that if everyone in this goddamn school looks at me with pity. I’ve already had a lifetime of sympathy for being Sharron’s daughter. I didn’t want it here.”
I felt like shit. When I had told Blakely that we had a lot in common, I meant it. I could understand wanting to run away from your parents’ toxic shadow. It’s why I was in Memphis instead of Chicago. Yes, I loved the slower pace coupled with a vibrant city, but the best part about being in Memphis was that people didn’t care if I was Jack Harris’s son. And I knew that she didn’t want to be known as the poor girl whose shitty mother died of cancer.
“So what do you suggest?” I asked. “Everyone already knows.” It was a dick thing to say, but I couldn’t change what people thought or already knew. The only choice now was to move forward. I didn’t want her stuck in the victim cycle; I wanted her to overcome it.
She folded her arms around herself and looked at the door. We could both see students eyeing us warily through the small window. “I don’t know.”
“You could always ignore it. Fuck their narrative. You’re here because you’re brilliant. Get good grades. Have fun. And don’t worry about me. So what if people know our living arrangement? I won’t treat you any differently than any of the other students here if you continue to get shit done.”
Green eyes looked back at me, and I had to take a steadying breath to stop myself from leaning over and touching her soft skin. “Okay,” she choked out.
I wanted to reach out and squeeze her hand reassuringly or offer her a hug. I knew first hand that this shit wasn’t easy. I craved to kiss away the furrow on her brow.
But instead, I nodded toward the door and started rustling through papers on my desk, wordlessly dismissing her because I knew I didn’t have the strength to tell her to go. For some fucked up reason, I wanted her near me. It wasn’t until the door to my classroom shut that I felt my spine relax and the tension in my body release.
Blakely had to become nothing. So nothing was what she’d get.
13
Blakely
“Baby girl, you look like you need to break something.” Rose stood up from behind her desk and walked over to me. She’d called me into her office after catching me toss a customer one of the biggest fake smiles of my life. I was trying, I really was. But the kindness didn’t meet my eyes, and Rose, being the intuitive annoyance she was, noticed right off the bat.
My first day at school had been hard. Surprise, surprise.
“I had a rough day,” I replied cryptically as she ran her fingers along her white desk.
“I can tell. Your aura is so angry right now,” she murmured while picking up a vase and tossing the wilted flowers housed in it on the floor. “Toss it. It’ll make you feel better,” she added before handing the glass to me.
“I’m not doing that,” I replied with an eye roll. I wasn’t in the mood for my boss’s eccentric personality.
“Throw it on the ground,” she ordered again before taking a step back. I eyed my boss wearily, taking in the tight jeans that hugged her curves and the off the shoulder smock draped across her frame. Her eyes were wild, and her lips were stained a berry color.
“I’m not throwing your vase on the ground,” I affirmed before setting it down on her desk. I almost called in sick to work, my stomach swirling with anxiety. Memphis Academy for Math and Science was intense. I felt incredibly out of my depth with the course load and was embarrassed by all the sympathetic looks my teachers gave me. Word had spread about my living arrangements, and by the end of the day, I had girls asking if I wanted to work on homework together. Something told me they just wanted an invitation to Mr. Harris’s house.
“Why not?” Rose asked while crossing her arms over her chest. Her smile had slipped some as she threw me a sassy look.
“The vase didn’t do anything to me. It doesn’t deserve to be broken.” I took a step back, needing to be away from her demands. However, the back of my sneakers hit a filing cabinet, stopping me short.
“Interesting. Do you feel like a vase, Blakely? Do you feel like you’re broken because of other people’s whims?”