Chapter 2 Scarlett
SCARLETT
I sink down to the floor and cover my ears with my hands. My scream echoes throughout the near-empty house, filtering through my palms, right along with Cross’s cackle. I shake in my crouched stance, and a tremor of blinding fear cuts through me.
“Gold.” Cross’s voice is muted, but I still hear him. “That was fucking gold.”
I release my ears, my arms prickling with fear.
“Jesus, get up.” Cross snorts. “It’s not like I’m holding a knife. I didn’t even cover my face.”
I scowl at him and stand on two wobbly legs. “You’re an asshole.”
Cross—too hot for his own good, which pisses me off–shrugs. “I’ve been called worse.”
“I’m sure you have,” I mumble.
Lugging my suitcase behind me, I push past him. I stick my elbow out far enough to dig into his stomach, which admittedly is as hard as a rock.
“Oof.”
I smile to myself and continue down the hallway.
I want to ask what he’s doing here, but I really don’t want to let on that I’m blindsided by his attendance. I’ve had one too many surprises lately, but if he’s here for any reason other than running an errand for my father, I’m going to scream.
Again.
“That’s my room,” he quips from behind.
My teeth clank together. I stop rolling my suitcase across the wooden floor and spin around to face my stepbrother.
I make a face.
It still feels so odd to say that.
Stepbrother.
Every interaction I’ve had with him has been awful. If he isn’t pretending to be nice to me in front of my father and Sofia, he’s sending me scathing glares and doing shit like jumping out from behind walls to scare me half to death.
When I left for fall semester after the wedding, I thought, good riddance. Out of sight, out of mind.
But then I ended up back at home for the holidays, and that was where I stayed. Cross was hardly around—not that I would’ve noticed much with everything that was going on—but I overheard my father comforting Sofia when she expressed how upset she was that he seemed to be pulling away.
I’m certain he was absent during the holidays because I was home, but who am I to care?
“Your room?” I repeat.
“Yeah.” He straightens to his full height. “My room. Didn’t realize you were hard of hearing, Wallace.”
I should’ve known this was too good to be true.
My father knew something was up when I announced that I wasn’t going back to Yale after the holidays.
“You’re the smartest in your class, you have a full-ride to Yale, and you don’t want to go back?”
“No.”
“Something happened.”
“Nothing happened–”
“You don’t have to tell me what happened, but don’t give up on school because of it. What if you transfer? To Shadow Valley?”
I know exactly why Cross is here. My dad probably bribed him to watch out for me, or maybe he thought I’d feel more comfortable if I had him around…safer. As if. I’d rather live alone, because I’m not sure being in the same house as Cross would be considered safe.
The question is, does Cross know that’s why he’s here?
I cross my arms and put all my weight on one foot. “So you mean to tell me that we’re roommates?”
His eyes narrow, like he’s just as put off by the thought as I am. “We’re sharing a house, not a room.”
I roll my eyes. “Housemates, then?”
Cross is busying himself with his phone, a half-smile overtaking his lips at whatever is on the screen. “Whatever you want to call it. Just don’t say it in public.”
The only thing worse than sharing walls with my rude, offensive, careless, jerk of a stepbrother is going back to Yale.
“Did you know?”
Cross lifts his gaze to mine quickly. Those brown eyes, rimmed in thick black eyelashes, narrow again, but he doesn’t answer. He just stares a hole in my face.
We stand in uncomfortable silence.
I clear my throat. “What did your new stepdaddy give you to get you to agree?”
Anger flashes across his face. “Stepdaddy? You’ve got to be kidding me.”
I feed off his emotions like I’m starving. I lean back against the doorjamb, my suitcase touching my leg. He’s blocking the other two doorways, which gives me nowhere to go but into the room he says is his or down the stairs. Neither seems like a good option.
“Surely you didn’t opt to share a house with your spoiled brat of a stepsister…
” I throw out the same insult he flung at me the last time we spoke.
Something in me demands I keep poking the bear.
“You either didn’t know, or my father bribed you.
” I tap my finger against my chin and pretend to think. “What does Cross want?”
He advances on me, his jaw clenched. He stops a hair’s breadth away and braces his hand on the doorframe over my head. He’s so tall that he effortlessly leans down into my space. It takes all of my willpower not to cower.
“One, I can’t be bribed,” he intones.
I hold my breath and angle my chin with a feigned boldness. My heart pounds so hard my chest aches.
“And two…” Cross grabs onto my suitcase. “I don’t want anything from your father.”
His brown eyes darken. I open my mouth to push him a little further, because although I know he doesn’t like me, and he is intimidating, the old Scarlett never would’ve let him get away with talking to me like this.
My therapist said it’s okay not to be the same Scarlett I was before, because I’ve been through something that is life-changing, but I can’t help but reach for that girl who stood up for herself and was fearless.
“Except a free place to live?” I bat my eyes innocently.
Cross bares his teeth, and I bite the inside of my cheek. My mouth fills with blood, and my pulse thrums violently.
His phone vibrates, and he pulls it out of his pocket. A familiar number flashes across the screen, and he instantly becomes irritated. He lets a growl out right before he answers.
“Hello?”
I lean closer, trying to hear what my father is saying. I’m almost so swept away in eavesdropping that I don’t notice Cross dragging my suitcase away from me.
“What are you doing?” I hiss.
He ignores me and continues talking to my dad. “Yeah, she just arrived. I’m helping her with her suitcase right now, actually.”
He is?
Just when I let my guard down and think he’s going to put my suitcase in the other bedroom, he winks and chucks it down the stairs.
My jaw falls open with a silent gasp.
It thuds against every step until it finally stops on the landing then bursts open. I stare at it silently then turn and face Cross. I catch a glimpse of his smug expression as he slips past me into his room.
“You…fucking…asshole–”
He flips me off without turning around.
With anger guiding my steps, I lunge toward him.
His door slams in my face. I jerk back just in time to save my nose, and that just pisses me off more. The lock cuts through the pounding in my ears.
I let out a shriek and slap the door.
My hand stings but not quite as hot as the embarrassment coloring my cheeks.
It’s okay, I tell myself woodenly. I descend the stairs and crouch next to my bag. I slowly close and re-zip it, warring with my emotions.
Being stuck in a house with Cross is still better than going back to Yale.
Barely.
But it is.