CHAPTER 27 #2
Poor Gran. Still so proud of her legacy, and she had no idea how epically I’d failed our family.
Just when I felt myself start to crack under the weight of it all, a pretty Asian girl in a tight white dress that left little to the imagination cut between the two groups and grabbed Thorne’s arm.
“Guess what?” she exclaimed, bouncing up and down on her ridiculously high heels.
“I sent in my application to Heartstone for next year!”
Thorne blinked as if coming out of a trance, breaking our stare to glance down at the excited girl. Obviously recognizing her, his impenetrable mask melted away, and he gave her a soft smile. “Yumi.”
Smiled. He smiled at her. He’d never smiled at me that way before. Something about that realization made the knife in my heart twist a little. I completely stopped in my tracks, torn between watching their interaction and making a break for it.
“Riku suggested that we dance while I chat your ear off,” the girl said, reaching up to stroke Comet’s chest. The bird bent his head to affectionately nip at her fingers, and she giggled. “Unless you have a special someone here I don’t know about?”
So fast that I might have imagined it, Thorne’s eyes flicked back to me before dropping to the girl again. “No one special.”
The blade gave an extra sharp twist.
“Oh, good,” Yumi said with a relieved smile. “I don’t want to make anyone jealous. Let’s go. I’ve got so much to tell you.”
As they turned and headed for the empty center reserved for dancing, something in me cracked. Broke. Yup, it was official. Thorne had stolen a part of me, something essential. Whatever he’d taken was following him onto that dance floor, leaving the rest of me to cope with the loss.
Dumb. I’d been so dumb to let my guard down around him.
Watching him walk away with another girl was almost worse than the knife of betrayal he’d just stuck into my heart.
Now that he was gone, everything felt off.
The tension between the two families remained, but without Thorne here, it grew unbearably awkward.
Instinct screamed at me to run while I had the chance.
But another part of me, the part laden with guilt, urged me to break the silence, to apologize for what I had done to the Hudson family.
I’d wanted to for so long, but I’d been too afraid.
And even though I was still afraid, I needed them to know how deeply sorry I was.
Words wouldn’t change what happened, and I didn’t expect them to forgive me, but I had to tell them how much I loved Juliana.
They deserved to know, even if they condemned me to death right afterward.
I was just about to risk everything when someone else decided to come between the Mayweather and Hudson standoff.
“Katherine Mayweather, as I live and breathe. I’m honored you decided to come.”
Gran finally broke her stare with Beatrice as Chancellor Grimshaw stopped before her with his hand extended. I blinked, surprised by his friendly greeting. Did he really mean the words, or was he just trying to keep the peace?
Either way, Gran looked him over with a critical eye before replying rather saucily, “Cyrus Grimshaw. I must say, you’ve aged like fine wine. Being chief executive officer of the community’s most prestigious academy must suit you.”
That creepy smile of his stretched a mile wide. “Oh, indeed. It suits me quite well.”
With a light laugh, she placed her hand in his, and he bent down to brush a featherlight kiss over her knuckles.
I clamped my mouth shut before it could fall open.
Were they . . . flirting with each other?
Or was this a simple play of politics? Probably the latter.
I understood politics enough to know that smiles and kind words could cut just as deeply as outright disdain.
Gran clearly had history with the chancellor, although I had no clue who or what they were to each other.
Ex-lovers? Doubtful. There was at least a twenty-year age gap between them, and Gran had never shown an interest in men after Grandad died.
Not that I was aware of anyway.
It suddenly dawned on me how little I actually knew about my grandmother’s personal life before I was born.
I’d always seen her as a surrogate mother, the woman who’d practically raised me and my brother while my parents were off doing important elder business.
She’d relocated from London to the states shortly after our grandfather had been killed, wanting to be closer to her best friend.
My dad and aunt moved with her, and shortly after, my parents met and married.
We’d lived as one big happy family for years, setting down roots in New Hampshire alongside the Hudson family, who officially joined our coven.
My world had been perfect before the exile. Since then, everything kept falling apart. The Hudsons left our coven and moved away, my parents’ attempt to restore the Mayweather name ended in failure and landed them in prison, and my continued secret friendship with Juliana resulted in her death.
And now, here I was, fighting to restore the Mayweather name, praying I didn’t fail like my parents had. But watching the ease with which my grandmother spoke to Chancellor Grimshaw, looking for all the world like she belonged here, I’d never felt more inadequate. She made it look so easy.
It was one thing to hear about her past exploits during her years as an elder but quite another to see her in action.
Gran was a formidable force, commanding the room’s attention with her presence alone.
She oozed confidence and charm in a way that baffled me, especially considering how she’d been treated the past ten years.
The chancellor was clearly basking in her attention, enamored enough with their conversation to ignore the glares many around us were giving them.
In that moment, one thing became painfully clear to me.
Gran was born for this cutthroat lifestyle.
So had my aunt Clarice who’d been Head Elder and the headmistress of an academy before she died.
My dad had thrived in this atmosphere too, along with my mom, despite not having a drop of Mayweather blood in her veins.
But me?
I didn’t fit. Making polite conversation didn’t come natural to me, neither did smiling in the face of my enemies.
I’d rather cut the pretense and tell people exactly how I felt about them, consequences be damned.
Smiling while I was dying inside felt like an impossible task, and forcing myself to do so wasn’t an option.
I might be standing tall in the middle of Heartstone Academy despite the great odds against me, but in that moment, I’d never felt more like a failure, like a fraud.
This wasn’t me. None of this was.
I was like a flopping fish on dry land, unequipped to survive in this world.
Everyone around me easily breathed in the air while I gasped, my body unable to cope where it didn’t belong.
Feeling like a useless lump, I stood silent as a tomb while the world ebbed and flowed around me.
Someone else approached the Hudsons, and I lost my chance to apologize.
Gran and the chancellor continued to talk like old friends, and more and more people started to dance.
One head stood taller than the rest, and before I could stop myself, I was watching Thorne and Yumi gracefully cut across the dancefloor.
Not much taller than me, the dark-haired girl had to crane her neck back while she talked to Thorne.
He responded to something she said, and she laughed loud enough for me to hear.
When he smiled, that pain in my heart twisted again.
I hated to admit it, but they looked good together. Easy. Natural. Unlike when Thorne and I were together. There was nothing easy about our relationship. We didn’t even have one, and after tonight, I doubted we’d ever speak to each other again.
Despite the fact that he was about to betray me, the thought of this thing between us ending tonight filled me with even more pain. Yup, I was broken. Broken and pathetic.
As I continued to stand like a statue, not knowing what to do with myself, voices filtered toward me, close enough to overhear but just out of sight. I tried to tune them out, but the mention of two names sank into me like vicious claws.
“. . . Benedict and Miranda . . .”
My parents.
“I heard the SCA is refusing to shorten their sentences. Too much of a liability, they say. Personally, I hope they rot in that prison for what they did. Sacrificing the community’s safety once for personal gain was bad enough, but twice?
I’m still in shock that Heartstone’s school board voted to admit a Mayweather, especially after Clarice’s failure to protect the students at Thornecrest. I, for one, loathe the thought of a Mayweather rising to power again.
The apple never falls far from the tree, and I say the whole family is rotten to the core and should have been disposed of years ago. ”
The condemning words gouged deep, hitting bone.
I struggled to breathe through the pain ripping my insides to shreds, to stand tall when all I wanted to do was curl up into the insignificant ball the speaker of those words made me feel like.
They’d wanted me to overhear them, to know just how much the community didn’t think I belonged here.
I’d survived countless verbal attacks this semester without breaking, but this one cut deeper.
This one was targeting my family, painting them as villains, and I couldn’t .
. . I couldn’t do it any longer. Couldn’t be here.
Knowing I was about to let Gran down but unable to listen to these people badmouth my family a second longer, I moved toward my grandmother, interrupting her conversation with Chancellor Grimshaw to quietly say, “I’m not feeling well, Gran. I’m so sorry, but I need to leave.”
She turned to me, concern and confusion warring on her face. One look at my own expression, and she saw far more than I wanted her to. Her pale eyes narrowed as she swept them over the crowd, no doubt in search of whatever had upset me.
Worried that she would find and confront whoever had said those awful words, I hurriedly added, “I’m fine, Gran, really. I just need to—”
She lifted a hand, and I reluctantly stopped talking, my gut clenching when her gaze locked on something behind me.
Certain she was about to make a scene in front of everyone, to fight a battle that I should have fought, I tried to brace myself.
But she didn’t say a word. She simply stood there with her hand up. Listening.
Oh no.
If she heard anyone badmouthing the members of her family, this political little charade would be over. Gran wasn’t the turn-the-other-cheek type, and after ten years of living in forced purgatory, I knew without a doubt that an explosion was imminent.
“Let’s just go,” I said, needing to stop this from escalating, from turning into a bloodbath that ended with both of us dead. I tried to slip my arm through hers, but her hand came down and grabbed mine. Hard.
“Is it true?”
At the change in her tone, dread sank like a rock in my stomach. Pearl must have overheard someone talking about the mentorship program and relayed the message back to Gran that Thorne and I were partners. Curse those furry little eavesdropping ears.
“Is what true?” I asked, choosing to take the coward’s way out by playing dumb.
“Are you sleeping with Thorne Hudson to get ahead?”
At the bite, at the anger in her voice, my insides turned to ice.
But it was the sudden stillness around us that had me swaying on my feet, on the verge of passing out.
They’d overheard. Worse, they already knew.
Just like with our arrival, silence rippled over the crowd.
It spanned outward as the gossip spread and spread, reaching every single ear in the great hall.
The dancing stopped. The music stopped.
Everyone turned our way, turned to me, waiting for an answer to Gran’s question. I swept a glance over the room and immediately regretted it when I saw that Thorne had stopped as well, his gaze locked on my face.
Had he started this rumor?
Just the thought of him doing something so cruel cracked the final pieces of my composure.
Feeling my hands start to tremble, I curled them into tight fists before looking Gran straight in the eye and replying, “No, I am not sleeping with Thorne Hudson to get ahead. The mere thought of doing such a thing sickens me.”
Seeing the truth written in my eyes, Gran’s expression fell. “Winter . . .”
Too humiliated to stand here for even one more moment, I quickly cut her off, something I never did. “I have to go, Gran. Thank you for coming tonight, and please tell Wyatt I miss him.”
Leaning forward, I swiftly kissed her cheek and turned away. She let me go, as silent as the rest of the crowd while I swept toward the exit. I kept my head held high even when my chin quivered, even when tears threatened to pour from my eyes.
They didn’t. Even today, they were as dry as bone.
I thought for sure I wouldn’t make it, thought I would trip and fall, making an even bigger fool of myself.
Just one more step. One more.
The stares were unbearable, the silence even more so. Did they believe me? Or had they already labeled me as nothing more than an opportunistic slut?
Oh, how the Mayweather name had fallen.
Barely able to force one foot in front of the other, I was nearly to the doors when Riku appeared beside me. “Bambi . . .”
“Don’t,” I curtly said, refusing to look at him. “Don’t ever call me that again.”
He stopped in his tracks, and I hurried past, the burn behind my eyes making my whole face hurt. Realizing that Riku must have betrayed me too, pretending to be my friend so I’d open up to him, I almost lost it.
By sheer force of will, I managed to exit through the doors and leave the Legacy Gala behind, all while my heart shattered into a million pieces.