“Alright, alright! I’m f**king sorry!”
“No. You aren’t. But you will be.”
“You aren’t getting the funding, Avery,” Wren says stonily. “Not now, not ever. I’m declaring the president of the French club unsuitable for duty. I’m putting a sanction on you. You’re officially banned from joining any clubs, attending senior prom, and graduation night.”
“You can’t do that,” Avery snarls. “I’ve been homecoming queen for four years straight! I’m in the running for Prom Queen and everyone knows I’ll f**king win. If you ban me, no one will come to prom. No one will come to your stupid little graduation night, either!”
“Do you really think you have that much influence over the student body?”
Avery scoffs. “I say jump, they jump. You know that.”
“Do you think you’ll have that much influence when we tell everyone you drugged someone at your own party? How many girls will trust you again? How many will brave the threat of being date-raped to come to your parties?” Wren coolly asks.
Avery’s face goes white. I pull her up by her dress and sneer.
“If you so much as breathe in Kayla’s direction ever again, I’ll kill you.”
Avery rips out of my grip and points at Wren.
“You did it! Don’t lie, you sanctimonious cunt! You f**ked her! You’re a sniveling little coward opportunist and I know you f**ked her!”
Wren smiles, hell-bent gaze turning more determine, more fixed and just slightly amused.
“I’m not that boy in the forest anymore, Avery. I’m not someone you can force into doing what you want. We’re older. And I’m never going to let you hurt another girl again.”
Avery takes a step back, shocked. She looks down at her hands, turns them over.
“That’s right,” Wren says. “You were so caught up in getting those funds; you didn’t realize you were doing the same exact thing you did to Sophia. You did it again. You haven’t learned at all. And you’ll probably do it again, and again, until you kill someone or someone kills you for it.”
“I was doing it for Sophia!” Avery screams, livid. “Those funds, the French club trip, it was for Sophia! She doesn’t have long, Wren, you know that! You f**king know that!”
“So you’d hurt someone else to help her?” He asks.
“I’ll do anything to help her,” Avery says through gritted teeth. “Anything.”
Wren smiles. “It’s too bad you can’t wring the money from your parents. Then again, they’re too smart aren’t they? They raised you, after all. You’re their spitting image. They’d track where it went, who was invited. They’d find Sophia’s name, and dig around in her background. And then what you did would be brought to light. It’d explode in your face. The whole town would know. Maybe it’s time the world knew.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” she snarls. “You and Jack would get dragged down with me.”
“Maybe. But I’m sure in court Jack would get a pardon, and I could plead I feared for my life. We’d get off more easily. But you? No. You’d get something much longer.”
“GET OUT!” Avery roars. “GET OUT!”
She throws things – a vase, a picture frame. She rips a fancy lamp from the wall and chucks it at my head, but I duck just in time. Glass shatters and I run after Wren, back to Kayla’s room.
“We need to go,” Wren pants, helping Kayla off the bed. She leans on his arm, tears almost dried, but still looking confused.
“What’s going on?”
“Give me your keys,” I say. Kayla rummages in her purse and hands them to me. Wren helps Kayla downstairs, and Jack lags behind with me. Avery’s screaming is waking up what’s left of the party. It sounds like a banshee being squeezed out in a wringer.
“Someone’s unhappy.” Jack smirks.
“Wren threatened to come out with the truth about what happened with Sophia,” I murmur. Jack’s face falls, and settles into a granite-hard determination. Wren and Kayla stumble across the lawn to her car. Just as Jack and I get out the door, rapid footsteps come down the stairs and race behind us. I turn just in time to see Avery, nose bloody from my punch, eyes wild with savage fury, her red hair like a mane of a fire goddess, and a baseball bat raised, inches from coming down on my back. I duck, the bat swinging over me, and there’s a snap the sound of something being forced, and Jack suddenly has the bat. Avery pants, shrinking away as Jack looks at the bat, observes every inch of it.
“Just like the good old days, hm?” Jack smiles predatorily at Avery. “Although the one I used was metal, wasn’t it?”
Avery’s fury drains so fast she looks like a punctured balloon. Terror claws at her expression as she scrabbles backwards, jumps to her feet, and runs back into the house, slamming the door shut and locking it.
Jack doesn’t say anything more until I’ve dropped off Kayla. Wren drove behind us, and got out to help Kayla to her front door. She thanked him, quietly, and he watched her go inside. Wren and I nodded at each other in a farewell, and he even nodded at Jack. When we’re on the highway and I’m driving towards Jack’s house, I spare a glance at him. I’d given him back his shirt, and he has his chin in his hand, fingers over his lips thoughtfully, watching the world flicker by outside his window.
He speaks first.
“I broke up with Kayla.”
“Shocking. I thought you two were going to last forever.”
He shoots me a sardonic smirk. “Haven’t you heard? Good things never last.”
I switch lanes. Jack turns on the heater. It smells like skunk. He shuts it off quickly.
“What happened last night?” I ask.
“You don’t remember?”
“I remember being…I remember being scared. Shaking.”
“That’s all?”
I nod. Jack goes still. His eyes are unreadable chips of ice as they always are, but for a split second I swear I see them crack on the inside with pain.
***
She was scared. She didn’t enjoy any part of it. If she did, she would’ve remembered. But her fear overwrote her memories.
The wound is far deeper than I’d imagined.
I watch her face as she drives, hands white on the steering wheel. She’s waiting, confused, trying to piece the blanks together in her mind. She blocked it out. Last night was too much like the time that caused the wound. I want to tell her I was trying to make her feel better, or tell her that I was trying to help (liar, you were taking advantage, just like he did).
In the sober light of morning, what I’ve done hits me with petrifying acidity. I forced a kiss on a drunk girl who’d been forced upon before. I’d touched a girl terrified of being touched at all. I lost control. I, Jack Hunter, the one person who keeps calm and cool and collected at all times, lost all control. And it hurt Isis so bad she blocked it from her memory.
It’s better if she doesn’t remember.
***
But the cracks fill in, icing over again, and Jack shrugs lightly.
“You were pretty drunk. Some guy with a disturbing mask jumped out at you from a corner. You were shaking fairly hard for the rest of the night.”