Sometimes, I wondered if Eastridge wasn’t a small, affluent town in North Carolina, but a circle of Dante’s Inferno. Problem with that theory—Eastridgers didn’t limit themselves to one sin. We were voracious with our sinning.
Lust.
Gluttony.
Greed.
Anger.
Violence.
Fraud.
Treachery.
Even heresy, because let’s face it. Most Eastridgers might have called themselves Christians, but they sure didn’t act like it when they turned up their noses at helping the other half of Eastridge—the half that slept in houses still damaged by the hurricane two years ago as they used the salary from Dad’s textiles factory to pay for food.
Take tonight for example. Cotillions presented debutantes to society, but we’d all lived in this town since birth. A cotillion was no more useful to us than a stack of sequential hundreds.
A bottle of bourbon nearly toppled off Dad’s alcohol cabinet, but Able caught it and held it up like he’d meant to knock it over. “Can I drink this?”
“Do whatever you want,” I muttered, bending over to access the wall safe behind the desk.
I still wasn’t sure if it was Dad’s office or Mother’s, but they had sunk their claws everywhere in Eastridge. Even The Eastridge Junior Society, an offshoot of The Eastridge Country Club.
Able gulped down a generous swig of the bourbon behind me. I pressed the lock combination Mother had whispered to me minutes ago. His footsteps beat against the hardwood before his hand rested on my back.
I pushed it off with a small smack. “Excuse you, I’m entering the combo. Look away.”
Cursing, I pressed the wrong combination and had to try again.
The sound of Able chugging the bottle like a frat house initiate filled the little room. “C’mon, Em, don’t be like that.”
With a voice like Adam Sandler circa Little Nicky, I could give a million and one reasons why Able couldn’t land a girlfriend to save his life. He was my date because his dad was my dad’s lawyer and fighting every ridiculous request Mother sent my way exhausted me into submission some days.
“Dye your hair to match mine.”
“Maybe another liquid fast will get rid of that extra five pounds of baby fat.”
“You’ll take Able Cartwright to the cotillion, won’t you?”
“Be a dear and grab the tiara.”
Perhaps the only reasonable demand I’d gotten lately.
I bit my tongue and did as she pleased, because my plans for college and a career in design required money. As a grantor on my trust fund, Mother possessed the power to bleed me dry.
Silent rebellions, however, were my bread and butter. Wearing a stained dress. Using the pastry fork rather than the fish fork. Tossing out odd words at inopportune times. Anything to make that curly vein on Mother’s temple bulge.
“My name is Emery,” I corrected, cursing Mother’s choice in my friends. “Turn the other way.”
“Fine.” He rolled his eyes. Already, I could smell the liquor wafting from his mouth. “This fucking blows.”
Must. Not. Stab.
I swiped hair out of my face and tried another code.
The code is your birthday, sweetie, my ass.
I should have known Mother had no clue when my birthday was.
“It’s a cotillion, Able.” I typed in Dad’s birthday, but the screen flashed red twice, taunting me. “It’s not supposed to be fun.”
Dad had called it “vital networking,” sympathy in his eyes as he watched the hairstylist tame my hair with what could only be described as the technique you’d use on a wild animal.
Mother hadn’t bothered with half-hearted apologies as she reminded the stylist to touch up my “truly awful” black roots and add more lowlights, so my shade would match her blonde exactly.
“Emery,” Able groaned. I finally entered the correct code—Mother’s birthday—and pulled out the tiara, leaving it in its velvet case. “Let’s ditch this place. My parents will be here, occupied by the rest of Eastridge’s heavy hitters.” He leaned closer, his bourbon breath caressing my cheek and neck. “We’ll have my mansion all to ourselves…”
“You mean your dad’s mansion?” I straightened and took a step back when I realized how close Able stood. “You can go home. I have to stay.”
The image of Basil’s fingers clenched around Reed’s thigh burned my mind. We’d been eating soup. Who mauled someone’s thigh while eating chilled fennel soup? Not the kind of psychopath I should leave alone with my best friend.
“Babe…”
“Emery.” I shook my head. “It’s just Emery. Not Em. Not babe. Not Emery in a whiny voice. Not Emery groaned out. Just. Emery.”
I dodged to the left to brush past him, but his palms slammed against the wall on either side of me, caging me in. “Fine. C’mon, Just Emery.”
A brief burst of fear seized my limbs. I thrust it aside as quickly as it came. “Move.”
He didn’t.
“Move,” I tried again. Firmer this time.
Still nothing.
I rolled my eyes and pushed at his chest, trying to keep calm when two-hundred pounds of Southern linebacker didn’t budge. “I’m sure you think this is hot, but FYI, it’s not. Your breath smells like a brewery, your armpits aren’t too pleasant either, and I would rather be out there at the fucking cotillion than in here.”
When he narrowed his eyes, I rethought my approach and the millions of times my big mouth had gotten me into trouble in the past. I’d known Able my whole life… He wouldn’t hurt me. Right?
“Look,” I began, my eyes darting around the room for anything to help me. Nothing. “I have to get this tiara out there or my mom will flip and send everyone in here for me.”
Lie.
Mom wanted nothing more than for me to marry Able and pop out two-point-five blue-eyed, blond-haired children. Even if that meant her fifteen-year-old daughter fornicating in the Junior Society office.
I scoffed like I wasn’t freaking out as Able closed the distance with another step and forced his entire front against me. The alcohol on his breath could put an elephant to sleep. It was all I smelled as he leaned forward and squeezed a sloppy, wet kiss to the tip of my nose. His saliva slid into my nostrils, and I had never felt anything more disgusting.
My eyes flicked to the bottle of bourbon on the table behind him. The contents sat low behind the glass, nearly gone. I prayed to whatever higher power existed that Able had found it that way. That he was not plastered out of his mind.
“This isn’t funny, Able.”
I shoved again, but it was hopeless. I weighed barely a hundred pounds, and he doubled my weight. I parted my lips to shout, but his meaty fist covered it as he ground his hardness against my stomach.
Fight, Emery. You’ve got this.
I tried.
I kicked.
I clawed.
I screamed, even when his hand swallowed my cries.
Desperate, I sunk my teeth as deep as I could into the fleshy part of his palm. He cursed and released me long enough for me to run two steps before his arm wrapped around my midsection and hauled me against him.
Granite muscles met my exposed back. He carried me to the desk and bent me over it. My palms hit the mahogany with a hard Smack! I used the backs of them to cushion my head as it banged against the table. It was useless.
My vision blurred. I still saw stars by the time Able had torn the back of my dress and started peppering sickening kisses all over my flesh. His kisses formed a scattered constellation of saliva across my skin.
I gasped when I finally found my voice again. I could scream, but I was too far for anyone to hear and he would just covered my mouth again.
Switching tactics, I begged, “My lips.”
“Hmm?”
His tongue swiped a trail along my spine.
“My lips. Kiss my lips.”
Able spun me around and dug his erection into my stomach. “Emery Winthrop. So eager to please. Who knew?”
He let me run a hand through his hair as I stretched up to meet his kiss, standing on the tips of my toes to reach his lips despite my height. He groaned into my mouth, a palm splayed on my lower back and the other trying desperately to unzip his pants.
I covered his fumbling fingers with mine, moved them to the side, and pulled the zipper of his dress slacks down. When they pooled around his feet and his boxers dropped with them, I kneed him as hard as I could in the balls.
Shock coated his face. I grasped the opportunity to knee him again. I refused to be the girl in the horror movie who died because she didn’t go in for the kill. I didn’t watch as Able collapsed to the floor.
Toppling the desk chair over him and lifting the hem of my tattered dress as high as I could, I took off into a sprint toward the hallway, barely making it a foot out the door before I crashed into something rock solid.
Emery, only you, I chided, would escape a near-rape and run into a wall.
I grabbed whatever I could to steady myself. Guanashina fabric slipped through my palms before my fingers latched onto it, digging slightly into the owner of the suit.
“Easy, Tiger.”
Relief flooded my limbs at the sound of Nash’s voice. I blinked away the tears that built behind my eyes while Nash came into gradual focus. Time played tricks on my mind as I took my time stitching the image of him together like patchwork on a quilt.
Nash Prescott was thrift-shop beauty, threadbare and jaded, the memory of something once beautiful lingering as he looked on the world with war-torn eyes. His contempt for Eastridge reflected on his face, hard edges and endless rage that, on normal days, forced me to look away.
The women of Eastridge fawned over him, the dead eyes and the self-assured sneer. The sheer masculinity that clung to him like an expensive cologne. But when I stared at him, I saw something sad. A priceless shirt with a stain on the front.
I meant it as a compliment. There was something arresting about someone who regarded the world for what it was. Even if he couldn’t see the beauty, he saw the truth. And because that truth was layered with ugly and flaws, I struggled to look at him most times.
And yet, at my most vulnerable, I’d suddenly caught tunnel vision for him.
Blatant wrath shifted Nash’s hazel eyes from golden brown to green, like aragonite and emerald gems had battled inside a kaleidoscope and neither had won. With his aquiline nose and too-full lips, he looked too pretty to touch. Still, I couldn’t pry my fingers from his forearms if I’d tried.
Tufts of jet-black hair stuck up in several directions on his head, like he couldn’t be bothered to tame it. Cropped closely at the sides, he kept it long on top in silky, uncultivated waves.
Cafuné, I thought, disconcerted when I realized I’d whispered it.
Cafuné—the act of running your fingers through the hair of someone you love.
The word came to me at the speed of an earthquake, sudden and unpredictable, shaking my already cracked foundations.
It didn’t make sense.
I was staring at the wrong Prescott.
“Your mom sent us to grab the tiara,” Reed explained from beside his brother.
Reed. My best friend. The school’s golden quarterback. A blond-haired, blue-eyed, All-American Southern boy with a charming drawl and a reliable smile. And those dimples. One on each side, gracing us each time he smiled.
Reed was here, and I was safe.
Time slammed into me until I teetered backward. It felt like an hour had passed since I’d bumped into Nash, but it was probably more like ten seconds. Nash steadied me as I registered Reed’s words.
Mom had sent them.
For the tiara.
Not me.
I said nothing.
I couldn’t.
Was this the type of truth—the type of ugly—Nash saw that had his lips permanently down-turned? For a second, I imagined my escape. No Eastridge Prep. No future at Duke. No designer threads laced with expectations.
Nash stayed silent. His eyes traversed a clinical path along my body—the disheveled hair, the mascara-stained cheeks, the ripped Atelier gown in Dusty Rose, a color that had looked cute when I’d left the house but just looked depressing now.
Tacenda.
Arcane.
Dern.
I mouthed words I loved to calm myself, letting them form on my lips without releasing them into a universe that destroyed.
My fingers clasped Nash’s button-down, one I recognized as my dad’s, but I couldn’t let go. Even as my torn dress made a slow descent down my torso.
“Whoa, Em.” Reed reached out and adjusted my corset.
Whatever he had done fixed it enough that it stopped slipping, and still, I couldn’t let go of Nash’s arm.
“Emery,” I corrected Reed. My tone spoke of a calmness I didn’t feel. A detachedness I desperately sought.
Some distant recess of my mind remembered Reed had always called me Em.
That this was normal.
That I was safe.
You are Em.
You are Emery.
You are okay.
“Emery?” The concern in Nash’s voice sounded real.
I clung to it like my hands clung to his suit. My dad’s suit. It still smelled like Dad, a mix of Cedarwood and Pine that settled in my chest. A balm to my nerves. I pressed my face against the shirt and inhaled until I sucked it dry of Dad’s scent, and the only thing that remained was the distinct smell of Nash Prescott.
Citrus. Musk. A heady vanilla that should have been feminine but wasn’t. Anarchy displaced rationale and rendered me speechless. I couldn’t speak. So, I focused on Nash’s scent, even when all I wanted to do was hide under my covers from mortification and never leave.
“Emery,” Reed started again, but the office door slamming open cut him off.
Wincing, I curled my head down, bracing for a hit.
Stop, I ordered myself. Able didn’t hit you. He tore your dress, touched your flesh, and pitched you onto the desk, but he didn’t hit you.
I snapped out of it when Able groaned. Swiveling in time to see him stumble past the doorframe, I scowled at the sight of him zipping his pants up and yanked myself away from Nash.
Anger fueled me, thrumming along to the beat of my pulse until my palm twitched with the need to hurt Able back. I needed to slap him. Punish him. Rob him of his dignity. Embarrass him like he’d embarrassed me. I considered how I’d look in an orange jumpsuit, doing twenty to life, but I lunged for Able anyway.
I parted from Nash, bridged the space between me and Able, and slapped him across the face. Twice. Nash stepped in front of me when I went in for a third slap. He captured my hand and released it.
Without a word, he pulled something from the jacket and shoved it into his pants pocket so fast, I only caught a glint of brown. He slipped off my dad’s suit jacket and slid it over my shoulders. I’d never felt more like a child than I did now.
“Take her home, Reed.”
Nash pressed the car keys to his 90s Honda into Reed’s palm and curled his fingers around it when he wouldn’t grab it. Reed had once said Nash’s car was quite possibly the only thing he’d ever formed an attachment to. It didn’t seem like it as he gave the keys to Reed without so much as a flinch.
Behind Nash, Able dragged a foot back, trying to slip away, but Nash gripped his shirt and tugged him back to us.
“Nash,” Reed tried to argue, his eyes blistering angry and streaking a flash of violence I’d never seen in him before.
The ferocity excited me, though a part of me feared it made him look too similar to his brother. The boy who used to stumble into my kitchen to steal ice for his bruised fists and black eyes.
“You should see the other guy,” Nash always said with a half-assed smirk before he vanished out the back door, and I’d have to pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating.
I’d been too scared to narc. Even the temptation of eating a bowl of ice cream without fielding Mother’s judgment couldn’t lure me back to the kitchen. I’d stopped the midnight munchies trips until one night, Nash had been arrested and Reed told me Betty Prescott had made him swear to never get into trouble again.
And he hadn’t. I’d been safe to eat my ice cream in peace, and our ice had been safe from Nash Prescott’s blood. I’d also never talked to Nash Prescott again until tonight, not that today nor back then constituted as talking.
“Take. Her. Home.” Nash gave Reed a long stare-down, and one, two, three seconds passed before Reed finally nodded his head.
I let out a pent-up breath, realizing I didn’t know what Nash would do if Reed disobeyed him, and I didn’t feel like sticking around to find out. I liked Reed’s face arranged exactly as it was, thank you very much.
“Fine.” He spared Able one more glare. “Yeah, okay. Fine.”
I felt like I was coming up for air as Reed interlaced his fingers with mine. That choking feeling evaporated, and another feeling took its place. Like something had grabbed my chest and dug its claws inside.
“I’m okay,” I promised Reed.
But I wasn’t.
I’d realized what this feeling was.
