Page 48 of Wicked Surrender

“How come you never go to parties?” he asked.

I’d walked right into this one. I glanced at him just so he wouldn’t get the idea that he was intimidating me. “It’s not my scene.”

“Hmm.” A moment later, he asked, “Aren’t you at least a little bit curious about them?”

I shook my head.

“Not at all? You’re too good and innocent to even wonder about them?”

I pressed my lips shut tighter, not answering. Of course, I was curious about them. I didn’t want to have to admit that I’d never been invited. My cheeks turned pink again, and I hated that he’d be so merciless as to tease me like this.

He cracked up, shaking his head as I got ready to bolt. “Yeah, right.” Standing with me, he looked down at me and smirked as he chuckled, continuing to laugh me off. “That’s a good one. The idea thatyouwould know how to have a good time is hilarious.”

I watched him walk away, hating that he could sound so right about that.

“Yeah,” I whispered to myself. “Hilarious.”

Now who’s the pathetic one?

16

JASON

Why me?

That was what Laura asked me that night when she finally snapped and called me pathetic. She started by critiquing my paper, not me, but I read between the lines of what she wanted to say. It all blurted out of her in that fantastic display of losing her patience with me.

But she had to deliver those scathing remarks in such a way that I couldn’t ignore what shedidn’tsay.

Why me?

She’d asked me why I targeted her. She wanted to know what it was about her, specifically, that propelled me to bully her.

That question stuck with me, but I had no plan to answer her. Not yet, at least. One day, I’d need to make her understand why she mattered to me as a target. That would involve telling her about William and about what her father did to him. As of yet, I had no clue what her relationship was with her father.

After all this time of bullying her, and not being quiet about it online or in person, there was no discipline. No one from the dean’s office was coming after me for my treatment of Laura. Which made me wonder if the asshole even knew.

I doubted he’d stay in touch with what was going on socially. He didn’t seem like he would want to keep his finger on the pulse of the social or community aspects of the university.

It was possible he didn’t know, which meant Laura didn’t tell him.

Because she’s that much of a good girl? She wants to only do what’s right and expected and roll over at any trouble?

That part of the mystery took up much of my time, and still, no matter how much she hogged my thoughts and stayed in my head, I couldn’t figure her out.

All I did understand was that I lacked the ability to shut her out. I couldn’t give up these fantasies I’d started having of her—taking her and making her cry out my name if she wouldn’t show me a tear of pain.

Each time I let my imagination wander about what it’d be like to ruin her, to fuck her and destroy that good-girl persona, I had to cringe at the guilt that followed.

How could I want her when she represented the man who ruined my brother’s life?

How could I be so selfish as to desire her when William deserved revenge?

It was a twisted tug-of-war, one I tried to ignore and not address at all. That was why I stuck with the same old, harassing her and teasing her when we had our tutoring sessions. The only deviation was why I complimented her about how smart she was, because it was obvious her braininess wasn’t an act. When I commented about how she had to be smarter than her sister, it felt weird to contradict my usual nickname for her.

Maybe she was never actually second-best to Mai.

But why wouldn’t she say something?No one could be that chill and forgiving to let a campus-wide nickname stick when it wasn’t true.

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