Because I was desperate to stay.
“I will leave her alone,” Damon reiterated again when the dean remained silent.
“Sir,” a woman called behind us.
“Don’t move,” Kincaid told us, and I heard him walk past us and step onto the stones of the main office. The door stayed open, and I could hear voices out there.
And then I felt him next to me, his warm breath just above my ear.
“Enjoy your freedom while it lasts, Winter Ashby, because we’re not done,” Damon warned in a low voice that snaked through my ear, taunting me. “Grow up, learn things, and have fun in high school, but don’t change the little girl who loves it ‘in the black’, because I like you there, too. And I will be back for what’s mine when you’re old enough for bigger things.”
I turned my face away, breathing harder.
“And be good,” he told me. “If I hear anyone touched you, I will crack his fucking skull.”
My mouth went dry, my stomach rolling as the voices outside grew closer, and then his heat was gone as he put space between us and Kincaid walked back into the room.
Damn him.
The meeting ended, Kincaid doling out harsh words for Damon but accepting his terms and promising to hold him to it. The dean didn’t trust him or like him, but the politics of Thunder Bay society would win over a man who feared for his job and position. He was an educator second and an employee of every parent in this town first.
Someone from the office got me and guided me to my next class, everyone now back inside after the false alarm, and as I walked out of the main office, turning right as Damon went left, I wondered how long I had and how many notches up he would take his behavior when we met again.
Because it wasn’t over.
He was just waiting.
Winter
Present
I blinked my eyes, waking up, and immediately winced as I rolled off my side and onto my back. Shit. Pain shot through the left side of my neck, and I bent it, trying to stretch it out. I didn’t think I moved all night. My whole body was kinked up. I never slept that deep.
Sitting up, I slid my legs over the side of the bed, rolling my neck and ankles before stretching my toes to a point.
“Ugh,” I groaned.
I was exhausted. I rubbed my eyes, feeling that they were a little swollen and achy.
Then it came back to me. The dance at Michael and Erika’s engagement party last night. Damon and me. Damon trying to taunt me with what he was going to enjoy with my sister.
I’d cried. A lot.
I’d come to bed, locked my door, and sobbed into my pillow, because I couldn’t stop myself, and I didn’t want to be heard.
I hated him. I hated his vile words and his cigarettes and his arrogance and insanity in thinking he wasn’t responsible for anything. I hated how he grabbed and threatened and wouldn’t let me go. He had no right.
And I hated that I’d missed him. I hated that so fucking much.
How I still felt the parts about him I loved when I didn’t know it was him I was with. How his arms around me still felt protective and how his whispers reminded me of when I loved the feel of them all over my neck.
I shook my head. It was an act. It had all been an act. He’d used me.
I stood up and closed my eyes, stretching my arms over my head to wake up my body.
A light rain tapped my window, and I inhaled, smelling it seeping into the house as I tried to clear my head. Coffee first.
A creak sounded above me, and I tipped my head back, training my ears on the sound. Who would be in the attic? No one went up there except servants, and we no longer had any of those. Full time ones, anyway.