Chapter Thirty-Two
Sky
R uby has a textbook open, but hasn’t even glanced at it. Her phone is a dull background noise that buzzes and makes it impossible for me to study. There was no way I was going to the library, though. I’m still not over being chased in the woods. But if I’m being honest… the noise isn’t why I can’t study.
After Cade dragged me out of the social studies and into the empty hall, I saw a side of him that maybe… scared me. He put his fist through the wall, heaving and panting, tore at his hair and then threw the bench—that I’m pretty sure was bolted to the floor. It shattered and echoed down the corridor, skidding into pieces. He was a tornado of fury, emotions swirling so fast around him that I don’t think he was even aware of me, standing with my mouth agape.
I’ve never seen someone lose control like that. I’m sure my father wars with a similar temper, but he governs his actions with a stiff fist. He could never let himself unravel. And neither could I. I had to bottle it all up.
Watching Cade… Maybe it wasn’t him that scared me, but that I was scared of myself, and the way his disorder sent a thrill through me. He was free, unbound. Not a victim of his turmoil, but an active participant. How many times had I wished I could react like that? How many nights have I lost sleep, suffocating under my own bitterness, trapping everything I feel inside of me and pretending to be a good girl ?
I slam my history book closed.
It’s crazy. I can’t ever act like that—shouldn’t even entertain the allure. Especially if I don’t want to get dragged away the way Cade did. It took three professors to subdue him, and even then he screamed and thrashed. It was awful watching him be hauled away. I wanted to lunge for him, thrash with him against his captures. But all I could do was try and soothe. The good girl in me winning and pleading for him to calm down.
It wasn’t until they tried to round a corner that he seemed to finally remember I existed. He yelled for me to go back to my room.
Stay in your room, Sky!
Wait for me!
I pull down the sleeves of his jacket and wrap them around my stomach, feeling guilty for not listening to him. There was no way I could skip an entire day’s classes. That would be unacceptable for the congressman’s daughter. Rain or shine, or even appendicitis , I wasn’t allowed to look like a slacker.
But after my last class, I did come straight back to my dorm. Even without Cade’s plea, I didn’t want to risk being out and exposed. I know how stupid it is of me to not tell anyone what happened, but I just can’t open myself up to that again.
No one believed me about Chase. Who’s going to believe a story about a knife slinging, skull-faced guy hunting me in the woods? And honestly, I’m more worried about what my father would do with my claim than some weirdo lurking around campus. The congressman would have to make an appearance if his daughter experienced something so harrowing. It would be all mock concern while in company, but then pinches and sneers in the shadows. It would be called another embarrassment, another lie, another ploy to ruin his reputation.
I don’t want to go through that again. I already made that mistake once.
I sigh and fall back on my pillows. It should be fine not saying anything. As long as I stick to my classes and don’t venture off alone again, I shouldn’t have anything to be afraid of. I can do that.
But what I can’t do, what I’m really afraid of, is if Cade is expelled. Can his blackmail get him out of assaulting a teacher? That seems like pushing it. Will I never see him again? The weight that settles on my chest and feels unbearable. Especially after knowing what life without him feels like.
He’s a drug that hit my lungs that first day in the administration building. His presence alone drips a sweet substance that got me hooked at first sight. It was madness—torture—trying to exist when I knew the high that came in his company. I fear it will be even worse now.
I’m already craving him. Ready to brave another skull-faced run in the woods, if it means seeing him again. That’s how crazy he makes me. And I would do it too, if I thought Cade was anywhere on campus. But I don’t feel him. His ominous aura is quiet.
Too quiet.
I sigh again.
“Ugh, my god.” The buzzing of Ruby’s phone suddenly quiets. “Will you spit it out?”
“What?” I bristle, swinging my head in her direction. “I’m just studying.”
“Yeah, if you call that studying, you might as well drop out now.”
I roll my eyes and make a show of dragging my book up.
“Just get it out,” she grumbles. “I permit you two minutes of venting and then you can stop stewing, and I can study in peace.”
I scoff. “You aren’t studying.”
“This is how I study.” She holds up her phone. “Now come on, everyone knows anyway.” She twists in her bed and lays her feet up against the wall.
I freeze. “Everyone knows what?”
She tilts her head back to look at me upside down. “That you and Cade Haven are a thing, and that he lost his shit. Word travels fast, Barbie.”
“Why would people think we are a thing?” I fling my book aside.
Are we a thing? My heart hums when it shouldn’t. Cade is… And yes, I want him… But he’s not…
“Because he threw you over his shoulder like a bandit with loot and ravished you in the hallway.”
“ What?! ” I shriek. “He did not!”
“Not what I heard. They say he took you on the Macmiller Memorial Bench and fucked you so good it broke.”
My face flames as I try and fail to form words. There’s no way that’s what people are saying. God, I’m going to be known as a whore. If that spreads…
“Yep. Word is Rykes looked at you too long, and Cade attacked him for it.”
“That’s not what happened at all!” Panic flares in my chest.
She shrugs and looks at the wall. “Well, you could tell me what really happened and I might be able to set the record straight for you.”
“He was just—” I start, not actually sure why Cade didn’t go to his class, but then notice Ruby biting her lip.
“You manipulative little liar!” I say.
“Who me?” She twists onto her stomach and pins me with challenging eyes. “I’m not the one who lied about knowing Cade while prancing around in his jumpers and acting like a goody two shoes while fucking the spawn of satan.”
“He’s not the spawn of satan, ” I spit.
“Oh, so the fucking part is accurate, though?” She smirks.
I narrow my eyes at her. “What do you care, anyway?”
“I don’t.” She scoffs, pulling her phone back out. “I just hope you know what you’re getting into.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” An odd, protective part of me bubbles up. “He’s just a person. Not a puppy skinning cultist.”
The truth is, though, that I don’t know that for a fact. I would like to believe I have decent judgment and didn’t spread my legs for a sociopath. Besides the poor little dead birds, I didn’t spot anything nefarious in his… cabin? Is that what that place was? My brows furrow. I was so distracted that I didn’t even question why he had a bed in there… or a drawer of knives. Does Cade actually sleep out there in the woods? It was kind of cozy, but still.
“I’m just saying.” Ruby shrugs.
“Saying what?” I don’t let my uncertainty stop the boulder I’ve already started rolling. “Because he’s a loner, he’s a freak? Looks can be deceiving, Ruby. Look at you.”
She slowly turns her head, raising a brow. “Look at me? What about me?” She tosses her phone and swings her legs off the bed. “At least I don’t pretend to be something I’m not.”
“Ha!” I laugh, the sound cruel and patronizing, but if she thinks I’m the only one wearing a mask, she’s mistaken.
She narrows her eyes at me, lips pinching together. “I don’t portray myself as being holier than thou and then mingle with the rubbish in secret.”
“No.” I sneer. “You just hide behind your eyeliner and attitude and pretend like nothing fazes you.”
I may have only been Ruby’s roommate for a little over a month, but I see her heart, bloody and mangled, all over her sleeve. She thinks her smart comebacks at Britney disguise the hurt in her eyes, but they don’t. Every insult that red-headed bitch throws at her whittles down her self worth. She might pretend she doesn’t care, but it’s the complete opposite. She never lets her black nails chip, always repainting them to perfection. She spends hours watching tutorials on how to make grunge eyeliner look effortless, and she has a pink diary stashed under her mattress that she writes in when she thinks I’m asleep. She sniffles softly at night, keeping me awake, and breaking my heart so violently that I have to resist the urge to climb in her bed and hold her.
Because I know what she would do if I did. She would push me away, hide behind a snarky remark, and pretend she’s having allergies. She’s built a spiky exterior, but it’s just a costume. She pretends to be hard when she’s nothing but a squishy little girl, just like the rest of us.
“You don’t know anything about me!” she seethes, eyes going watery.
And isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black? She judges me for not having piercings, tattoos, or wearing makeup, but she doesn’t know why. She doesn’t know that the real me—whoever she is—is clawing to get out.
“And you don’t know anything about me ,” I say, hoping she gets the irony.
I stand and grab my shower caddy, going to the door. I can’t watch her cry at my words. I don’t like being mean. I really don’t, and I didn’t mean to sound so cruel, but I’m getting progressively worse at letting people get away with poking at me.
I slam the door, not sure if I’m angry at her or myself. I mean, it’s true she doesn’t know me, but is that my fault? I don’t speak up during lunch, never show my hand, and yes, I suppose in a way I’ve kept Cade a secret, but not because I think he’s less than me. It’s because I don’t know what to think of him. I could have told Ruby about when he took me for ice cream, but then I would have had to confess how it made me feel, or what it meant. And I didn’t know what it meant. I could have gabbed that we kissed, that he showed up in our room. But then he disappeared. And while I personally don’t care what people think, my father has ingrained it into me that if I tarnish my image, I have him to answer to.
Lana and Callie basically called Cade evil. Was I supposed to tell them I let him give me stitches? No matter how far away I am from my father, I’m still expected to be decorous.
Tears threaten in my eyes as I stomp into the showers. Will I still be like this even if I scrounge up the money my father stole from me? Will leaving the country and getting away from him really save me if I’m unable to be myself, not even sure who myself is? I grip the counter, afraid that for all my aspirations, it’s too late, that my molding is set in stone, and that Japan is just a faded dream now.
I haven’t been able to skim any cash being here, seeing as how there are no ATMs on campus, and I’ve only been able to get forty dollars cash back; From the one time I went into town with Cade. As desperately as I want to be free of my father, in a place where he can’t find me, I don’t think I can be homeless in a foreign country. I’m going to end up enrolled at Duke, studying political science, and trying but failing to keep those grades up while scouring away money from scratch.
Politics is the bane of my existence, and the culprit of more backhands than I can count. But I can’t absorb it. It’s like my mind shuts down when it hears anything about policy and law. It’s just more constraints, more suppression, more clenched fists looking for control. The people in that world wear masks of deception that never falter, and that’s the exact thing I want to get away from.
I want genuineness. Freedom. I don’t want to worry about how I come off, and I don’t want to be stuck under my father’s thumb anymore. I have to try harder to get the money.