasn’t going to just let me walk away from the game, and the Sumners weren’t going to let me stay with them if I got caught sneaking out. Which meant I had to pick one.
Given the violent path Moriarty had chosen to exercise his control, and given that I knew something was going down on the adult night that was a lot bigger than poker, the sensible option was to get out of the game before things blew up.
So that’s what I needed. I needed to find a way to force Moriarty to let me go.
There. At least now I’d defined it. That was my ask for help.
Was it fair to burden Locke with that? I wasn’t sure. But as I drifted off to sleep with the smell of him on my body and in my nose, I felt a deep level of trust.
So I knew I was going to let him try.
16
The Next Morning
Locke
Ididn’t know if she was going to be angry with me, but I felt I had no choice. She needed help. More than that, she needed her friends.
Opening the front door, I let them inside. Beth, who’d been here before, stepped inside confidently, while Janie seemed more uncertain.
“She’s really here?” Janie asked me.
I’d only told them Irene was in trouble and needed their help. To which Beth replied:Hello, we know! Twenty-thousand-dollar bank statement, remember?!To which Janie replied:Where is she?
I’d told them both to meet here early. This way they would have plenty of time to get up to speed on what was happening before school. Then together they could figure out what cheerleading mishap needed to have happened to give her the bruises she sported.
I hadn’t gotten very far on Moriarty last night, only because I suspected the name was fake. The names that did pop all looked perfectly legitimate. Nothing shady about any of them, at least in the surrounding area.
Which meant I was going to have to turn my attention on someone I knew was real.
“Upstairs. Second door on your right.”
I didn’t go after them. If Irene was pissed, let them deal with it. I had to get to the one person who could clue me in on who was really pulling the strings at Thornfield Home.
Coyle Simmons.
For that, I imagined I was going to need a little help myself.
Picking up my mobile, I hit Fitz’s contact number. After a few rings he answered.
“Locke, what do you want? It’s fucking early.”
His voice was raspy, so I imagined I had woken him up. Still, he’d answered the phone. That was a good start.
