Rebels at Sterling Prep: Cole (Rebels at Sterling Prep Duets #2), page 27
When I’m awake, the fear in her eyes haunts me. The smell of burning. The acrid taste of destruction.
It’s the only thing I can think about.
It was all my fault. All of it. And no matter what anyone says, I can’t forgive myself for putting the people I care about in that position.
Hadley could have died. Ace could have died. Hell, even James could have died. And all because of me. Because I’m too much of a fuck-up to do something decent with my life.
I lift the bottle to my lips once more and swallow down liquid that I’m long past tasting.
I have no idea what time it is, but the sun is beginning to set behind the dark clouds that taunt me.
It was raining an hour or so ago, but I didn’t move. A little rain is the least I deserve.
The others got up and went to school this morning. Even James left the house to go to work. I know they’re giving me space, but at the same time I can’t help thinking that they’re looking straight through me. Almost as if I did die and I’m no longer here.
No one listened to me when I demanded that Hadley stay here so we know she’s safe. No one seemed to care when I didn’t turn up for school this morning.
Everyone just seems to have checked out… or is that me?
I rest my head back and close my eyes, but it doesn't last long. The second I feel myself start to succumb to my exhaustion, that image is there again. It feels so real, like I can actually feel the weight of her in my arms.
I wake with a start, my heart thundering in my chest. Ripping my eyes open to focus on the clouds once again, I’m confronted by the sight of three sets of concerned eyes staring down at me, scaring me almost as much as the dream.
“Fucking hell,” I mutter, lifting the bottle back to my lips.
“I think you’ve had enough, don’t you?” Conner asks, reaching forward to take the bottle.
“Fuck you. You have no idea what it’s like.”
He lifts a brow. I know he’s still angry that we left him behind with the girls, but quite frankly, I don’t give a shit. I’m barely holding it together as it is, the last thing I need is the added image in my head of almost losing him too.
“This isn’t going to help,” Ace says, joining in with Conner. He walks around the lounger I’m slumped in and prises the bottle from my fingers before throwing it across the yard until the glass shatters against the wall of the pool house. “That isn’t how you deal with this.”
“No? Care to tell me how I should then, big brother?”
“I can’t. Only you know that. But hiding your head in the sand, running away from real life isn’t it.” He narrows his eyes, saying a million things to me without actually speaking the words.
“Fuck you, Ace. You have your girl to lose yourself in when shit gets hard.”
“So could you, if you pulled your head out of your ass. She’s in her dorm waiting for you. All you’ve got to do is talk to her.”
I look away from him, unwilling to hear the words let alone think about what they mean.
Hadley doesn’t want me. How could she, after everything I’ve put her through?
I know they say that people do crazy things for love, but I stick by what I said to her the other night. That isn’t what this is.
Is it?
I wouldn’t know love if it slapped me in the face. Everyone who was ever supposed to love me screwed me over.
I’m unworthy. Unlovable. I accepted that a long time ago.
I’m just a person—a body—that people use to forget. It’s the way it’s always been. Pleasure to bury the pain. It’s all I’ve ever known, all I ever saw as a child, and my relationship with Hadley isn’t anything different.
We’re both lost, both hurting, both trying to outrun pasts and nightmares that continue to haunt us no matter what we do.
That’s not love. It’s just another addiction.
I’m addicted to the release, to the way she makes me feel. The way she makes me crave her like no other.
Movement at my legs makes me look up, and I find that Remi has wedged herself on the edge of my lounger. Her eyes are soft, sympathetic. Whereas my brothers like to take the hard line with me, I feel that what’s about to come out of her mouth is going to be very different.
She reaches for my hand and squeezes gently. “She needs you, Cole.”
“Trust me, she really doesn't,” I spit. How can she possibly need me? Because of me she was kidnapped, almost burned alive. And even before that, the two of us were so wrong, so toxic that it never could have lasted. Our sex life involved my knife, for fuck’s sake. That shit isn’t normal.
“She does, more than you could possibly know. More than she understands. Please, Cole. You can’t have forgotten what I told you.” Her eyes bore into mine. I know exactly what she’s asking, but I refuse to even think about it.
Ripping my eyes from hers, I stare at the still water of the pool and try to forget about the person we’re talking about.
“What did you tell him?” Conner asks, trying to stick his nose in.
“Nothing,” I bark. “She told me nothing.”
“Please, don’t do this. You’re both falling apart in front of our eyes,” she begs, her grip on my fingers getting tighter as she says each word.
“It’s what I deserve. Excuse me.” Pushing from the lounger, I turn my back on the three of them and storm inside.
“What are we missing here?” Conner asks, but I don’t hang around to hear Remi’s answer.
“Cole, would you like any—”
“No,” I bark at Ellen as I march through the kitchen.
“When was the last time you ate?” she calls out to me as I continue through the house.
I have no idea. The only things that have passed my lips the last few days are alcohol and weed. Exactly as it should be in my quest to forget.
The sun has long set, and I’m beyond drunk when there’s a knock at my bedroom door.
I don’t respond, but that doesn't mean I expect whoever it is to get the message and leave. That’s not how we do things. I don’t, however, expect to see the head that appears when my lack of response is ignored.
“What do you want?” I bark at James when he invites himself inside and sits in the chair at the other side of the room.
“I think it’s time we talked, don’t you?”
“No,” I say bluntly, keeping my eyes anywhere but on him.
“Cole, I know everything came as a bit of a shock.”
“A shock?” I ask. “I thought you were just our uncle who didn’t care about us. Then suddenly I’m meant to just accept that you’re not our uncle, but our fucking father?”
“I know. I know. But you have to trust me when I say that I’d have done everything so differently if I had the chance.”
“Trust you?” I balk. “Fuck off. You could have done something. You could have taken us away any time you wanted, but no, you left us there. You left me there to be…” I trail off, not wanting to go down that road on top of everything else.
“I couldn’t go behind your mother’s back.”
“Why? You didn’t care about going behind Charlie’s all those years before.”
“Cole,” he growls. I ignore his warning. If he wants to come in here and talk, then we can fucking talk. But then he says five little words that make my blood turn to ice.
“I know what you did.”
I shake my head, thinking that I must have misheard. “What?”
“I know about Charlie.”
My chin drops. That can’t be possible. “How?”
“How do you think it got covered up so easily? Donny certainly wasn’t going to help keep your name clean.”
“But—”
“I saw you leave the house that night, Cole. Deny it all you like, but we both know the truth, don’t we?”
I shake my head, because he can’t know the truth.
He can’t.
“You know nothing,” I say.
“That’s what you’d like to think, but it’s simply not true.”
“Whatever. I’m done with this conversation.”
I swing my legs from the bed, and my fingers are wrapped around the door handle when he speaks next.
“Go and see Hadley, Cole. Stop punishing yourself for something you couldn’t have stopped.”
“That’s just it though. I could have stopped it. I shouldn’t have gone anywhere near her in the first place.”
“We can’t help who we love, Cole. I know that better than anyone.”
I have the door open when he says, “I think it would be best we kept your secret between us, don’t you?”
Without answering him, I fly through the house and across the backyard. I need to get away from that house, from everyone who thinks they know what’s best for me.
They can’t possibly know what I need right now. None of them are in my head, none of them fucking understand.
Apart from her.
I walk along the beach until I’m forced up a path that I know will take me to the dorms.
I tell myself over and over to turn back, but because I’m unable to stop causing myself even more pain, my feet continue forward until I’m standing in the trees that surround the building and looking up at her window.
Hadley’s light is on, but there’s no movement inside, although I know she’s up there. Fucked up, I know, but I can feel her. It makes it a little easier to breathe, knowing she’s close. Although I have no intention of getting any closer. I shouldn’t even be here, but my self-punishment knows no bounds.
I have no idea how long I stand there for, willing her to come to the window just so I can see her face. But when there is movement and a figure does appear, it’s not her. It’s a guy.
My fists curl so tight that my nails dig into my palms to the point I swear I must draw blood. Stumbling back, I crash into a tree before sliding down until my ass hits the cold, damp ground beneath me.
My eyes remain on her window, hoping for a glimpse of the motherfucker I’m going to have to kill next. But I never find out.
The next thing I know, the sun is burning through my eyelids, and when I drag them open, I find myself curled up on the ground, still facing her window.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Hadley
Everything is a mess.
I can hardly focus in class, I’m lying to Miss Jones and the team about why I can’t practice, and Cole barely looks twice at me.
Donny Lopez is gone, but the scars of that night are still there. I wake in the middle of the night, clutching the sheets and soaked in sweat. I can still taste the acrid smoke, feel the heat closing in around me. Sometimes, I dream we don’t make it out, that the flames engulf us, burning the skin and flesh from our bones.
A shudder rolls through me as I shake off the memories.
“Hey,” Remi approaches me. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m okay.” I hitch my bag up my shoulder and keep walking, but she falls into step beside me.
“Any morning sickness?”
“Remi!”
“What?” Guilt flashes in her eyes. “No one can hear us.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Hadley, I know things are—”
“No, you don’t. Look,” I stop in front of her, “I know you’re only worried, but I need to deal with this on my own.”
“Hads, come on, I just want to help.”
“But you can’t.” A heavy sigh escapes my lips. “No one can. I’ll see you around, Remi.” I take off before she can stop me.
I don’t want to talk about it.
Any of it.
I just want to survive the day, go back to my dorm room, and do it all over again tomorrow. But as I round the corner, Miss Jones spots me.
“Hadley, my office.”
Ugh.
This is the last thing I need, but I know if I try to evade her, it’ll only make it worse in the long run. I keep my head down as I follow her down the hall and out of the other door, toward the gym. A couple of girls shoot me a scathing look as I enter the locker room, but I let it roll off my back.
I have bigger things to worry about.
“Come in,” she says, dropping into her chair.
Closing the door, I take a seat. “What’s up, Miss J?” My smile feels all wrong.
“I could ask you the same thing. You’ve missed practice all week.”
“I told you, I pulled a muscle.”
“I know. But I see things, Hadley. I hear things. Something is off with you, and I’m worried it has to do with Cole Jagger.”
“It doesn’t,” I blurt out.
Her brow lifts. “I haven’t seen the two of you together since Monday. And then you missed school Tuesday and Wednesday. If something happened with—”
“It didn’t. I was sick Tuesday and Wednesday. Really sick. I think it was bad chicken from that diner downtown.”
“And now you’ve pulled a muscle?”
“I’m sorry, Miss J, I just haven’t been feeling one hundred percent, so I didn’t want to do more harm than good.”
“I’m glad you took the initiative to give yourself some time to recuperate. But I get the feeling you’re not telling me the whole story.”
This is my chance. But I’m not sure how she’ll take the news that I want to quit the team. It was part of my terms of enrolment here—I would join the cheer team so Miss Jones could keep an eye on me, and my parents could ease whatever sliver of guilt they had over shipping me off to a new town.
Taking a deep breath, I choose my next words carefully. “Since it’s senior year and I want to focus on my future, I think I should prioritize my classes.”
She steeples her fingers, leaning forward slightly. “What are you saying?”
“I want to quit the team.”
“Hadley, that’s not—”
“Look, I know you promised my parents that you’d keep an eye on me. And you still can. We both know my heart isn’t in cheer. The girls don’t like me, they tolerate me at best. And to be honest, I’m struggling to keep on top of everything.” I throw that last line in, hoping she’ll feel sympathetic toward me.
“How long have you felt like this?”
“I never wanted to join the team, Miss J. It’s nothing personal, but cheer was part of my old life, in Gravestone.”
“I see.” She studies me. “Your father won’t—”
“My father isn’t here,” I hiss, immediately lowering my voice. “Sorry, it’s just a sore subject. I’m eighteen, shouldn’t I be allowed to make some of my own decisions? I’ve followed the rules, I’ve tried really hard to—”
“Okay, okay.” She holds up her hands. “I get it, I do. I know your parents can be difficult...”
That is an understatement.
“They just wanted to know you were happy here.”
She’s deluded. My parents didn’t care about what I wanted. They still don’t. My father likes control. He likes a tightly run ship, and I veered off-course.
“I’ll do whatever you want me to,” I plead. “I’ll check in regularly, or take extra credit, but I can’t do this anymore.”
“You really don’t want to be on the squad anymore?”
“I don’t.”
“I want bi-weekly meetings. I need something to tell your parents.”
“Consider it done.”
“And I’ll be asking all your teachers for regular reports.”
“Fine.” God, she’s as bad as them. I’m not a child anymore. I’m pregnant, for God’s sake. Growing another life inside me.
Emotion overwhelms me, but I force it down. I can’t break, not now. Not in front of Miss Jones. She’ll never let me leave without answers if I start crying.
I stand, desperate to get out of here.
“I meant what I said last time we talked, Hadley. My door is always open.” Her smile is sincere, but her words can’t be trusted. Not when she’s on their side.
“I’ll see you in two weeks,” I say, hurrying out of there... and running straight into Marissa.
“What’s your problem?” she sneers.
“Leave it, Marissa.” I barge past her.
“Just because Cole decided to dump your pathetic ass, doesn’t mean you have to take it out on us. We’re supposed to be a team.”
I shoot her a scowl over my shoulder and say, “Not anymore.”
And then I get the hell out of there.
I manage to get through the day. Every time someone shouts in the hall or accidentally bumps into me, I recoil, panic flooding me. Until I remember I’m safe.
Donny is gone.
He can’t touch me anymore.
There’s a big game tonight, but I only feel relief that I won’t have to be there. I’m not sure I could face Cole.
But as if the universe thinks I haven’t had enough to deal with lately, as I exit the building I almost collide with him.
“Shit,” he groans, tensing the second he realizes it’s me.
“I, uh... sorry.” I brush the stray hairs from my face and hover awkwardly.
There was a time I would have moved closer, seeking out his darkness. But everything is different now.
He’s different.
I’m different.
“How are you?” he asks.
“I’m okay.” Liar. “I should go.” I thumb toward the path that leads to the dorm buildings.
“Hadley, wait,” he calls after me, the sheer desperation in his voice reaching something inside me.
“Yeah?” I ask as I glance back.
Our eyes connect, jolting me with electricity. Cole looks as bad as I feel. His eyes are ringed with dark circles and his skin is pale, and he looks like he’s living on as little sleep as I am.
Everything becomes white noise around us, the laughter and chatter, footsteps on the pavements, the purr of expensive cars roaring to life. It all drowns out until I can hear nothing but the thud of my heart against my chest.
“Nothing,” he finally says, dashing the foolish flicker of hope I’d felt at hearing him call after me.
Doesn’t he realize he only needs to say three little words to fix this mess?
