Page 14 of Reckless Hearts

Now, I’ll destroy her.

4

DAHLIA

Six years ago:

“You know she’s a rape-baby, right?”

I flinch, stopping in my tracks just before rounding the corner to my dorm room. My face contorts, biting back the pain as the sound of other girls laughing fills the high-ceilinged hallways.

It’s not the first time I’ve heard the term used to describe me, but it still hurts. It still sucks to hear it out loud, especially when it’s immediately followed by cruel laugher and ridicule.

“You know that makes her a total slut, too, right?”

“Uh,tellme about it,” Amanda groans with a knowing tone. “Why do you think I barely ever sleep in my own dorm room?”

My mouth pulls to a thin line as anger and hurt boil inside of me. My roommate Amanda spends half of her nights out of our room because she’s insomeone else’sroom.

Severalsomeone elses’, actually.

The “rape-baby” comment is callous and horrible, but at least it’s rooted in fact. Being labeled a slut who apparently keeps my roommate out of our shared space because of my endless sexcapades, however, is firmly rooted infiction.

Except, it’s one of life’s greatest catch-22’s for a woman: if I own up to the fact that I’m a nineteen-year-old virgin, then I’ll be branded a weirdo. A freak. A prude. We’re talking serious “No wonder you don’t have any friends, Dahlia” territory. But then again,notbeing a virgin apparently makes you a whore and a slut.

There’s literally no winning in this situation, and it fucking sucks.

“Also, her mom is totally one of those Instagram whores who gets flown out to Dubai to fuck rich Saudi guys for money.”

Enough is enough.

My blood turns to fire.

I’ll put up with the sneering looks and mean girl comments. I’ll put up with having no friends here, because I fully appreciate that just being here at Knightsblood University is a privilege and ahugeadvantage. I’ll even put up with the fact that my roommate Amanda is the leader of the meanest mean girls on campus and apparently decided before we ever even met that I was the shit on the sole of her precious Louboutins.

But my mother is asuperhero, and one tenth of the horrors she’s overcome in her life would have broken fucking Amanda in half.

This is my goddamn line in the sand.

I’m not by nature a violent person. Or even a confrontational one. But my fists ball up as I start to lurch around the corner.

That is, until one last comment slaps me sideways.

“Well, like mother like daughter. Youknowshe’s probably doing the same thing. Probably just a matter of time before someone puts a fucking rape-baby in her, too.”

I blanch, bile rising in my throat as they all start to laugh.

“Yeah, well, it’s not rape if they’re willing, is it?” Amanda snickers. “You know she wants it all the time with anybody.”

Jarring lights flash like strobes in my vision. My brain glitches, my breath choking off as my throat closes up. The hallway spins as I find myself falling back against the wall, clutching at my chest.

You know you want this, pretty girl.

Air. I need air.

All of the fight floods out of me as I whirl and bolt down the hall, bag in hand. Outside the dormitory, I go stumbling past other students who stare at me like the crazy, has-no-business-being-here girl they all already see me as.

But I don’t care. My feet pick up the pace until I’m sprinting across one of the greens, far away from the sprawling, beautiful Jacobean Revival and Georgian-style towers and buildings of Knightsblood University.

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