But it wasn’t meant to be.
The day Dad was diagnosed was the same day I researched the best college psych programs I could find, and the best high schools to help me get in them. I buckled down and turned my grades from C's to all A's. Two weeks after the end of freshman year at my old high school, I entered the McCaroll scholarship essay contest for Lakecrest, and won.
My eyes skipped over to my closet, where piles of cardboard boxes sat, all my old, childish things inside them. My books sat there, calling out for me. I'd always been tempted to open them again, dive into the worlds I used to love so much, but at the last second I'd remember the look on Dad's face when he heard his diagnosis, the look on Mom's face when she'd come home, tired and barely holding together, and all of my selfish urges to slack off would instantly fade away.
I didn't have time to play around in fantasy lands. Dad needed me. Mom needed me.
I pulled out my homework and cracked down on it, but no matter how hard I'd try to concentrate, the image of Wolf's angry eyes slid into my brain, burning between all the equations and derivatives. The fact he thought he knew about my family just kept pissing me off, over and over, like rubbing salt in a wound.
He talked a big game, up in his golden castle with his perfect body and infinite money and petty little red-card power struggles, but he didn't know shit about me.
Chapter 3
I went to bed angry at Wolf. The next morning, I woke up only slightly miffed. I was willing to forgive him. Maybe. If he decided paid me a million trillion dollars.
Except then Mom dropped me off at school, and he had to go and make me hate him again.
You always knew when the Blackthorn brothers were around, because that's where the people gathered, too. A ring of them surrounded two other people in the quad, a grassy part of the campus where people usually hang out before the bell rings. The two people in question were Wolf, and a freshman boy I recognized as being on the swim team, too. Fitz and Burn waited for Wolf far from the crowd, leaning against a pillar and watching everything go down. I fought my way to the edge of the circle, just barely picking up on the words around me.
"Who is that?"
"Wolf seriously needs to stop picking on the freshmen. Don't tell him I said that, though -"
"Look at that guy! He's so big for a freshman."
It was true - the freshmen was nearly Burn's height and twice as wide. His muscles bulged from his uniform, like he was growing too fast for his own skin to keep up. Wolf stood across from him, his blazer perfectly pressed and his hazel eyes narrowed, his body the exact opposite of the freshmen's - lean and sleek and coiled tight like a spring.
"I'll ask you again - are you going to stop?" Wolf all but snarled.
The freshman clenched his meaty fist, a red card peeking out of it. "You don't know what it's like."
"No, I don't." Wolf drew his eyebrows tight and hard. "And you won't either, if you keep going on like this."
"I'm not stopping," The freshmen set his jaw proudly. "I don't give a shit what you say."
My chest swelled a bit. Good for him, standing up to Wolf's sorry ass. Wolf, on the other hand, didn't even blink. He walked over to the crowd, to where a girl was drinking an iced coffee. He said something to her, and she gave the rest to him. It was a bizarre silence, until Wolf walked over to the freshman and dumped the coffee over his head.
The crowd gave a half-muffled shriek. Some started laughing. The freshman looked mortified, anger buried deep in his gaze, but he didn't so much as glance at Wolf with it. Wolf, on the other hand, stared right at him, as if daring him to throw a punch. He'd just antagonized a guy who could probably fold him in half, but he looked unruffled and fearless to the point of arrogant.
"You will stop," Wolf said. "Or I will make you stop. It's your choice - control yourself, or have me do it for you."
The freshman could only stare at the ground, but even I could tell he wanted to spit out a 'fuck you'. I gritted my teeth. I was getting sick just watching this. I'd had enough. I strode into the center, between the freshman and Wolf. He immediately turned his snarling on me.
"What the hell are you doing, scholarshipper?"
"Wow, it's weird how I also have a question for you, which is; are you actually this much of a pisslord, or is it just to show off for your daddy?"
A second murmur ran through the crowd. I kept my head high. Wolf's feral glare was practically searing me from the inside out. He opened his mouth, and at that second the bell rang, loud enough to break the tension and scattering the crowd in a dozen directions. The freshman ducked away from us, dripping coffee as he went. In a blink it was just Wolf and I. I'd make a pun about staring down a wolf, here, but I was too nervous at the time.
"You keep getting in my way," He growled.
"Someone's gotta do it," I lilted. "Haven't you seen a single feel-good after school cartoon? How else will we defend against the evils of bullying? Who am I kidding - you probably grew up watching orchestras in Berlin instead of TV."
I was shocked by my own bravery, but then I realized my mouth was running on an auto-pilot born of chest-crushing anxiety. Could he really take my scholarship away? Even if he could, that doesn't mean I would just stand by and watch him harass and humiliate other people. Not when I know how much psychological damage that could do. Wolf's glare lingered on my face, over my blazer, to my skirt and long socks and worn converse shoes.
"You've got the best grades in the sophomore class behind Fitz," Wolf finally said. "But in reality you're a complete idiot."
"I'd rather be an idiot than a sadistic, spoiled little bully," I countered, my face turning red.