But if I was going to salvage any part of my life after Owen had broken my heart, then goddammit, this was going to be it.
I turned the corner to Elizabeth’s glass office. Fate was with me, it seemed, because she was inside alone. When she saw me standing at her door, she gestured for me to enter.
“So,” she said as I stepped in and stopped in front of her desk. “Have you made up your mind?”
Your son made it up for me, I nearly said. He broke my heart and he’ll never understand why. It was the trouble with rich boys, really. They would never understand love the way we poor girls did—as a lifeline, as a way to be our truest selves apart from anything else. They would never understand what it meant to feel like you were enough. They would never know how important it was to feel that you mattered on your own.
Lesson fucking learned.
I sat down in the chair across from her. “I have.”
Chapter 21
Owen
It didn’t matter what I did. Tanith was still not speaking to me. I’d done everything right. I’d gotten her what she wanted. An opportunity. A great one. Maybe not Preston, but still, who on earth could be mad at Teen Vogue? Why did it matter to her if it was Preston or not?
Was this about me?
I never smoked. I hated it. But sometimes, when I was stressed out, I came out onto the roof of the boys’ dorm, and the lingering scent of tobacco soothed me. It was weird. Probably because my father had smoked a pipe for years, and it reminded me of all those times I’d tag along with my brother after him, chasing him down, wanting to be just like him. Felix smoked all the time now, like a bloody chimney. He insisted only the coolest people smoked.
Subtext, I wasn’t cool. Nevertheless, the roof was where Rhys found me.
“Ah, there you are, douchebag.”
I rolled my eyes. “What’s your fucking problem with me now, Rhys?”
He shrugged. The collar of his coat that he had tucked up flapped slightly in the wind. “Nothing, other than you’ve been moping around here for the last couple of days. You’re hardly any fun.”
I coughed a laugh as the wind bit into my skin. “Sorry, mate, I’m not the fun one, remember?”
He sighed and rolled back on his heels. “This is some bullshit. Why do I fucking keep doing this? I’m not the good one.” He pulled his hand out of his pocket and jabbed a finger toward me. “You’re the good one. You or Keaton. Because, let’s face it, Phineas is a degenerate. And Lennox, well, he’s just whipped. It’s actually sad.”
“Do you have a fucking point, Rhys?”
He shrugged, and the bite of winter crawled up our spines, threatening to sap all our heat like some fuckwit Dementor. “My point is, douchebag, that you fucked up. And now we’re all paying the price for it.”
My brows snapped down. “What the fuck are you on about?”
He shook his head. “I hate it when you guys put me on the spot. I’m the one with the attitude. The one who can’t be fucking bothered.”
“You keep saying that, but you keep butting in, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I’m butting in because you idiots keep fucking with my equilibrium. Twat. You’re the one who normally says don’t be a dick, but I’m witnessing you being a dick right now.”
I rubbed the back of my hand over my brow. “I fucked up? What, with bloody Tanith? Since when do you care about her?”
Rhys threw both hands up and started to pace. “That’s the point; I don’t. But you do. You became a total fucking sap because of some chick, which I don’t fucking understand. It’s like the lot of you got your dicks wet, and suddenly, your brain cells stopped working.”
I chuckled low with that. “Oh yeah? Should we invite van Doren here? See what that does to your brain?”
He narrowed his gaze at me. “Don’t bring her up to me.”
I was the one who knew. One time during our second year, some guy had been bragging he’d felt up Sera van Doren. I knew it was a bullshit lie because I knew Sera couldn’t stand him. But Rhys, Rhys had proceeded to get drunk for a solid week. He and Jack Daniel’s had become fast friends then. And I’d sat with him up here on this very fucking roof, listening to him rant on and on about how he didn’t like her, how he didn’t care, but then he’d told me how he’d really felt. That even, just once, he wanted her to look at him like he was a human being instead of some monster. When I’d asked him about it later, he’d denied ever saying those things, but he knew I knew.
“Okay, fair enough. You don’t want to talk about van Doren, I don’t want to talk about Tanith.”
He shifted uncomfortably. “I’m a dick. The biggest dick. I know that. But you, you’re not a dick. It’s not natural to you. You said the wrong fucking thing when she needed you. God, it’s like you fucking idiots can’t see. Don’t be stupid.”
“Me? You’re saying it’s me who’s being stupid? You poke at Sera at every fucking turn.”
“Sera and I are a different game. Don’t bring her up, Owen. You, Montgomery, you have a fucking chance. You were almost a lost cause when Tanith started to like you. Why? I don’t fucking know. But there you have it. She has poor taste. Which is fine. But you, what you should have said, dumb fuck, was, ‘Mum, you’re a bitch. Tanith isn’t quitting her job, and I’m not breaking up with her. So,
