“He’s a mummy’s boy,” Aurora declared.
“He’s conflicted,” Sloane countered, and Aurora smacked her on her leanly muscled arm.
“Whose side are you on, Lauder?”
“It’s an impossible choice, his mother or Tanith,” Sera said. “And that’s what he should have said to his mother. He should have gone to her and told her that she isn’t allowed to give you or him any kind of ultimatum.”
“Well, he didn’t do that,” Aurora said. “Ergo, he’s dead to us. Right, Tanith?”
“Right,” I said, without any conviction. “Right. Dead to us.”
“Or just plain old dead,” volunteered Sera, and Sloane agreed with a silent, watchful nod.
Later that night, as I lay in my bed and cried—quietly, so I wouldn’t wake my sleeping roommate—I realized what really hurt about all this. It wasn’t only that he’d thought I needed his charity, that I should be grateful for anything someone cared to toss my way. It wasn’t only that he’d chosen to keep the peace with his mother instead of standing up for me.
No.
It was that he’d clearly intended to keep me a secret from her all along.
All that talk of being his, of tomorrows—it was all just good marketing, wasn’t it? All salesmanship. He’d said whatever he had to so he could keep fucking me. He had never planned for me to be anything more than his convenient little fuckdoll. And the kicker was that when I’d been with him—when he’d been staring down at me with those deep, navy eyes and his full lips parted in lust and awe—I’d felt like so much more. I’d felt like I’d never felt before in my life: that I was brilliant and wonderful and that I deserved every dream I could think to have. He’d made me feel like that. And so to have him be the one to dash it all away—to show me I didn’t deserve anything but scraps of a relationship, that I didn’t deserve being fought for, that I didn’t deserve not to be a secret . . .
It was unbearable.
And that was what Elizabeth Preston had tried to tell me, wasn’t it?
He won’t mean to, but he will break your heart.
She’d known exactly what was coming for me. And even though she’d been the one to light this awful fire in the first place, I found myself appreciating her honesty. If she were going to hurt me, she’d face me like a woman and do it to my face. She’d do it in the open air, with nothing to hide.
Unlike her son, who would stab someone in the back and then expect them to be grateful.
No, Elizabeth had made it very clear that to her, I was worth something. That I had every right to my ambitions, and my only mistake would be to surrender them to stay with a boy who didn’t give a shit about me anyway. A boy who wanted to keep me a secret and had clearly planned on discarding me at the first opportunity.
Owen had wanted more tomorrows?
He didn’t deserve a single one. All of my tomorrows would belong to me and no one else.
* * *
I begged my counselor to let me take Wednesday off so I could go down to the city. I had to get to the Preston Media offices—and more importantly, I didn’t think I could dodge Owen for a single day more. He’d taken to hovering outside my classroom doors, to hunting for me at lunch, to banging on Sera’s door whenever he thought I might be in there. Sera, Sloane, and Aurora together couldn’t put him off, not until they’d threatened to call the headmaster about it.
“Tell her I just need to talk to her,” he’d said through the door, his voice miserable. “Please.”
“Nein,” Aurora had snapped back in flawless German. “Arsch mit ohren! Einzeller! Hosenscheisser! Kotzbrocken!”
I’d taken French instead of German, so I had no idea what any of that meant, but given the evil smile that’d crept across Sloane’s face, Aurora had really let him have it. It had been quite pleasant to witness.
But headmaster threats and German insults would only hold him off so long, and so I needed to leave Pembroke before he could get to me. Before he could remind my traitorous body how good he made it feel. Before he could coax my weak heart into believing any more of his lies. And so with the counselor’s help and the van Dorens hiring me a car, I was in the city by Wednesday afternoon, striding through the blustery late January air to get to the glass-enclosed warmth of the Preston Media building.
Even though I’d already made up my mind last night about coming here, even though I’d already practiced what I was going to say, I was still chewing hard on my lip as the elevator swept me up to the Gotham offices.
What if Elizabeth had been lying about giving me a choice—what if she meant to separate me from Owen and cut me out of my internship?
Or what if she had been baiting me . . . testing me? Seeing what Owen was worth to me in some misguided attempt at maternal protection?
What if she refused to see me at all?
I was a mess by the time the elevator doors opened, but I tamped everything down—the last few days of tears, rage, and German insults—until I felt nothing but calm. Until I felt completely numb. As cold as the late winter day outside.
Just like a Preston, in fact.
I walked past reception, showing my intern’s badge, and then strode into the offices. I knew there was every chance Elizabeth was at a meeting or supervising a big shoot or not in the office at all. I knew there was every chance this would not end well for me.
But that was the lesson, wasn’t it? Whatever happened next, I was the
