Devil Incarnate (Boys of Preston Prep #4) - Angel Lawson Page 0,161

on my heel and reach for the door, walking out of the room.

I’m not sure how I get from there to the courtyard. It’s like I just jump space and time, too caught up in this enormous boulder of nothingness inside of me to realize that it’s aimlessly rolling me forward. I stand there for a suspended moment, looking around me at all these people. All these eyes on me. All these ears listening. All these solitary souls that’ll consume a part of me.

I wonder how long it’ll be before they see it.

I let the boulder roll me forward because staying still makes the panic swell thick in my veins, and I don’t think I can handle it. That suddenly becomes the biggest of my worries, the memory of the last time throbbing painfully near my temples. I know what this path looks like. I can recognize the numbness, the pulling away, the escape from the sharp brightness of it all. I’d fight against it, but I’m not sure the alternative is any better.

I let the boulder roll me past the dining hall, past the athletic field, to the old, worn walkway that leads to the tree line behind campus.

That’s how I find myself at Heston’s door.

Mechanically, I pull his key from my pocket and push it into the lock. My mother’s never going to speak to me again. I turn the knob and shove the door open, stepping inside. No one’s ever going to want me. I drop my bag on the floor and leave the key on the table, in the same spot he always leaves it. I’ll have to move away to avoid the looks; I already know I can’t do it again.

This is how it goes.

The boulder rolls me forward while my thoughts churn through what’s to come. I see it for what it is. Self-preservation. Survival. An attempt to shield myself by preparing for each terrible, degrading, invasive thing. I’ve spent years alongside it, running from it, getting behind it. I know every angle of feeling used and too exposed. I’m not the weak, confused girl I used to be. Because this, I know.

It’s all the other parts that are horrifically new.

This time, there were promises, agreements, trust. If I thought I hated myself last time, then I don’t even know what to call this sick, toxic, revolted thing that’s turning inward right now. Could I have been so fucking stupid to believe that he’s changed? That he might care about me? That all those times laying in his bed, feeling his fingers run through my hair, his lips brushing over my temple, could have been tenderness?

I empty my lunch into his toilet, fingers curled around the bowl as I retch, as if I could purge myself of the gullibility that led me here. It took me two years to forgive myself for going up those stairs with him. For enjoying it. For not realizing what was happening. For not speaking up sooner. But as I walk robotically into the hall, catching sight of the bed I’d been so eager to crawl into, it feels like this self-hatred is tattooing itself on my soul, and I know what’s different.

Last time, I didn’t love him.

26

Heston

The meetings haven’t gotten any better.

Warren sits across from me, looking appropriately interested in whatever the guy to my right is saying, although I can’t see how he could be. Just about everyone has something to say, except for me. Sometimes Warren will let me get away with just sitting here, but other meetings, he’ll make me spout off about whatever twisted thing my mind is dying to latch onto, like some sick sacrifice to the addict gods.

But Warren himself rarely talks about his own shit.

It’s bugging the hell out of me, mostly because it doesn’t seem fair that he knows so much about my problems and I know fuck-all about his.

I do have other reasons for wondering, though.

I wait until just about everyone’s left to approach him about it, sidling up to him at the coffeepot. “Heard Reynolds took Vandy to Homecoming,” I start, already bored with the pretense. In a few hours, Georgia will be waiting for me, in my bed. The thought of her naked body between my sheets is making it really fucking difficult to be patient.

Warren gives me a nod. “Making up for last year, when he didn’t get to actually take her, I suppose.”

I take out my form for him to sign, shifting impatiently as he