Chapter 8 Willow
WILLOW
As the door to the closet shuts behind Ransom with a soft click, I wrap my arms around myself, taking a few deep breaths and trying to get a handle on my emotions.
My heart is still racing way too fast, and my skin feels cold and hot at the same time. I can still feel the brush of Ransom’s fingers and the way he boxed me in against the door, and it reminds me way too much of the dream I had last night.
I don’t like the way my body responded to him.
I don’t like the way my heart beat harder and faster, or the way my skin prickled like I was touching a low volt battery.
It makes me feel unbalanced and out of control.
I haven’t felt like myself since last night, and I was hoping that just doing my job and getting back to some semblance of my normal life would help, but now that’s being taken away from me too.
I scrub a hand over my face and then draw myself up, finally leaving the closet to go knock on the door to Carl’s office.
“What?” he barks, sounding as irritated as usual.
I edge the door open and stick my head in. “Do you have a minute?”
He looks up from his computer screen and glares at me, shaking his head. “Jesus, Willow, if I wanted to see you this much, I’d put you on the fucking stage like you asked me to. What the hell do you want now?”
For a second, I think about reminding him that he’s the one who dragged me into his office earlier, but I hold that in, deciding to get to the point instead.
“Um, I… I’m quitting. This is my last day.”
He purses his lips for a second and then shrugs. “Fine. Leave your uniform before you go.”
“It’s just that I need more money if I’m going to be able to pay my tuition, so I have to find another job.”
Carl scoffs, rolling his eyes. “That’s what they all say, sweetheart. And usually they come crawling back. But good luck out there.”
It’s a clear dismissal, and my stomach ties itself into knots as I close the office door and head for the bathroom. I change out of my uniform and leave it folded up in the back room, since I won’t be needing it anymore.
Fuck, I hate this.
Sure, this job wasn’t great, and Carl could be shitty more often than not, but cocktail waitressing was paying the bills. It was the only thing paying the bills. Without it, I have no idea what I’m going to do.
I walk out of Sapphire earlier than I ever have before, and each step I take toward the bus stop feels heavy and terrible, like I’m trudging through molasses or quicksand that’s pulling me down.
It feels like my life is crumbling around me. And there’s nothing I can do to stop it.
Over the next couple days, I get very jumpy. Every time I leave my apartment, I find myself looking over my shoulder, half expecting to see Ransom or one of the other two following me.
Someone brushes up too close to me on the bus on the way home from school once, and I nearly jump out of my skin.
But it’s just a little old woman with a bag too full of groceries, and I breathe a sigh of relief, my hand sliding out from my messenger bag.
Ever since Ransom showed up at the club, I’ve taken to carrying a small switchblade with me in my bag.
It’s just a little thing to make me feel safer, even though I know if it came down to a fight, I’d probably be dead before I had time to even pull it out.
I start looking for a new job too, but I keep getting turned away.
No one is interested in hiring me, and I know it’s because my resume isn’t great.
Even though I’ve worked a lot since I was younger, it was all shady, under the table stuff that my mom got me into.
Not stuff I can put on a resume when applying to work at the local seafood restaurant.
On the third day after quitting the club, I head to campus, feeling like crap.
The window of time for me to pay the school the rest of the money I owe is rapidly closing, and I can’t help but think of that as I sit through every class, trying to focus and take notes.
After my last class of the day, I have to go to a meeting April called to work on our group project. It’s a hike to get across campus, so I’m a few minutes late, and when I walk into the study room she booked, she’s on me in a second.
“Where have you been?” she demands, her hands planted on her hips as she tosses her red hair over one shoulder. “We said three-thirty. Sharp. Do you know what time it is now?”
Usually I try to ignore April’s bullshit, or at least distance myself from it, but this time, I give in to the angry feelings in my chest. She’s had it out for me since the minute I showed up on this campus, when she saw me in ripped jeans and a threadbare long-sleeved tee and decided I clearly wasn’t of the same caliber as her and her friends.
“Get over it, April,” I snap. “I showed up, didn’t I? I’m ten minutes late, it’s not the end of the fucking world.”
Her eyebrows shoot up, her jaw dropping open a little. Then she laughs, her expression morphing into a smug smirk.
“Whatever,” she drawls. “It doesn’t matter anyway. After all, you won’t be here for much longer, will you? If I knew I was gonna get kicked out of school for being too poor, I’d probably slack off too.”
My cheeks heat, my stomach twisting as I glance around at the other students from our class, who are all watching our exchange with interest.
Dammit.
One of April’s crew must’ve been in the admin office the same day I was and overheard the discussion about my tuition being late.
Or maybe it was someone trying to get in good with her, bringing her whatever gossip they could to try to get in with her and her crowd.
Either way, she knows how close I am to being booted from Wayne State, and that knowledge makes embarrassment and despair rise up inside me in equal measure.
Because she’s right.
Unless some miracle occurs, there’s a good chance I won’t even be here next week.
Turning away from April, I take a seat at the long table in the middle of the room.
The rest of our classmates sit too, and I avoid looking in April’s direction as much as possible as the meeting gets started.
As soon as it’s over, I rush out of the room, striding quickly across campus toward the administration building.
I have to try to get one more extension. I need more fucking time.
The office isn’t very busy today, thankfully, and when I see the guy I spoke to last time, I approach his desk. He looks up as I near, adjusting his tie.
“Can I help you?”
“Um, hi.” I settle into the seat in front of his desk, dropping my messenger bag beside me. “My name is Willow Hayes, and I was hoping… I wanted to talk about the tuition payment I have due. I know that the deadline to pay it is coming up, I was just wondering—”
He holds up a hand, cutting me off. “Willow Hayes, you said?”
I nod, fiddling nervously with the hem of my shirt.
He types on his computer for a bit and then looks up, smiling. That shocks me, because unless he’s just as happy about me getting thrown out of school as April is, I have no idea what he has to smile about.
“Ah, I see you got your tuition issue sorted out,” he says. “That’s great.”
I blink, leaning forward a little. “I… what?”
“It says here that you’re all paid up for the rest of the semester. So you’re good to go.”
“But that—how?”
He looks at me like I’m a bit slow, and honestly I feel like I might be in this moment. My mind is having a hard time processing his words.
“Hold on,” he tells me, and then prints something off on the printer next to him.
Once it comes through the feed, he hands me the sheet, and I stare down at it.
There in black and white is my name and a list of fees and costs for the rest of the spring semester. All the way down at the bottom it clearly says, OUTSTANDING BALANCE: $0.00.
It’s hard to believe, but I can’t deny what’s right in front of me, even if I have no idea how it happened.
My stomach churns with a weird mixture of joy and anxiety.
I’m glad that I don’t have to stress about this anymore, but also super freaked out by how it happened in the first place. Mostly freaked out.
The man behind the desk looks at me expectantly, and I remember that I’m having this little freak out right there in front of him. I shake myself a little and force a smile.
“Thank you,” I say stiffly. “I just wanted to… check on the status of things.”
“No problem,” he replies, turning back to his computer. “Have a good afternoon.”
I get up and leave the office, feeling like I’m in a daze. Something good happened to me for once, but I have no idea how. Or why. Or what is even going on anymore.
“Hey, Willow.” Colin nods to me as I pass by him and a few of his buddies lounging on the steps to the economics building. “You done for the day?”
“Yeah,” I mutter, barely glancing at him as I continue walking.
As my feet carry me across campus, a thought occurs to me, tickling the back of my mind. I turn and head for the area near the cafeteria, where the closest ATM is located. My fingers shake a little as I put my bank card in the slot and type in my PIN.
My account comes up, and I stare down at the screen.
There’s extra money in it.
Not just a few dollars, either. My account balance usually hovers in the three figures range, dipping down to two figures when things get really tight. But now there are four numbers ahead of the decimal point.
“Holy shit. I knew it,” I whisper to myself, my heart racing.
It’s a payoff. It has to be. There’s no other explanation for it.
The tuition payment, the extra money in my account… it has to have come from the three brothers. And it’s not a kindness, not really. They’re just looking out for their own interests. Making sure I don’t have any reason at all to go back on our deal.
But it’s starting to feel like they control me and my life now.
Like they own me, and they can play with my job and my education and whatever else they want, whenever they want.
It makes the sour feeling in my stomach even worse, and I stand in front of the ATM, staring at the numbers for several long moments.
Finally, I jab my finger at the machine, clearing my info off the screen.
Then I turn around and start heading back across campus, hiking my messenger bag higher on one shoulder.
Dozens of thoughts are flying through my head all at once, and it’s as if they’re all fighting to be heard over the pounding of my heart.
This is insane. How is this happening?
I’m barely paying attention to where I’m going. I should be heading toward the bus stop since I don’t have any more classes or meetings today, but I end up walking through a quiet part of campus where the paved pathway cuts between two buildings.
I don’t catch the flicker of movement in my periphery until it’s too late.
The man named Malice steps out of the shadows behind me, and I glance over my shoulder, freezing at the sight of him.
He meets my eyes and then starts to prowl closer.