Page 40 of Seren

Ugh. Why did I like the way my name rolled off his tongue? I needed to fix this, and I needed to fix it fast. “Well, now that you got it out of your system, we can go back to hating each other.” I turned to walk away, but his hand shot out and caught my wrist, stopping me. I didn’t dare turn around as my heartbeat drummed faster, betraying me on so many levels.

“That didn’t come close to getting it out of my system,” he said, the rasp in his voice telling me he was serious. “And, I don’t want to hate you anymore.”

I closed my eyes,reallyneeding to be away from him so I could process the craziness that just went down.

He finally released my wrist, but his grasp branded my skin like a hot vise grip and I couldn’t shake the feeling of it despite how hard I tried. I hurried up to the manor, and this time he didn’t follow me.

Had he really been treating me coldly because the alternative was falling for me? All of it seemed so outrageous. But I wasn’t in Coopersville anymore. People in Windham controlled other people better than they controlled their own emotions. And, apparently, I was the chink in Seren Grayson’s armor.

CHAPTER 21

Grace

I’d stayed in Coopersville at Holly’s, needing the weekend away from Grayson Manor to think about what had happened with Seren. To rethink the kiss, my reaction to the kiss, and my confusion over his one-eighty. Holly and Laney were all #TeamSeren, loving that he’d saved me in the cafeteria and then declared his actual feelings for me. They hung on every word of my story like it was some kind of fairy tale. But nothing about my time around Seren had felt like a fairy tale.

Maybe I wasn’t being fair.

Sure, he and I had gotten off on the wrong foot when I arrived at the manor, but maybe I’d misread everything. I’d seen it one way, and he’d been seeing it differently because he was coming at it from another place. A place I’d never even considered.

I’d assumed he’d done all the crappy stuff to me, but I’d been wrong. Maybe I needed to forgive his actual indiscretions because now I knew they were done out of feelings he was having for me that he didn’t want to be having. Maybe I never met the real Seren until now.

I wasn’t Elizabeth Bennet fromPride and Prejudice. I could admit when I may have been wrong. I could move past the bad and see the good. Maybe I’d been ignoring all the good things about Seren. Hehadstuck up for me in front of the entire cafeteria. Hehadtried to get me to need him to drive me to Coopersville (albeit in a screwed-up way). Hehadtried to push me away because he knew he was no good for me. Hehadadmitted he’d done some messed-up stuff.

Maybe forgiveness was what I needed to take away from my time in Windham. And, maybe I needed to start with Seren.

* * *

At school on Monday, most people looked away as I passed by. No laughter or whispering followed me down the hallways. It seemed as though Seren’s threat in the cafeteria had worked.

I spotted Seren standing by his locker on my way to chemistry. My anxiousness about seeing him after what happened quickly morphed into a pit in my stomach. Kiki stood plastered to his side, her arms wrapped around his hips from the side as she whispered into his ear. She wasn’t hanging on him the way a friend would. She was hanging on to him the way a girlfriend would.

“Bitch,” Christa called as I moved by them.

Kiki pulled her attention away from Seren long enough to add, “Whore.”

Whore? Did they know what happened with Seren and me? Were they mad? Jealous?

I looked to Seren, hoping to find an explanation behind his eyes, but he avoided my stare.

What the hell?

Kiki reached up and tunneled her fingers into the back of his hair. I was about to avert my gaze when she pulled his mouth down to hers.

Thatcaused me to look away as my stomach roiled. My heartbeat thrashed off the wall of my chest as I hurried to class. My mind whirled as I wove myself through the crowded hallway. Had I really been that stupid? That gullible? That naïve?

He played me.

Again.

And I let him.

I gave everything he’d said in the treehouse credence. And it all ended up being a lie—another way to pay for my “crimes” against him.

And I fell for it.

Hook. Line. And sinker.

I struggled to focus on the teacher’s lecture on element eighty on the periodic table: Mercury. He had all sorts of show-and-tell objects including large thermometers and fluorescent lamps, but his words were a jumble of discernable sounds.

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