quickly. Neither one of them had mentioned that weird interaction again—when Bree had thought Dallas was hitting on me—and they seemed totally smitten with each other. So I was happy for them.
He'd visited us once in Aspen, just after Christmas, but otherwise it'd been all hushed, late-night phone calls and dirty texts. It was cute as shit. It gave me hope that one day maybe I'd be able to move on from the three time-bombs who'd detonated my heart and left it splattered all over the steps of the fake Danvers’ mansion.
"So, do you know if Scott actually managed to transfer here?" Bree asked, linking arms with me as we made our way to the lecture halls. "He seemed pretty determined to make it happen." She waggled her brows at me, and I gave her a flat glare back.
"Stop it," I muttered, feeling my own cheeks heat. Except mine wasn't the fuzzy, loved-up glow that she got when Dallas dirty texted. Mine was embarrassment... I think. "He was just talking it up to try and get me to sleep with him."
Bree snorted a laugh. "No shit."
Scott was someone we'd met on a night out in an Aspen bar after a long day on the snow. He was a part-time snowboarding instructor and had been pretty forward about asking me out. I'd refused—thanks to my severely damaged trust in men and my shattered heart—and he'd become a pretty good friend to us in the weeks since. A flirty friend, for sure—he'd made no secret of the fact that he was attracted to me—but a friend nonetheless.
When it had come time for Bree and I to start packing up to return to Shadow Grove, Scott had declared he was transferring from Newton College. We'd all been decently drunk at the time, so we'd laughed it off. But the next day he’d left Aspen with a promise to see us on Monday morning.
"I mean, it'd be cool if he did," I added, thoughtfully. "I could probably do with a few more friendly faces around here."
Bree scoffed. "Please. As if you need anyone else besides me. Come on, let's get inside and learn some shit." She cuddled into my side tighter, and we walked in sync into the main building, even while my nervous jitters increased with every step we took.
What were the odds of not seeing the guys at all? Bad, probably.
The whole reason we'd left Shadow Grove and gone to Aspen was their relentless attempts to make me speak with them. Or Kody and Steele, anyway. I hadn't heard a damn thing from Archer himself. No calls, no texts, no showing up on Bree's doorstep uninvited... nothing.
Archer D'Ath.
My husband.
Just acknowledging that fact in my head turned my stomach and made my confident stride falter. The paperwork Zane had provided me with that day had been a copy of my marriage certificate. A marriage I hadn't even been present for. But as my consulted legal counsel had told me, good luck trying to prove that in court. It certainly looked like my signature on the certificate, and my father had signed off as my guardian. The documents had all been completed just before my eighteenth birthday, when I was still a minor.
The other document Zane had gifted me with was a bank statement showing multiple enormous payments made the same day as my marriage had been made official. I didn't have the stomach to dig any further into those accounts, but I could guess what they were. Archer had paid off all my father's bad debts in exchange for... me.
But why? That was what I couldn't understand. The amount of money he’d paid for my forced marriage was more than ten times what my inheritance was worth. So why pay it? He certainly hadn't bought me as a sex slave, like his great-grandfather had purchased Ana all those years ago. I'd basically begged him to fuck me, and he'd refused. So what the hell had he spent the money on?
Sure as hell couldn't have been my sparkling personality.
Unless this was all some elaborately sick mind game. Maybe that was why he’d been fine with his friends having their wicked ways with me, knowing that one day he could clamp a collar around my neck and yank the leash.
Fucking hell. I was giving myself a stomach ulcer just thinking about all the possibilities when I'd done such a good job putting it out of my mind in Aspen. I guess Scott had helped a