Page 348 of Small Town Firsts

He said he wanted to break me.

His words from the first week of class bombard me, crashing into me so hard I nearly collapse to the floor.

"Poor little Princess Price. So eager to ruin the lives of others but whimpers and whines when she's paid back in kind."

That's what this is. That's what this has always been.

Payback.

Oh my God. How stupid could I be?

My throat constricts as I try desperately to suck in much needed air, but it's no use. Even my body is turning on me.

He told me. Sterling told me, again and again, and like the stupid little girl I am, I didn't listen.

He played me.

A handful of weeks of being nice and I was eating out of his palm, falling in love with him and letting him into my bed...into my body. Only for him to betray me in the worst way.

He's nearly to me when Melanie steps in front of him, blocking his path. He leans in as she speaks to him, and that's all the confirmation I need.

I was nothing to him. A sweet little nothing. This was all a ploy.

With ice in my heart and a sinking emptiness in my gut, I turn and flee.

"Emmy!" Zach calls after me, but I don't turn back. I just run.

I run through the crowd, out the door, and down the street.

I run and I run and I run, blind from tears and locked in my head.

I run until I'm safely back inside my dorm. Once inside I lock the door and shove the coffee table in front of it.

Pain unlike anything I've ever known lances through me, piercing what's left of my tattered, barely beating heart.

There isn’t a single cell of my body that doesn’t ache.

It’s the kind of hurt that pierces your skin and sinks into your veins, your bones, your fucking soul. It’s the kind of pain that eats away at you like poison, consuming all of the good within you until all that’s left is a shell.

I stumble, tripping over my own feet as I cross the living room. “Stupid, so stupid,” I mutter, righting myself. I flip on the lights as I enter my bathroom, recoiling at the bright light. God, even my eyes hurt.

I guess crying as hard as I have will do that, huh?

My fingers tangle in my now limp and dirty hair. I wince as I tug on the ends, my past and my present colliding in my mind, morphing into a single mangled nightmare.

“Stop, stop, stop!” I plea, the words a garbled cry to the universe. I want it all to go away, for the memories of then and the horrors of now to all stop. But I learned long ago there’s no one out there listening. Not for me, anyway. My own mother didn’t even have time to hear my story.

“Not enough.” I pivot in a wide circle, clipping my hip on the vanity. “Never enough. Stupid!”

Tears cloud my vision as I struggle to breathe. I want…I needthe pain to stop. For my past to stop haunting me. For the taunts and leers to go away.

I’m a top spinning out of control, desperate for someone—anyone—to save me from the path my own self-loathing is shoving me down. If I’d have been stronger—smarter—none of this would’ve happened to me.

My breaths heave in and out of my lungs as a humorless laugh slips past my trembling lips. God knows, there’s not a single person on this planet who cares enough to try and pull me from the murky depths of my misery.If anything, they’d press their boots to the back of my head and hold me under.

My hands shake as I press down on the lid, pushing to the right.

“Dammit!” I cry as the orange bottle slips and my blessed relief falls to the floor. The tablets scatter and roll around my feet as I fall to my knees in a desperate attempt to gather them.

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