Page 66 of Swallow Your Sorries

“I told you I don’t want to hear your apologies.” I snap. I don’t want her fucking understanding. Her sympathies. “You can swallow them and shit them out later for someone that gives a fuck.”

“No need. Because I’m not apologising,” she says, her expression hardening. “I said Iwassorry, not that Iam.You’re a monster that put my life at stake even after I gave you what you wanted. I did what you said.”

“I also saved you,” I point out, eyes narrowed. “If Beaulieu knew that you couldn’t swim, you wouldn’t even be admitted. It’s a requirement.”

“I wouldn’t be at Beaulieu at all if it weren’t for you! If you hadn’t thought up this insane scheme to exact your revenge!”

“You’re welcome.”

Fury flashes in her eyes. “How’s that coming, by the way? I hope you have something better up your sleeve than just having Rin and her cronies dump food on me.”

“It’s comingswimmingly,” I deadpan. “And I’m happy we agree. Spaghetti stains and a refreshing dip aren’t quite worth two hundred grand, are they?”

Her jaw slackens, her full lips splitting into a little O but now words escape her.

“But I want to make something very clear. I don’t want you dead. Not literally. Because then I’d have to follow you into the afterlife to exact my revenge.”

For some reason, I need her to know that.

“You’re out of your mind.” She shakes her head and sits up fully. Once she does, she notices her naked breasts and I notice something beneath the left crease.

A three-pointed, indented scar is nestled between and on top of her ribs. The closest concave to me is the largest, about the size of my pinky nail.What the hell made such a weird impression? And why had it healed so horribly?

I go to touch it, but she hisses, crossing her arms as a dusky flush wanders up her neck to her cheeks. She looks so innocent; sheisso innocent because, for all her titty-holding, I can still see a pebbled nipple through her fingers. Besides, she’d already shown me them so willingly, so what had changed? Her ridiculous thought that I wouldn’t be obsessed with them?

I bite my lip, tracing every bit of her curvy outline. Who would’ve thought all of that was hiding beneath a cheap polyester button-down?

She looks everywhere but at me before finally settling on the lake and then the dock. Her uniform is drifting lazily downstream, bobbing along the surface, but her book bag is nowhere to be seen.

“No,” she whispers, dropping her hands so her breasts bounce free as she pitches forward. But the second she does, and the second her fingers touch the lake’s water, she recoils, scooting back until she’s firmly on dry land. “My textbooks. My bag…You pushed it in the water.”

There’s no anger in her tone, just pure devastation. Like those books were her lifeline.

I guess they are. Beaulieu’s her lifeline. She’d made it that way.

But why should I care about how she’ll pass her classes? I have an entire semester to torture her. What does it matter if she gets kicked out at the end of the term?

It doesn’t matter.

So then why don’t I correct her, that it’d tangled around her ankle by mistake? Why do I ease into the lake and dive for her bag? For her filthy uniform?

It’s brutally heavy from dozens of five-pound books now waterlogged and nearly double their original size. When I throw it and her uniform onto the grass beside her, she gazes at the soaking-wet textbooks with equally watery eyes.

“Better spread those out in the sun,” I say before kicking off my boots and heading back towards the upper campus.

“Asshole,” she mutters beneath her breath.

“That’sdaddyto you, angel.”

“You meanDove,” she bites back.

Touche.So she was somewhat conscious then.

“Wait,” she calls when I’m halfway to the greenhouse. “A-are we even now?”

“Even?” I chuckle.

“I almost drowned because of you. My books are fucked and my uniform too. Isn’t that enough for us to stay out of each other’s way?”

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