I shoved the phrase from my head and stared straight ahead, lifting a cold fry to my mouth only to drop it and get rid of the rest of my lunch in the scholarship kids’ section.
When I left the building, he was there.
Because, of course, he was everywhere.
“Ready?” Ash had said yesterday without looking up.
“Yeah.” I gripped my backpack tighter.
“Shit.” He dropped his arm and showed me his phone. “Could you at least try to be more discreet?”
“What?” I was the epitome of discreet; nobody cared because nobody looked in my direction with anything but pity to fill the lonely void I carried.
There was a pic on Twitter of me smiling at Tank.
And then smiling at the TA in my bio class, the hashtag read “#sluttytriangle,” as if I was leading them both on.
Tears had burned the back of my eyes. “I hate social media.”
Ash snorted out a laugh. “Careful, there’s truth to everything, isn’t there?”
I had said nothing.
Instead, I went home.
I did my homework.
And at the end of the day, when everyone was sleeping.
I cried for the girl I used to be.
Then cried for the one I had to become.
And finally cried for the one I wished I could be, a future where I was someone stronger.
A future.
With someone like the person I hated the most.
Yet swore to my mom to trust.
An Abandonato whose heart wasn’t even his to give.
Ash.
Mine.
But never to be claimed.
Damned.
And wallowing in it like he wanted it more than life. I shook the thoughts of yesterday away. This morning I’d had a plan.
Gratitude.
Maybe if I started thanking him rather than reacting or just plain ignoring, he would see that I wasn’t the monster he made me out to be.
It had been worth a shot, and by the look on Ash’s face this morning, he’d been so stunned that it was as though I’d just pulled out a gun and announced I knew how to use it.
I smiled a bit and gripped my bag tighter.
Maybe today would be the day where things changed for us, for me.
The wind picked up around my hair, setting a cold chill deep in my bones as I tried to pull my jacket tighter around my body.
I was about maybe thirty feet from the parking lot when I noticed people pointing at me, laughing, then looking back down at their phones.
Mine was in my bag, so I stopped walking and quickly grabbed it to see if there was a tweet or something on the Eagle Elite social media account. Nobody knew who controlled it, only that we didn’t want to get on that person’s bad side. Then again, I’d already been an unlucky victim, so fingers crossed I wasn’t continually pissing off the rich kids.
I nearly dropped my phone onto the cement. It was a picture of me, all right.
And the tweet beneath it read. “Back from Italy, rumor has it she was sent away because she was pregnant… but don’t believe our word for it, ask the guy she tried to hook up with, none other than Ash Abandonato. I’ll be your daddy.”
My hands shook as I read the tweet over and over again; more and more people crowded around me until I couldn’t breathe.
“Annie!” Izzy’s voice was the only clear thing I could focus on, and then Serena started yelling at people to move before she stabbed them.
If they were on this side of campus.
They’d seen it and were pulling in the troops.
Which meant rumors were spreading like… well, apparently my slutty legs.
I fell to my knees on the concrete, phone still in the palm of my hand as the two girls circled me and protected me from the rest of the students.
“Breathe.” Izzy rubbed my back. “It’s going to be okay. We had Ash call Sergio; he hacked the system and deleted the tweet; it’s already gone.”
“The damage is already done,” I whispered hoarsely. “Who would say that about me? I’m not even… I haven’t even…” I couldn’t get the words out or the reason why they hurt so much in the first place.
Like someone knew the truth.
And wanted to air out the dirty laundry.
Who would be so cruel? And how did they know where to hit me the hardest? The worst part was that I had slept with him.
And I’d wanted that moment for just me.
Between us.
Because it was already so damn hard sharing it with her ghost.
“You’re a whore just like your mother!” Daddy spat out the word whore so often now I responded better to it than my own name. “You were supposed to be a boy, you know that?” He took another swig of beer. “She just had to get pregnant with a girl and ruin all my fucking plans!” He threw the beer bottle at my feet then grabbed my wrist, squeezing it so hard that I heard a crunch, felt blinding pain as I swayed toward him. “Wish you would have never been born, worst idea I’d had—trying to fight my way to the top. Worthless…” At my scream, he released me.