Page 36 of Swallow Your Sorries

Gant Auclair.

He looks different. He’s aman now, etched from stone. His lips are fuller, and he’s about four inches taller, with hollowed cheeks and stronger eyebrows. So much more mature than the baby face I’d seen in my dreams.

No, my nightmares. My nightmares that are about to come true.

“Listen up,” he says to the audience, and I gasp as he wraps a muscular arm around my neck, locking me into a chokehold and pressing me against his front. His familiar woodsy scent encases me and it’s like déjà vu, except this time we have an audience.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing? Get off of me!” I choke out, clawing at his elbow, but he only tightens his hold. I buck hard and fast against him, my dancing feet trying to crush his. He pulls, using my neck to suspend me and suddenly, I’m not fighting him anymore. I’m fighting just to remain on my tiptoes.

“Stop moving,” he hisses in my ear, but of course I ignore him. It’s only when he clamps an arm around my waist and pulls my hips against his, do I freeze. Something long, thick, and hard is stabbing me right above my ass crack.

What the actual fuck? Is he getting off on this shit?

“Or don’t,” he presses harder.

My eyes wide and wild search the crowd, but no one’s getting up to help me. No one even bats an eye, as I’m sure my face is turning blue.

“This red-haired cunt is mine. My personalplaything.”

Gasps, giggles and whistles erupt around the room. I sink my nails deeper into his elbow, but his grip is relentless.

“I can’t believe you were fucking stupid enough to fall for that packet,” he hisses in my ear, his lips brushing the shell. “That you thought you were actually good enough to be accepted into the academy?”

Even if I could retort, I’m too stunned to speak, too shocked to do anything but bulge my eyes at this deranged lunatic.

I must look like a proper idiot because the brown-haired boy, Hale, coos, “Awww…She still doesn’t understand.”

“Let me clear it up then,” Gant says, and a strangled shriek echoes from my throat as he shoves me away from him and onto my knees,hard.The resounding crack knocks the air from my lungs and I barely have time to brace myself before strong fingers clamp down on my arms.

Hale Perriott’s to my left, and a dirty blonde’s to my right. They’re holding my arms with such steady force that I can’t get up, I can’t sit down, and I can’t pull out of their grasp. The only thing I can do is look up at Gant’s beautifully murderous gaze as I struggle to catch my breath.

“That scholarship?” he asks, leaning down so we’re just a hair apart. “Icreated it. Your tuition?Ipaid for it.”

His words barely compute.

The information packets, the forms, the welcome letter…he created a fake scholarship just for me?

He paid a hefty tuition bill ...just to lure me here?

Just because I leaked that email three years ago to Beaussip?

Beaussip, that must be the school’s gossip column…

Still, there’s ludicrous, then there’s downright unhinged.

“Butwhy?” I breathe.

“Why?” he mocks.

It didn’t make sense. The lengths he went through, and for what? I’m guilty of spreading the email, not of fucking his mum. That’s all Jarett. What the hell did he want with me? Information on Jarett? I have none and even if I did, is that really worth Beaulieu’s six-figure tuition?

“Why?” He repeats, his voice laced with venom. “Becauseeverythingwrong with me is because of you.”

Wrong with him?

“Then why would you want me around? If you hate me so much, why would you want to see my face every day?” I ask, tears threatening to fall, but I won’t let them. I meant it. I won’t cry in front of my classmates, even if they were assholes.

“To ensure you suffer like I do. Beaulieu means beautiful place, but I’m going to make it hell for you.”

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