Dark Favors

“Yes.” I swallowed hard. I wished I hadn’t.

“All of it?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“And I’m lucky to have a friend like you,” I told her honestly, whispering. Suddenly, my throat seemed to be on fire. I reached for the glass of water I kept on my nightstand, and I sipped it. Then I set it back down. “I’m lucky to have someone that stands up for me no matter what.”

I was, too. Not every roommate, and not every friend, would have my back the way that Fawn always seemed to have mine. I was lucky to have someone who was willing to go bat for me no matter what.

“He’s a pig,” she said. “And you deserve better.”

I’d talked to her when I’d gotten home, and she’d listened to every damn word. Then she’d taken my side, and she’d told me that she had my back, and she promised to help me through this no matter what happened next.

The answering-the-door thing had been a welcome surprise. I hadn’t been ready to see him. At all. It was incredible that Fawn had been willing to answer and to take care of everything for me. Personally, I kind of just wanted to crawl under my blankets and pretend that my life hadn’t gone in the direction it had gone in. I wanted things to be different. Part of me wanted to rewind the last semester. If I could go back to the summer, I could choose a different college, and then I wouldn’t have to worry about any of this.

Only, I knew that wasn’t true. This was the school my mom had chosen for me, really, and I would do anything to finish my degree. I needed to make her proud. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t around to see it, and it didn’t matter that I was being hurt. In the end, the only thing that really mattered was keeping my promise to my mom.

Locke was...

Well, he needed to be an afterthought.

“What are you going to do with it?” Fawn asked, nodding toward the flash drive. After I’d left the post office and got all of my screaming out, I’d realized that leaving it in the pencil holder was a stupid decision. I’d walked back inside, grabbed it, and come straight home. I hadn’t told Locke. Let him look for it. Let him waste his time. I didn’t care.

I couldn’t let myself care because the truth was, I cared far too much about him. He was no good for me. Fawn had been right all along. He was the type of guy who took what he wanted, and apparently, what he wanted was...

Well, everything.

“I don’t know,” I told her. “I could go to the news, but I doubt anyone would care.” There had to be a way to share what had happened to my mother, to Rebecca, but I didn’t know what that way was.

“You mean nobody would risk their careers over the story,” Fawn pointed out. “It’s definitely a story people would care about.”

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s exactly what I mean.”

The truth was nasty and dirty, and the reality was that Josiah might be a dick, but he had power. He had weight, and I didn’t want to ask someone to risk everything just to expose the fact that he was a garbage human being. Whoever ran the story, if anyone ever did, would probably be discredited, shunned, and possibly even attacked. They might have to risk their lives to share it because Josiah was the kind of person who wanted to destroy anyone and everyone in his way.

“Well,” Fawn said. “You don’t have to decide anything now. Besides, you should probably focus on your finals.” She was right. I had a lot of papers coming up, and some exams, and my homework had piled up.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Probably.”

“If you need anything...” Fawn’s voice trailed off, and she looked at me sadly. She pitied me, I realized, and that was kind of a horrible feeling, but I knew that I deserved that, too. I had gotten myself into a mess, and to be fair, she’d warned me many times about Locke. She had never viewed him as anything but a landlord, and that’s where Fawn was better than me. She hadn’t let herself get sucked into his games the way that I had.

“Thanks,” I said, managing a curt nod. I didn’t really have anything else to say to her, and it was obvious that Fawn had done more than a roommate’s fair share of helping. She didn’t need to help me anymore. Anything that came next... Well, I’d just have to figure it out, wouldn’t I?

She left the room, and I threw myself back on the bed. I didn’t cry anymore. I’d wasted enough tears crying over Nathan Locke. It was time for me to do something else, anything else and so I started formulating a plan. That was what I needed. I needed to decide exactly how I’d move forward after this, and then I needed to do it. No matter how scary or wild or crazy my plan was, I had to come up with something. There had to be a way to move forward after all of this. There just had to be. I couldn’t let this be the end.

What would my mom have done? That was what I really wondered. What would she have wanted out of this situation? And how would she have figured out a way to get what she wanted?

No matter what, I was going to have to confront Josiah Reagan at some point. That much was for sure. His daughter was going to find out that I was her sister. There was going to be hell to pay. There was going to be pain and anger and frustration, and people would be talking about it for a very long time.

The only thing I knew for certain was that Nathan Locke had broken my heart, and I didn’t know if I was ever going to get over it.

Chapter 20

Locke

The night of the gala arrived, and everything was perfect except for one thing: Paige wasn’t there. I keep looking, waiting for her. I don’t know why I imagined that she would show up. It wasn’t a movie, after all, and I was no prince.