Page 89 of Kings & Corruption

I don’t know what I wanted him to say. That he didn’t regret it? That would be stupid, because I was already regretting it.

Liar. You’re just regretting that he didn’t finish what he started.

I ignored the voice in my head. It wanted to hand me a lighter while I stood next to the grenade that was my attraction to Neo — that was our attraction to each other — and I was apparently already holding a lit match in one hand.

“Fine,” I said, reaching for the door, “but you can drop the Jezebel act. If I’m not mistaken — and I’m not — you would have been more than happy to fuck me back there.”

He turned to face me, and I was almost surprised to see the hatred still burning in his eyes. “Wanting to fuck you and liking you,trustingyou, are two very different things,Jezebel.”

“You have a lot of nerve talking about trust. It’s been two years since Emma went missing. Two years!” Tears stung my eyes. “You’ve been here the whole time, were here when it happened, and you haven’t done anything to find her. And I’m supposed to trust you?” I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”

His expression turned cold. “I’m not the one who left the country for a worldwide party.”

The insult took my breath away, literally sucked all the air out of my lungs.

Because it was true. They were the words that taunted me when I let myself stay still long enough to hear them. I’d spent my last year of high school hanging on every word the police spoke about Emma’s disappearance, printing flyers, combing her social media for clues about what might have happened to her.

I should have come to Aventine when I graduated. Instead, I’d bailed. I’d left my mom with Roberto and I’d tried to pretend none of it had happened.

“Maybe,” I said. “But what you did was worse. You were there — at Aventine when she disappeared and for two whole years afterwards. And you didn’t even bother to look for her.” I took a breath. “Stay. Leave. I really don’t care. I’m going to talk to Nikki.”

I slammed the car door and started across the parking lot, feeling Neo’s eyes burning a hole in my back every step of the way.

* * *

The Bellepoint campus was old and quaint, with stone buildings and sweeping lawns surrounded by old-growth trees, but Lenape Hall looked like any dorm in any college in America.

I made my way over gray linoleum in the second-floor hall and watched the numbers on the doors, all of them decorated with two names written in glitter and stickers that varied from butterflies to music notes to theater masks.

I’d been surprised to find out that Nikki still lived in the dorms. I’d assumed every college student wanted to move off campus in their last two years, but Claire told me it was hard to find rentals in Blackwell Falls. Its residential makeup consisted of townies who’d lived in their houses for decades — and sometimes generations — and downstate people who owned most of the upscale homes in the area. It was one of the reasons the sororities and fraternities were so popular: living off campus was a huge perk.

Some of the doors were open, and I caught glimpses of the life I might have had if I’d started school as a freshman at a regular college — posters on the wall and rumpled bedding and fairy lights and music and laughter between girls spread out on the floors and beds.

Leaving the country had been a choice, but it hadn’t felt like a choice at the time. I’d been drowning in grief, completely unequipped to deal with my mom, who’d spent her days in bed unless Roberto Alinari was paying a visit. Now I felt a pang of loss. I liked to play tough and act like I hadn’t wanted to be like everyone else graduating from high school, but I couldn’t help wondering what it was like to start college with so much hope and innocence.

I passed a girl with wet hair in boxer shorts and a tank top carrying a shower caddy, continued past three more doors, and stopped at room 238. A glittery green name tag that read MELODY was taped to the wall on one side of the door. The other side spelled out NIKKI in pink.

I took a deep breath and knocked, hoping Nikki wasn’t out. I really didn’t want to have to come back, especially since I was pretty sure Neo would hide the keys to the cars after today.

The door flew open. A dark-haired girl stood in its frame, her expression distracted, music playing softly in the background.

Her blue eyes widened in surprise.

“Hi, Nikki,” I said.

She stared at me for what felt like ages. “You shouldn’t have come here.”

* * *

She sat on her bed after offering me the desk chair. Her roommate — the girl named Melody — was at the library studying with friends, a stroke of luck for me.

The dorm room was standard, and a fresh pang of loss washed over me as I looked around. My mom and I had driven up to Blackwell Falls with Emma to help organize her dorm room. It had been a fun day, full of excited chatter, and for the first time in a long time, I’d felt something like hope.

I’d thought the worst of our bad luck was behind us, my dad either in witness protection or dead. Emma had been excited to start college, to be away from home, and I’d been looking forward to my senior year of high school.

Then she was gone.

“Whatever you have to say, you should say it before Melody comes back,” Nikki said.

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