The Penalty (Lakeview Lightning #4)

1. Runaway Train

Chapter 1

Runaway Train

Cece

Waking up in jail was not how I planned to end my junior year at Cornell. But here I am with a demolition crew jackhammering my skull from the inside. The hot tingle at the back of my throat warns me I’m about to make a bad situation worse by hurling on the cold, concrete floor.

I roll over to at least avoiding puking on myself. Although, judging from the crustiness of my hair, I may have already achieved this at least once. My body hits the unforgiving floor with a painful thump that’s going to leave bruises. My hand is shaky when I reach up to brush away the tangled mess of my hair, swallowing hard to keep the remaining contents of my stomach down.

What the fuck happened last night? My memories have that hazy, faraway quality of a drunken night. The last thing I remember is being surrounded by people. My house full of all my friends, and acquaintances. Not to mention the hundred or so strangers who were more than happy to take advantage of everything proximity to the Whitaker heir offers. The party was thumping as we celebrated the end of another school year.

After that? I search my memory like a CSI agent, trying to find any strand of evidence to help me solve the problem of how I ended up here. Darkness, darkness, and then a single patch of gray.

My best friend, Pen, has her talons in my arm as she drags me out my front door. Bella is with us, and I can hear the shadow of Trent’s pretentious laugh. Wait? Why exactly was he with us? Our on-again, off-again relationship is definitely in a permanent off position. Who knows with him, though. He was probably trying to creep his way into Bella’s pants. She’s the only one of my friends he hasn’t slept with at some point or another. Our little inner circle tends toward the incestuous.

But that’s all I’ve got. No matter how hard I try, there’s nothing after that but a dark void. What is wrong with me? I learned my lesson the last time I got blackout drunk. Callie’s New Year’s Eve party, the year I turned eighteen. Or at least I thought I had, but apparently not. A few years later, I’m right back where I started.

Why did I let myself get to that point? Maybe it was the message from my mother that they wouldn’t be able to make it to my art show. Maybe it was catching Trent getting a blow job from my econ tutor in the library. At ten thirty in the morning. Who does that? It might be easier to deal with if I passed economics, but nope. One more thing to add to the Cece Whitaker list of fuck ups. My father is going to disown me when he finds out.

Fuck. This isn’t me. Why have I let this year fly off the rails like a bullet train with a missing section of track?

I groan, then whimper when my head smacks into the concrete wall. Well, that’s it. My life is over. My father is going to kill me, or maybe he’ll lock me up in my room for the rest of my life, like Rapunzel. Not sure which is the worse option.

“Cecelia Whitaker. Come with me.”

The sound of keys jingling and the groaning clank of a barred door sliding open forces me to peel open my crusty eyelids. It’s as if it’s reluctant to let anyone out. I’ve gotten myself into some shitty situations, but this is a first, and hopefully a last.

A gray-uniformed guard looks down at me, disgust pinching his mouth into a thin line as he roughly grabs my arm, but I hold the yelp inside. Never let them see when they hurt you. I know exactly what he’s thinking. Spoiled princess thinks she can do whatever she wants. And maybe he’s right. Maybe it’s time I take a look at myself and try to do better.

The churning in my stomach kicks up a notch at the man here to bail me out. “Holmes?” My father didn’t take the time to come for me himself. It’s no surprise a five-and-a-half-hour drive would be too much of an inconvenience for his only daughter. But I think I’d prefer the judgment on his face to the sympathy on the face of my family’s long-time driver.

“Miss Whitaker.” He dips his silver head in a respectful nod I one hundred percent do not deserve.

I’ m shuffled over to a desk to sign some papers, before accepting the large yellow envelope the officer hands me. He looks almost as tired as I am, with deep grooves etched beside faded blue eyes. My cell phone in its glittery silver wallet case slides out, along with a few items of jewelry. They’re comically out of place under the fluorescent lights of the grim place. I blink, but the stabbing pain at the back of my eyeballs doesn’t dissipate.

Each step to the car feels like I’m fighting through quicksand, and if I thought the artificial light inside was bad, I was mistaken. The sun is out in full force, and my stomach revolts against the increased throbbing in my head.

I bend over next to the shiny black sedan, retching the bile that is all that’s left in me.

Holmes pats my back, handing me a bottle of water.

“You’re being too nice to me, Holmes.” My voice is a croaky rasp.

“Someone has to be,” he says, swinging my door open and helping me inside.

Instinctively, I fling up an arm to shield my face from the familiar click of a camera. Fuck. That’s all I need. To be exposed once again as an object of derision. If my twin brother Beau is the golden boy of the Whitaker family, I guess I’m the tarnished brass penny.

I curl up against the buttery soft leather seat and shut my eyes, taking small sips from the water bottle. It’s clutched in my hand as if it can save me from the wrath I’m awaiting at home. The chilled water flows down my parched throat like a glacial waterfall, soothing the ache.

“Miss Whitaker. We’re home.” Holmes’s gentle call drags me back to reality, and I blink groggily awake.

As we pull up to the tall iron gates at the end of the long driveway, I’m regretting consuming multiple bottles of water as a tsunami crashes around my guts.

It’s all fun and games until you pull up to the family estate. At least it’s a long ass driveway. I drag my fingers through the snarled mess of my white-blonde hair and smooth a hand down the glittery skirt that matches my phone case. My phone flicks on when I snatch it up, studying the screen. Notifications are popping up at an alarming rate. Nope. Not even going to look. I do not have the energy to deal with that right now.

I’m out the door before Holmes comes around to open it for me. He’ll be disappointed, but I think I need to get this over with as soon as possible. Face my punishment and move on. The rhythm of my heels clacking on the cobblestoned walk matches the thump of my heartbeat echoing in my head.

The heavy wood door gives under my trembly push and I’m here. Home bitter home. Goody. All traces of sleep are chased away by the anxious dread chilling my body.

Eddings takes a step back as I’m charging in. At least he looks annoyed with me, or maybe it’s the fact that his stiff white collar is too tight. He pretty much always looks annoyed. Not like Holmes.

I give him a nod and the friendliest smile I can muster up. He returns the nod, but his frown only deepens as he takes in what I can only assume is a wild appearance. Definitely not suitable for the Whitaker family.

“Your father is expecting you in his study,” he says to me in a voice as stiff as his collar.

The big window catches my eye as I’m passing through the large sitting room to get to my father’s study. I could bust out and try to run for it. The manicured back lawn disappears into a wooded park I could hide in for days. But I’m not much of a hunter-gatherer, so I’d be pretty hungry at the end of a day or two. Not to mention the unsuitability of my club-worthy attire for backwoods survival.

Instead, I take a deep breath, pull my shoulders back and reactivate the steel rod in my spine years of debutante training have formed. My father is not one to accept weakness or any kind of defeat. It’ll only make it worse if I show him the fear that’s been swirling around inside since my unpleasant wake-up call this morning.

My three sharp knocks on the door are greeted with... a big fat nothing. Is he even here? Eddings doesn’t lie. I don’t think he’s been programmed for deceit, so he has to be in there. Must be ignoring his wayward daughter.

Finally, he issues an impatient. “Come in.”

I push open the door. If I was uncomfortable before, stepping into my father’s inner sanctum ratchets up the feeling tenfold. This room is all him. Pure wealth and male energy. From the fuck-you heavy antique desk to the shelf of pretentious books behind him that rarely get read. Clothbound classics and rare first editions are the general vibe. Although there are a few shelves dedicated to newer business books, and I know he’s read those.

He doesn’t rise as I step inside, not that I expected him to. Just nods to the chair across from him. It’s shorter than his, so he looms over you. In case his perfectly tailored custom suit and stern expression aren’t intimidating enough.

“Cecelia.”

I dig my teeth into my lower lip to avoid correcting him. I usually tell him to call me Cece like everyone else, but correcting him is not a wise idea at this particular moment in time. “Father.”

“What do you have to say for yourself?” Straight to the point.

I’ve always thought this was the stupidest of questions. What exactly is he expecting me to say? I fucked up. I was possessed by a demon. Is there any answer that’s going to make a difference to him? No. Why even try?

“It was just a party.” Since I’m still in the dark about what happened after I left my party and the events that led to me ending up in a cell, I’m going with that.

The lines between his eyes deepen. “Cecelia. A party did not get you arrested and splashed across the Internet.”

The cold sweat starts back up again. “Splashed all over the Internet?” That could mean anything. It could be the pictures that got taken earlier this morning while I puked outside the car. Or maybe it was whatever happened during the gaping black hole in my memory of last night. But since I’m still unaware of my crime, I’m quite concerned.

“Don’t tell me you haven’t seen the pictures.”

Suffocating heat presses in on me, leaving me light-headed. Pictures posted online never cast you in a positive light when your family is as high profile as mine. At least not the ones of me.

I shake my head, struggling to swallow around the lump at the back of my throat.

He swings around the open laptop on his desk to reveal a picture of me. Am I??? Attempting to scale the statue of Ezra Cornell? I flip to the next picture, closing my eyes when I catch a flash of bright pink panties and... oh no... my tits. Holy fuck. My tits are on display on the Internet. And I’m the one lifting my shirt to show them to the world. I have nice tits, I’m not going to deny that, but I don’t exactly want them on display for everyone with access to the world wide web. Especially not while I’m disgracing the statue of my school’s illustrious founder.

My neck goes weak, head falling to my hands.

“Anything to say now?”

“I don’t remember.”

His long pause is designed to make me squirm, and it works.

“You don’t remember.” He enunciates each word like a laser-targeted weapon. “Cecelia. I thought you were over this nonsense. You had your wild spell, but when we sent you off to Cornell, we trusted you to uphold the family name like you have been raised to do since birth.”

“I have been.” Mostly. I haven’t done anything of this magnitude, that’s for sure. Nothing you would hear about if you weren’t on the campus of Cornell. But I guess I let the stress of exams and unrealistic expectations take over. The Ivy League school filled with students who share the same blue blood as I do. Other people who would like nothing more than to bring people like me down. It’s not fair, to be honest. Beau is the golden boy, the favorite twin, but he’s allowed to party and drink, sleep around. Boys will be boys and all that misogynistic nonsense. But not their angel girl child. No, I’m supposed to keep quiet, smile demurely and drink my bottle of wine without a single wobble on my heels.

“No, you haven’t been. Because if you had, this wouldn’t have happened. If you were in control of yourself. Aware of your pedigree and the expectations of someone with our name, you would never have embarrassed us like this.”

Of course. It’s all about control with him. His control of us, and our control of ourselves. As if we’re not college students with our own minds attached to underdeveloped prefrontal cortexes.

“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry won’t make this go away. I’m pulling you from Cornell.”

That gets my attention. “What? I only have one year left. You can’t pull me. ”

“You’ll be transferring to Lakeview, where your brother can keep an eye on you.”

I shake my head, gripping the desk until my knuckles ache. “No. All my friends are there. I know the professors.”

“And look where your friends have gotten you? Disgracing our family name, failing economics. You’re not going back.”

“But...” The nausea is back again, twisting my insides into knots.

“There are no buts. It’s already done. I’ve arranged for Lewis to send all the paperwork.”

And there it is. My future settled with a few words to his lawyer. My years at Cornell wiped away like they meant nothing. I was finally going to be able to take the animation elective I’ve been aiming for my entire time at the school. What a waste.

“You’ll take an online course this summer. I’ve hired you a tutor to make up that economics credit you failed, and you’ll still graduate on time.”

He turns his laptop back around, dropping his eyes to his keyboard, fingers punching the keyboard with harsh, staccato clicks. And just like that, I’ve been dismissed.

“Dad, please.”

He doesn’t look up from his screen, so I stand up, trudging out. My stomach growls at me and I look up, glancing toward the kitchen. Nope. I can’t face our chef Shelley right now. She’d be so disappointed if she saw me in those articles.

I sigh, swiping a hand through my hair and making my slow way up the back stairwell. I don’t want to run into anyone else, especially not my mother. If she’s even here. I doubt she wanted any part in my disgrace. Leave father to deal with it and move on with her life. Gloss it over next time I see her or save it for later to send a targeted dig at me during a future argument.

Maybe Beau is home. He might drive me crazy sometimes. He might be overprotective and the standard I can never live up to, but I still love my twin. It’s not his fault our fucked-up world has such gross double standards.

I guess there is one bright spot in this disaster. I’ll get to see him more often now that we’ll be going to the same school. Hell, maybe I can live with him. That has both pluses and minuses. Pluses, hot hockey boys, minuses my brother monitoring my love life. Definitely no hockey boys. Bad idea all around.