Chapter Thirty-Nine
I walk backto my dorm in stunned silence.
One numb step after another. Staring at the ground. Uncomprehending.
He thinks I’m like all the other girls. He lied—not with his words. That would be easier. He lied with his gazes and his touch. With the way he held me close.
He made me lie when I told him that I was his.
I gave myself to him completely. He took my virginity, took my hopes, took my trust—and set it all on fire.
Does he hate me? I almost wish he would.
My mother’s words—People say that love and hatred are opposites, but I don’t quite agree.
She thought that the opposite of love was regret. Maybe it’s not. Maybe the opposite of love is indifference.
That’s how he looked. Indifferent. Uncaring. Irritated, if anything.
Is it over?
Is that even a question that I have the right to ask myself?
Into the tower. Up the elevator. Down the hall.
I’m empty. Not sad, not angry, just—nothing. I feel like I’m suspended at some titanic height, on the very verge of free fall, and even the slightest gust of wind could push me over the edge.
Harper is waiting with wide eyes, on her feet as soon as I close the door behind me.
“Well? Did you talk to him? Is everything?—”
At the lifeless look on my face, she goes silent. Her lips part, but no words come out. The lively spark that always lights her eyes is nowhere to be seen.
I go to my room, and she makes no move to follow me.
My bed, my desk, my dresser—all of it feels foreign, false. If my relationship with Ryker was nothing more than an illusion, what about the rest of it? Who’s to say that my time at Crimson Elite has been any more genuine than the imperfect replica of Starry Night that hangs on my wall?
I kick off my shoes and climb into my bed fully clothed, pulling the blankets up over my shoulder.
Some part of me—some tiny, pathetic part—insists that this could all be a misunderstanding. Maybe someone was spreading rumors about me, and he took them to heart. Maybe he has other stuff going on, something to do with his father or the Order, maybe, that’s making him act unlike himself.
But why am I even bothering to speculate? Ryker couldn’t have made himself clearer.
It just doesn’t make any sense. None of it.
Unbidden, Marissa’s words from a couple of weeks ago spring into my mind.
Ryker isn’t for you. Maybe he’s decided to play with you for a while, but he will come back to me.
I thought she was being jealous. Vindictive. Projecting her own insecurities onto me.
Maybe I should have listened.
I pull my blanket over my head, curl up tight, and try as hard as I can to just stop thinking.
Hunger hits me hard the next morning—I wake up with stabbing pains in my stomach, and realize to my alarm that I haven’t eaten since Sunday evening. I was too nervous for breakfast or lunch yesterday, and then?—
And then my world was turned upside down.
I don’t want it to be real. I can’t let it be real. I scramble to grab my phone—half-charged; I never got around to plugging it in last night—and check my text messages, hoping against hope that it was all some horrendous bad dream.
My texts to Ryker are still there. Still unanswered. And there’s something else: the group chat. The one with Yuki and Roxanne and Shivani—the one that Angelica had been so reluctant to join, though she never ended up leaving.
They’ve kicked me out.
No goodbye. No explanation. I’ve just been… removed.
This isn’t—this can’t?—
I’m not thinking straight, hungry and uncaffeinated. Once I get some proper fuel in my body, then I can try to make sense of all this.
But when I step into the living room—not bothering to change; I never switched into my pajamas last night—I’m hit with another shock.
The mug that Sage gave me at the start of the semester is broken.
Not just broken—shattered, reduced to a sad pile of shards sitting in the middle of the coffee table. Placed there on purpose, without a doubt. Not an accident, but a deliberate message.
What is happening to me?
Fine; coffee from the union will be fine. I probably look like a mess after sleeping in my clothes, but it’s hard to make myself care right now.
I feel like I’m moving in slow motion. Through the hall, down the elevator. A few girls are chatting in the common room, but they fall silent when they see me. I offer them a tiny wave—nothing in return. Just blank, stony stares.
My head throbs.
Is this all connected to him? I guess people might have noticed that he hasn’t been at my side over the past few days… but that doesn’t explain the smashed mug, or being booted out of the group chat. Maybe someone really did tell him lies about me, and now they’ve leaked out to the rest of the student body… but I don’t understand what those lies could even be. The only incriminating things I’ve done since getting here have been for the sake of the Order, and of course it doesn’t make sense for the whole school to know about that.
The quad feels three times its usual size—or maybe I just feel smaller. Quite a few people are out and about, but they ignore me?—
All of them but one, that is.
When she strides up to me, the look on Marissa’s face is beyond cruel—the gloating grin of a lioness with her teeth in the throat of her prey.
“Hey there, Lia.” Her voice rings with false friendliness, much like it did all the way back during class registration, before she decided that she wanted nothing to do with me. “How’s your day going?”
“I just want to go to breakfast.”
“Not so fast! There’s something I want to tell you.” She taps her chin in a mockery of contemplation. “Something along the lines of… how do I put this delicately… I fucking told you so.”
“Are you the reason this is happening?” I demand—part of me wants her to say yes. If I can pin this all on Marissa, then I might be able to believe that Ryker isn’t the one responsible.
She laughs in my face. Loud and brutal, tossing her head back.
“Not me, honey. Though I sure am appreciating it—and not just because I know I’ll be back in his bed by the end of the week. Enjoy your little breakfast.”
She struts off. I wish I could roll my eyes, toss her words aside like I did before—but nothing’s certain anymore. She may very well be right. At least she hasn’t already hooked up with him again… that’s hardly a comfort, but it’s the best I’ve got.
A few GODs are waiting at the door to the student union, chatting idly. I try to weave my way past them, keeping my head down, but one of them—TJ, the guy who brought me food the first time Ryker and I ate together—steps in front of me.
“Off limits,” he says.
“What?” It doesn’t look off-limits; at least a couple dozen students are seated behind the closed doors. “Did something happen?”
“I think you know the answer to that, Morgan.”
I shake my head. “I don’t—I just want to get breakfast before class. Please.”
“Begging will get you nowhere. Do yourself a favor and fuck off. The union’s no place for dirty skanks like you.”
“TJ—”
“And keep my name out of your goddamn whoring mouth.”
Tears of raw anger bite at the backs of my eyes, but I don’t let them drop. I won’t give him—or anyone else—the pleasure of seeing me in pain.
I turn back to the dorm—I don’t know where else to go. I’m not wanted here. Not wanted anywhere, it seems. I don’t know if I’m imagining the disgusted looks from other students as I trudge across the quad.
What did I do wrong? I don’t deserve this—do I? Is it just because of Ryker, or has everyone found a reason to hate me? I know I’m not perfect, but I thought I was doing okay. Making friends, having fun?—
The vibration of my phone in my pocket floods me with dread. I’m tempted to ignore it—or, better yet, to just get rid of the stupid thing, toss it as far as I can across the field—but I know better than that. Even if the world around me has decided to go crazy, I can still stay sane. I have to.
Harper: Just got out of class—lunch in an hour?
Me: I can’t. They aren’t letting me in the student union.
She doesn’t text me back—instead, her response comes in the form of a frantic knock on my bedroom door fifteen minutes later.
“Lia, it’s me. Please let me come in?”
Thank God—her voice sounds normal. Agitated, but with none of the frigid, teasing tone that Marissa and TJ shared. “Of course.”
She bolts inside, slams the door shut behind her, and stares at me in abject horror.
“What do you mean, they aren’t letting you in?”
“I’m not allowed to eat, I guess.”
“The fuck? Who needs to give you permission to eat?” I think I know the answer—and, after a few moments of silence, so does she.
“Oh, fuck that. Fuck him. That’s not just stupid—it’s downright evil. Jesus Christ, are you okay? No, don’t answer that; of course you aren’t.” She grits her teeth and begins to pace back and forth, tugging anxiously at her hair—I’ve never seen her distressed enough to do that before. “I’ll go grab you some food, okay?”
“You don’t have to?—”
“Bullshit. You need to eat, Lia.”
I don’t feel like I can eat—my entire digestive system is wound into knots of anger and frustration. The things I want to do to Marissa… the things I want to do to Ryker…
And yet there’s still a part of me that rebels at the prospect of hurting him. If I could just talk to him—really talk to him, not like that frenzied exchange at the doorway of the GODs house—maybe I could get to the bottom of this all.
“A burger,” Harper decides aloud. “That’s what you need. A good old-fashioned burger. Now that’s what I call a heartbreak cure. Give me ten minutes.”
She’s gone before I can tell her that whatever I’m feeling, it isn’t heartbreak.
Is it?
Being broken-hearted means being sad, right? Crying and reading tragic poetry, listening to breakup songs? I wouldn’t even know where to start. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a breakup song in my life.
This sensation is colder than that. I don’t feel broken, I just feel empty. Empty and anxious and so, so confused.
I just want this to be over.
True to her word, Harper brings me a juicy cheeseburger slathered in ketchup, and it’s good enough that I actually manage to get a few bites down before I have to start preparing for Marko’s class. Sickeningly, I’m almost looking forward to the awful way he looks at me. At least that’s something normal to hold on to.
But when I arrive at the room, he doesn’t look at me at all.
Nobody does. Not Freddie, not Yuki. I raise my hand a couple of times when Marko asks questions, but his eyes skate over me, even when I’m the only one with an answer. They all ignore me like I’m an embarrassment, a stupid little girl pretending that she knows enough to get through a college course. Pretending that she’s normal enough to have a real social life.
Which is what I’m doing, right? Pretending. And it worked for a while, but something has shifted now. People, even professors, have realized who I really am: a fraud.
Fraud or not, though, Harper is right: I don’t need anyone’s permission to eat. I’ll wait for a bit on the later side, then go get dinner. Ryker can’t keep his stupid henchmen posted at the doors all the time.
At least, I hope not.
That hope sputters and dies a few hours later when I lay eyes on the student union.
I was right, in a way. He didn’t send the other GODs to keep me out.
He came here himself.
Even cruel, even glaring, he’s still gorgeous. The slant of his clenched jawline, the tension in his broad shoulders—if it were directed towards someone else, it would be a turn-on. I would feel safe behind him, under his protection.
Instead, I’m in front of him, and he’s staring at me like I’m the enemy.
I stare right back. Probing those eyes that I’ve come to know so well, searching for a trace of the deeper gleam that was once so apparent.
Nothing. In the past, I’ve thought of them as being the color of cobalt, or of azurite—that’s all too appropriate now. They’re cold as any metal, hard as any stone.
“I don’t know what you want from me,” I say carefully, taking care not to let my voice tremble—I’m not going to let him think that he frightens me. “I don’t know what I did to upset you. But I’m hungry.”
“Go eat somewhere else,” he growls. “We don’t want you here.”
A couple of the guys flanking him chuckle and nod in agreement. As I watch, a few more of them spill out of the doors—it looks like half the GODs house is here at least. I can make out some other familiar faces in the growing crowd, as well—Angelica, Vaya, Roxanne, Shivani. None of their expressions betray a trace of sympathy, or even of recognition.
“I just want to get dinner, Ryker.”
His nostrils flare. “You still don’t understand, do you? My word is the fucking law on this. I told you to fuck off. But if you refuse to do that—fine. You’ll have your dinner. And the rest of us will watch.”
Wait, no—I’d rather eat alone in my room a thousand times—but heavy hands are closing around my arms. Freddie on my left, a grinning blonde GOD with a chipped tooth on my right.
“Let me go—Freddie, come on.” I hate how much I sound like I’m begging. Almost as much as I hate the way he won’t even meet my eyes. “Come on, you’re my friend, right? I’ll leave. That’s what you want, isn’t it? Just let me go.”
But he may as well be deaf for all the reaction that he gives. I’m forced to stagger along as they haul me through the doors, across the dining floor, and towards a table near the center. Their grasps release after shoving me into a chair, but I don’t run for it. I can’t—there’s nowhere to go. Other students are encircling us completely, a solid wall of leering faces and hateful eyes.
“Well? What are you in the mood for, Lia?” Ryker asks from where he stands at the other end of the table. “I heard that your friend grabbed you a hamburger earlier. That’s a step below the lobster pasta that you ordered at the restaurant—were you just showing off? Pretending to be classy to impress me? It didn’t work.”
I don’t speak. I won’t give him the satisfaction.
“Burger it is, then. Serve her up, TJ.”
“My pleasure, boss.” TJ steps out of the crowd, and I don’t have time to process what he’s holding before it thuds onto the table in front of me.
Meat. Raw hamburger meat piled sloppily onto a plate, dark pink and oozing. No utensils.
This is too much. I start to get to my feet, but there are hands on my shoulders forcing me back down, cramming me into the chair no matter how much I struggle—I could break free if I really tried, but hurt and confusion stall my movements. I don’t want to hurt anyone; I don’t want to give them even more reason to think of me as a freak.
“What’s wrong, Lia?” Ryker asks—his face is still frozen in that terrible, expressionless mask. “I thought you were hungry.”
“I get it,” I snap. Then again, louder, glaring around at the silent, staring crowd that looms above me. “I get it! You’re making yourselves perfectly clear. You’ve made your point.”
“We’re giving you what you want.” Ryker’s fingers tap impatiently at the end of the table. “Take your time. We’ll wait.”
A giggle comes from my side—Marissa is standing in the inner ring of onlookers, grinning like a shark. A couple other OPs—Sam and Vaya among them—join in, and soon the ranks of students are awash in laughter.
My face burns. I want to disappear—I want to bury myself alive and stay there for a thousand years. I feel pathetic—like a kicked kitten, cowering, desperately holding in my whimpers of pain and confusion—and Ryker still just stands there, waiting, his jaw set and his eyes empty.
I don’t know how much time passes in silence, punctuated only by the snickering crowd, before I realize that he isn’t bluffing. I really don’t have a choice.
The meat is cold and pulpy between my fingers. I take a tiny pinch, shove it in my mouth before I can think too hard, and swallow without chewing.
I force myself to keep from gagging, eyes watering with the effort. There—I did it. They’ll let me go now. They have to.
But when I blink the tears away, nothing has changed. Ryker is still standing there. Waiting.
“Go on,” he orders. “All of it.”
No. No, please. He can’t be serious?—
He is, though. I can see it in his eyes.
I manage to down a second bite, then a third. I can feel their stares burning into me. Watching me squirm.
I can’t do this. I’m going to throw up—I won’t be able to stop myself. And that’s when the laughter will return tenfold, deafening… I can hear it now.
No—they may have me cornered, but I’m not giving that victory to them. To him. He can play dirty all he pleases, but I won’t bend to his level. If I give these awful people what they want, they have no leverage against me.
I finish every last bite—and then, with my stomach screaming in protest, I lift the plate, lock my eyes with Ryker’s, and slowly, deliberately lick it clean.
For the briefest of moments, I think I see something shift in his face, a flicker of doubt?—
Then it’s gone, and I’m left to wonder whether it—and everything else about him—was ever real in the first place.