21. Addie
ADDIE
PARAMORE – THAT’S WHAT YOU GET
“Addie, wait!”
But I wasn’t waiting. Not for anyone. Not stuck in these halls, in this building, in nothing from the waist down.
How could I have been so fucking stupid? To let things get so far with my instructor—a man who apparently didn’t care enough to spare my pride or my dignity—who just laid there while I was verbally and descryingly slaughtered by his friend.
Fuck the lot of them.
My face burned as I tapped the elevator call button relentlessly until it stopped on the fourth floor. The doors dinged open. My one small reprieve was that it was empty.
Small mercies.
I dashed inside, conscious of the thudding footsteps echoing down the hall behind me, and hit the button for the ground floor. The doors began to slide shut—but too slow. A hand appeared within the gap, prompting them to reopen, and I spun to hide my glowing face.
I didn’t care which of them ran after me. Didn’t care what they wanted from me. I had nothing left to offer except my virginity, and like hell was that going anywhere near those three.
Someone stepped into the cabin, and the doors slid shut behind them. My stomach somersaulted as it descended—a feeling that was overwhelmingly short thanks to a certain arrogance said someone possessed in pulling the emergency stop.
“Addie.”
I knew that voice. I’d run from it earlier.
“Adelaide, please look at me.”
Somehow, despite everything that just happened and the whirlwind of things I was feeling, I couldn’t help but look up at Evander through the curtain of white hair Deklan had pulled free.
I’d been bold before, but that false bravado dried up the moment their apartment door swung shut behind me.
I was nothing but a girl, used up, hung out to dry, standing half naked and mortified in front of yet another instructor.
At least it was nothing he hadn’t already seen before.
I couldn’t wait to see this Academy in the rear-view mirror of whichever car they assigned me at Graduation. I couldn’t wait to never see these men again.
And yet—Evander stood patiently before me, holding a throw blanket out in front, shielding my body from view.
“I’m blocking the camera from this angle. You can get dressed—I promise no one is looking.”
It was a kind, humane gesture—but I couldn’t forget the fact that he’d reduced me to a puddle almost as embarrassing as the one I’d melted into now, little more than an hour ago.
I threw my trousers back on—sans a certain pair of underwear. What was I thinking? What was the point in that besides a show of you-can’t-rattle-me?
Worse, what was Beckett going to do with them now?
Hoping the answer was throw them in the bin, I bent to shove my feet into my still-tied boots. I didn’t even remember when they’d come off. And I didn’t want to think about the events that led to my not-remembering, either.
“You can drop the blanket now,” I murmured.
“About earlier—” he began, rubbing the back of his neck as a flush crept across his cheeks.
“Forget it.” I slammed the emergency stop back down, and the elevator resumed its downward journey.
“Adelaide—”
“Instructor Lockwood,” I snarled, rounding on him. “Forgive me if you don’t think my embarrassment has already peaked tonight, but I’ve had more than enough of you three and your toying. Leave me alone and maybe we can all see the week out in relative peace.”
The doors dinged open as if on cue and I fled—just like the old days. Like a thief in the night.
“And just where have you been, my tiny, blonde nomad?” Ethan drawled from his new cot—the one right next to Fleur’s, which I hadn’t yet vacated.
She wouldn’t be needing it anymore—and I couldn’t bring myself to sleep in the place she was murdered.
“Never you mind,” I grumbled, heading straight for the trunk at the end of the bed, housing what little clothing I still possessed.
“What’d he say?” Mercy piped up, eyes alight, peering over Ethan’s bare chest from where she lay snuggled in the crook of his arm.
“He said that if we’d continued to look deeper than the top sheet, we would have discovered a whole cohort’s worth of capture sheets.” My teeth ground together, reiterating my own stupidity.
Mercy’s dark brows slashed together beneath her choppy, sex-addled mane. “There was more?”
“Yes.”
“Well, fuck. Maybe we should have looked.” Her petite, pixie-like face wrinkled in a grimace.
“Ya think?” I snarked, slamming the trunk lid down a little harder than necessary.
“Hey, don’t shoot the messenger,” she said, hands raised in mock surrender.
The action, however, caused the blanket to slip, exposing her whole right boob.
Mercy didn’t seem to mind, though. In fact, she stuck her chest out a little further when she noticed the trajectory of my eyeballs, and winked when they landed on her pebbled nipple.
Scoffing, I said, “Technically I’m the messenger,” and averted my gaze.
“Fine, don’t shoot the recipient then.” Whatever else she was going to say was drowned in a wave of giggles as Ethan leaned in to cover said nipple with his mouth.
Apparently he didn’t mind, either.
Using the opportunity of their sudden distraction to slip into something a little more comfortable and a little less revealing, I whipped my standard-issue trousers right off. With clean underwear halfway up my legs, I thought I was in the clear.
“Adelaide Eliza Sinclair, where the fuck are your undergarments?”
Turns out, I was wrong.
“You’re kidding. Eliza’s your middle name?” Mercy stifled another giggle.
“No,” Ethan answered on my behalf. “But she refuses to tell anyone her middle name—and therefore it must be ghastly—so I made one up in the event of needing to full-name her. Like right now for instance. When she’s wandered back to her bed, irate and panty-less.”
Mercy sucked her cheeks in, looking for all the world like she was trying real hard to suck in whatever snide commentary was rattling through her brain.
“Care to explain, Miss Sinclair?” Ethan hummed.
“Not even a little bit,” I snapped, climbing into bed with underwear in situ.
Thankfully, Ethan dropped the interrogation—though I knew it was only a temporary reprieve—favouring Mercy’s attentions instead.
Go Mercy. Someone might as well be getting some around here. And it certainly wouldn’t be me.
I lay there pretending to sleep until well past lights out; well past the staggered times each inebriated recruit came traipsing in. The hours trickled on, the minutes rolling by whether I slept or not, until the sky lightened with the day’s first fractured rays of cold, winter sunshine.
Fuck this.
I slid out of bed and padded over to my trunk on silent, sock-covered feet—not that anyone would have noticed considering the state they’d all been in when they’d fallen into bed, as well as the racket of their snores across the room now.
I threw on what I found, layering on whatever passed through my fingers.
My nose wrinkled when I grabbed the same pants I’d worn last night, but I didn’t exactly have options, so on they went.
Three pairs of socks, my boots, a beanie, and two sweaters later, I crossed the threshold into the frosted hallway.
My breath, visible in the air as I ambled along the walkway and down two flights of stairs, was my only companion.
Blissfully silent and quickly disappearing—the only evidence I’d ever been here at all.
It wasn’t until I pushed through the external doors and inhaled that first deep, chilled lungful of frozen air that I felt like I could actually breathe again.
The ice needling my senses was invigorating—exactly what I needed after a night of no sleep.
Of tossing and turning and thinking and overthinking.
Of growing more irritable with every sleepless second that passed.
“Couldn’t sleep either, huh?” A deep voice rumbled from behind me, so close and unexpected that I yelped.
And I would have fallen ass-first into the fresh, powdery snow, too—if not for the very large hand that snapped out to halt my descent.
“Get your fucking hands off me!” I yelled, shoving him backwards—though the oaf may as well have been hewn from granite for all the good it did me.
“You’d be dealing with a wet backside if not for me,” Beckett answered, bewildered.
“Oh, don’t flatter yourself,” I snarled. “I’m as dry as the Sahara around you. And that’s the last time you’re ever going to be thinking about my backside.”
Spinning on my heel, I took off in the general direction of away-from-Hunter-fucking-Beckett.
“Sinclair, stop,” he rumbled, snagging my wrist.
I snatched it back, changing direction again because I had an ogre on my tail, clinging to it like an unwanted shadow.
“Adelaide—wait!”
This time he stepped in front of my wayward path, forcing me to pull up short lest I slam into him again.
“Move,” I growled, voice as cutting as any knife, ignoring the way his stupid mouth uttered my name.
“No.”
“Move!” I tried shoving him again.
I failed again.
Which prompted a stupid smirk to appear on his stupid face.
“Not until you hear me out.” Beckett crossed his arms over his chest.
While I scowled up at him, shivering under a hundred layers, somehow he was fine in just a long-sleeved tee. He raised a dark brow, waiting for me to articulate… well, anything.
Stop ogling the ogre, Addie. He hasn’t earned shit from you.
I tilted my chin up, mimicking his posturing, earning another lip twitch for my efforts.
“I’m sorry,” he said, uttering the last two words I’d ever expected to hear come from Hunter Beckett’s mouth.
Mine flopped open.
“I should have at least let you cover yourself up before kicking you out. You might have left your dignity and self-respect at our door, but I could have spared you losing your allure as well.”
I didn’t know how it was possible, but my jaw dropped further. “Excuse me?!”
“If an initiate is willing to sleep with her instructor to get the position she wants, then perhaps sleeping around is the position she should get. You seem to have plenty of experience if Pearce’s satisfaction is anything to go by,” he continued, oblivious to the rising inferno inside me.
“And let me tell you”—he leaned in, close enough that I was able to make out flecks of blue around his pupils—“he bragged about it to anyone who would listen.”
That fucking asshole.
“He lied,” I snarled.
Beckett shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. Doesn’t change anything at all, really. Assignments were finalised this morning.”
My heart sank into the pit of my belly, and I deflated. “What did I get?” I breathed, barely daring to ask.
“You’ll have to wait and find out like everybody else.”
Without another word, Beckett shoved his hands in his pockets and strode off in the direction of the apartment building—warning successfully delivered.
Or perhaps it was a threat, dangled over my head like a guillotine blade.
Surely they wouldn’t squander my skill on a honey-trap assignment.
Surely he wouldn’t.
And yet, as the day wore on, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d just been fucked over.
And not in the fun way.