Poppy never spoke to Arabella, Alice, Stacee, or Soren again.

She no longer cried about Knight or about moving back to the UK.

She was done with All Saints High and waiting to go home—just like me.

I kept my profile lower than the Dead Sea for the remainder of senior year—even when word got out that Vaughn had decided to take Arabella to Indiana and parade her in front of everyone at Daria Followhill’s wedding proposal. The invitation came out of the blue, but it garnered a lot of rumors about them being an item.

Afterward, I overheard Alice whispering to Stacee that Arabella had tried to kiss Vaughn during that trip, and he almost broke her nose fighting her off.

Why he took her with him across the country was a mystery I was going to have to live with. Did he really hate me so much that he was willing to bear the presence of my enemy just to prove a point?

Anyway, Papa was right. I needed to take the assistant’s job, suck it up, and move on with my life.

I’d been resilient and unaffected, even when Vaughn spent the weeks after his internship announcement looking for every reason under the sun to smirk at me tauntingly, trying to rile me up. I always knew when he was in the same room with me, even if I had my back to him, because it felt like clouds rolling in, bringing thunderstorms in their wake. He’d yet to offer me the assistant’s position officially, and so I’d yet to accept.

In the meantime, Vaughn had decided to burn the days until graduation by spiraling out of control. It was as if getting what he wanted—the internship—had destroyed whatever was left of his joy, instead of giving him something to look forward to. He seemed utterly miserable, even more than his usual morbid self, and he’d started skipping school for three and four days at a time, perhaps giving up on his high school diploma altogether.

One day I caught a glimpse of his father prowling the corridor of All Saints High like a demon. Clad in a sleek, black suit and a scowl that made no room for error, the man left no doubt that Vaughn was his flesh and blood. His gaze could wound you from across the hall, and heat spread across my cheeks when I remembered how I’d told Vaughn I was going to call the police on him, and he’d said his father owned everyone in this town.

It wasn’t a figure of speech, I’d later realized.

The principal had invited Vaughn’s parents for a discussion, but when Baron Spencer left the premises an hour later, a triumphant smile on his face, I didn’t think he was the one who’d gotten the third degree.

It made me so frustrated, I bit my inner cheek until warm, salty blood swirled inside my mouth. Vaughn did nothing to earn the unabashed love and support his parents offered him.

When Vaughn did attend school, he looked like he’d been dragged through every section of hell—bruised, beaten, with cut lips and black eyes. I’d heard he’d gotten into plenty of fights, and his face confirmed that. His welts opened if he spoke or moved the wrong way.

He’d stopped talking to people, attending parties, and, according to his friends, responding to text messages and phone calls. There were no more rumors about him getting blowies on school grounds or elsewhere, and the only people he seemed to still be communicating with were Knight Cole and Hunter Fitzpatrick.

I wanted to ask him if he was planning to offer me the assistant’s position anytime soon—or at all. Just because Papa said he’d discussed it with Vaughn didn’t mean he would follow through with the plan. But my pride, mixed with the fact that I really didn’t want to draw his attention to me when he seemed to have finally forgotten about my existence, held me back from asking.

All that changed the last week of school.

I came home after classes with the intention of swimming, then trying to work on the sketch for my next piece, which just wouldn’t come. It drove me nuts that I couldn’t nail down the way I wanted the assemblage to look. I was beginning to suspect Vaughn had not only messed with my head, but also with my creativity.

I dropped my backpack by the stairway, kicking the door shut behind me and double-locking it for good measure. I wanted to swim naked—not because of the stupid tan lines, as Vaughn said—but because I’d read somewhere that swimming naked reminded people what it felt like to be in the womb, and I desperately longed to feel that, a sort of connection with Mum.

I tugged at my shirt, advancing toward the glass doors, when I heard it.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

I spun sharply. The leak came from upstairs. Broken faucet? Bollocks. There went my afternoon. I’d be glaring at the back of a frustrated, grunting plumber.