Page 60 of A Vicious Rumor

"Cool. When did all this happen?" I asked.

"Just this afternoon, actually," my father said.

My features twisted a little. I'd sort of hoped that Paper would have included me in whatever he was doing. I'd have to talk to him about it later. For now, I was just glad that things seemed to be back on track.

"Sounds good," I said. We both finished the rest of our dinners in silence. I put my bowl into the sink and started heading to the staircase.

"Glad to have you home, son," my father said to me.

I stopped on the first step and thought about what he'd just said. "Okay," was all I could manage to respond with. I wasn't sure that I was totally ready to forgive him, or even be civil to him. I made my way upstairs and closed the door behind me.

My feelings about my father were entirely mixed. I hated that he sent me to my mother's this summer, but if he hadn't, I wouldn't have met Lily. I hated that he was running the business into the ground, but I'd figured out a way to fix it, except that way also meant that I couldn't be around Lily because it put her at risk.

And my thoughts on Lily were an entirely different matter. I stripped down to my boxers and climbed into bed. I turned my phone on and started scrolling through social media. So much of it was random pictures from the first day of school, but I couldn't help but look for pictures of Lily.

Then, she appeared. I clicked on her tag and for the second time that day, my stomach dropped. It was a brand new Instagram account, but it already had a serious number of followers. There were a bunch of pictures of her and Scissors on there, complete with horribly cringey sayings about how special he was and how lucky she was to be with him.

The whole thing made me want to puke.

I scrolled up to the top of her feed and noticed she had a link to a TikTok account. Because I was apparently a masochist, I clicked it. The app opened complete with a video of her sitting on Scissors' lap, giggling, as they announced the first party of the year at "their" mansion this coming Saturday.

Well, she announced it. All Scissors did was try and press kisses into her neck while she giggled and told him to stop.

My blood boiled and without thinking, I threw my phone against the wall. I laid back down and tried to drift off to sleep, but spent most of the night staring at the golden cracks on the bead around my wrist as they caught tiny bits of light.

18

LILY

I tried to hide the tears as Zachary drove me home, but I was doing a pretty bad job of it.

"What happened?" he asked me.

I brushed away some moisture with the back of my hand. I still didn't fully trust him. Our bargain didn't seem remotely fair in my eyes. All he wanted from me was to do some digging in some paper file boxes for his family's vital records and in exchange he was giving me a scholarship to the most prestigious high school in the nation, pay off my mother’s credit card debt, and money for college? It just didn't make sense.

At least, it didn't make sense for a girl with no money. For a guy with more money than he'd ever be able to spend in his entire lifetime, maybe the bargain was more beneficial to him. At least that's what I kept trying to tell myself.

That didn't mean I trusted him, though.

"Nothing happened," I replied. "It was just a lot to take in for one day."

"Bullshit," Zachary said, turning onto the private driveway that led to the monstrosity that I currently called my own home these days. "You're tougher than that. Tell me what happened."

I sighed as he put the car into park. "I got paired up with Tyson for lab. And before that class I caught him kissing Kitty in the hallway."

"And?" Zachary asked.

"And what? And nothing!" I said.

Zachary let out a little laugh and then turned to me. "Did you think this was going to be easy, sweetheart?"

"I guess I just didn't expect it to be so hard," I admitted.

Zachary got out of the car, and I followed his lead. We walked upstairs to the clubroom in silence. I plopped myself down on the couch and he grabbed himself a drink from the fridge, popping it open and leaning back.

"So, did he know how much it got to you?"

"What do you mean?" I asked.

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