Empire High Elite (Empire High #2) - Ivy Smoak Page 0,9
disappointment that I felt.
He reached out and ran his fingers through my hair.
His touch was so comforting. It helped give me the courage to ask him all the questions that I knew he had answers too. “Is he married? Does he have any other kids?”
“It’s just his wife and Isabella.”
“Do you know how long they’ve been married?”
Matt shook his head.
Isabella was older than me. So the odds that Mr. Pruitt was married to Isabella’s mom when my mom got pregnant with me were pretty high. Which meant he was a cheater. Did my mom know? I swallowed hard. None of it mattered. I didn’t want anything to do with his family. He didn’t want me. He’d told my mom so. “I don’t want to live with them, Matt.”
“And you won’t. My mom agreed to meet with your uncle’s lawyer along with Mrs. Alcaraz this afternoon. We have a great family lawyer that she’s bringing. They’ll figure it out. You won’t have to spend one night at their place.”
I heard it in his voice. What he’d told me about the Pruitts was true. He hated them. And it felt like maybe he hated a tiny piece of me too now. I didn’t want to think about any of that. “Thank you for asking your mom to help. I want to hear all about how that conversation went, but right now I just really want to get the hell away from here. Are you sure James doesn’t mind that you’re borrowing his car again?” Not that I really cared. Hopefully Matt would scratch the paint on his car or leave a ding. As far as I was concerned, James was an asshole. One of my uncle’s last days had been spent hearing insults thrown at him from Isabella. And it was James’ fault.
“He wouldn’t care. But my note was a joke. We’re not actually taking his car.” He threw his arm around my shoulders and directed me through the small parking lot. “Where we’re going, we can just walk.”
“So where are we going?” I was actually glad that we weren’t driving. Fresh air always made me feel better. If you could even describe any air in Manhattan as fresh.
He smiled over at me as he steered me toward Central Park. “One of my favorite places.”
It was like he could read my mind.
For a while we just walked in silence. Eventually his arm fell from my shoulders and he grabbed my hand. I was happy to be walking around Central Park with him and not hiding our relationship to the world. But just thinking about it made me sick to my stomach. I didn’t want to go back to school and pretend we weren’t together. Not today when it still felt like my world was falling apart. I gripped his hand a little tighter.
“Close your eyes,” he said.
I laughed when I looked up at him. The smile on his face was contagious. Any negative thoughts I had were easy to dismiss when I was staring at him.
He reached out and covered my eyes with his hand. “Now keep them closed.” His lips lightly brushed against mine. “I’ll be right back.”
“Wait, what?”
His hand fell from my face.
I reached out for him, but my fingers came up empty. “Matt?”
There was no response. I squeezed my eyes closed, despite the fact that I really wanted to open them. I trusted him. He’d be back. But as the seconds turned into minutes, doubt started to creep in. I remembered that day with him in the auditorium. I’d thought it was some terrible prank. He’d scared me half to death. Today felt exactly the same. My heart was racing and I could feel panic setting in. He’d left me alone in the middle of a path in Central Park. Wasn’t that dangerous?
I started counting in my head. Trying to focus on something besides the random footsteps I kept hearing. Where are you, Matt?
I screamed when he swooped me into his arms. My eyes flew open.
“You’re terrible at keeping your eyes closed,” he said.
“You left me.”
“I didn’t leave you. I just needed to grab something real quick. Now close your eyes.”
I followed his directions as he started to carry me somewhere. The farther we walked the better it smelled. I’d barely touched my food last night and I’d been in too much of a hurry to eat breakfast. I prayed my stomach wouldn’t make that same embarrassing rumble that it had last night.