Page 28 of Pretty Girls Never Lie (St. Mary’s)

Isla’s gasp is nothing more than a warm breath, but it slaps me all the same.

“Isla.” Raven pops out of the headmaster’s office, and Isla’s jaw drops open before she sends a scorned look in my direction.

The tiny sliver through the door lets injustenough sound that I hear her getaway car idling behind her. My pulse strums, and I crack my knuckles.

“Don’t youdarecome closer to me.” There’s a hint of panic masking Isla’s feeling of betrayal. “I never should have trusted you.God.” The heels of her palms go into her eyes, but when I take a step closer to her, she pulls them away and shoots me a glare. “You’ve ruined everything.Again.”

“That’s not fair.” I stay calm, but my gut is heavy with dread. “I saved your life that night, Isla.”

“And you ruined it too!”

I shrug. “Fine. Hate me. Don’t trust me. But have enough fucking decency to accept help when it’s standing right in front of you. I couldn’t help you after that night, but I’m here now.Helpingyou.”

Raven tries to ease the conversation because she sees the small steps Isla is taking backward. “Zachary is using Thomas to get to you.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Isla laughs, but it’s not the same laugh I heard earlier when she was wrapped in my arms.

“This is why I came to you.” I’m speaking to Raven, but I refuse to take my gaze from Isla. “Nothing is going to stop Isla from seeing her brother.”

Isla quickly turns her back to us, and my world stops spinning. Panic like I’ve never felt cements my feet to the flooras I watch her descend the stone steps of St. Mary’s and get into the car of a man who has no idea what kind of girl he has in his passenger seat.

“Isla!” Raven runs after her, but I remain in the same spot. “Do not get in that car. Thomas is being placed in a different home.”

Isla is halfway in the passenger seat when I hear Zachary’s voice. “You sure about that?”

Raven makes her down the stairs and I follow after her. I take one step at a time and stare at Isla the whole time. “Isla.” Her name rolling off my tongue sounds like a prayer.

Her blue eyes harden with an independence that only someone like her can yield. “I’ll admit that I needed your help four years ago, Brantley. But I don’t need it now.”

Yes, you do.

“Get in the car, Isla.”

“I will have you arrested!” Raven shouts.

The headmaster’s voice is a whisper behind me. “She’s eighteen, Raven. Technically, he’s doing nothing wrong, and she can make her own decisions. We can't have him arrested.”

I want to crack Zachary’s windshield with my fist. I want to pull him out of the driver’s seat and do to him what I wanted to do to my father on so many occasions. I want to take my fist and plummet it in his face just like my father used to do to me whenever I showed any decency to someone other than him, but instead, I reach down into the passenger seat and grip Isla by the chin with so much force the pads of my fingers turn white.

“I hate you.” Isla peers up at me with glossy eyes.

“You can hate me. I’ll take it. But listen to what I’m about to say to you because I’m only going to say it once. Do with it what you may.” It takes everything in my body not to reach past her and take her old foster father’s head and slam it into the steeringwheel. “Get out of the fucking car and take the help I should have given you four years ago, because I won’t offer it again.”

A second passes, but it feels like a year. “No.”

And there goes my restraint.

I snap my attention to Zachary, and he smiles before shifting it into drive and pushing the pedal to the floor. I’m forced to let go of Isla’s chin so I don’t drag her out of the car and cause us both to be run over.

The headlights fade in the distance with Raven still arguing with the headmaster in the distance. That same feeling of dread and emptiness I felt four years ago after I left Isla and her baby brother screaming in a big, fancy house weighs on me the longer I stand outside of St. Mary’s.

I walk past Raven and the headmaster, headed for my room. A numbness has started to spread throughout my entire body, and the only person that has ever been able to pull me out of it is the one who just put it there.

SEVENTEEN

Isla

“What the hell was that all about?”

---