Chapter 3

Clara's POV

A week later. Charleston.

Bennett sold the house back home and brought me down to this city on the coast, almost a thousand miles from that place.

Harborview High is my new school.

"Clara, this is home now. Go ahead and take that empty seat in the third row." My advisor is a middle-aged woman with a kind face and an easy smile.

New place. New people. Everyone's been decent to me so far.

I walk over to the desk. The boy next to me is in a clean white shirt, head down, working through a physics olympiad problem.

The sun catches in his hair. His profile is all clean lines.

"Hi. I'm Clara," I say, keeping my voice down.

He stops writing and turns. His eyes are dark and still, like a lake in the middle of winter.

"Emory." He has a good voice. Something about it settles me.

He looks at my fingers, still twitching every so often, and doesn't ask. He just reaches over and cracks the window open.

The ocean air comes in and everything in me loosens.

"Thanks," I say.

"Sure. If it ever gets stuffy, just open it." He says it like it's nothing.

The next two weeks are the calmest I've had in a long time.

Emory doesn't talk much, but every time I get stuck he explains it in the fewest words possible. When the classroom door slams shut and I catch myself holding my breath, he gets the window open so I can feel the air.

So this is what it's like when someone treats you like an equal.

It doesn't last.

Friday after school I head out the front doors with my backpack on. Emory walks next to me, still explaining a problem.

A red sports car cuts in front of us and stops hard. Every kid in the parking lot turns to look.

Nash gets out. His eyes are bloodshot. He looks worn down, with stubble he didn't bother shaving. But there's something wild in his eyes that's worse than anything I've seen before.

"Clara! You seriously ran from me?"

He comes at me fast and reaches for my wrist.

"You're coming back with me. Who said you could transfer?"

A hand catches his arm out of nowhere.

Emory has him with one hand and steps in front of me.

"Let go." He doesn't raise his voice. He doesn't have to.

"Who the hell are you? This isn't your problem. Get off me." Nash yanks hard and gets nowhere.

"I said let go." Emory tightens his grip a little and Nash sucks in a breath, all the color gone out of his face.

"This is school property. You don't get to do this here." Emory looks at him, cold. "She doesn't want to go with you."

"You're dead." Nash swings at him with his free hand.

Emory moves his head out of the way and kicks the back of his knee. Nash goes down on one knee.

Security comes running and pulls them apart.

Half an hour later. The dean's office.

Nash's parents flew down to Charleston on a private plane. Mrs. Bellamy comes through the door dripping in jewelry and starts in on me before she's even sat down.

"Clara! After everything, you ungrateful little snake. Ten years my family fed you and put a roof over your head, and this is what we get? Picking up some boy off the street to put hands on my son? It's in your blood. It's what you are."

Nash sits off to the side and won't stop staring at me. "Mom, don't waste your breath on her. Just take her home. She needs someone to keep her in line."

The door slams open, kicked in from the other side.

Bennett comes in without his jacket. Somebody called him and he drove straight over from work.

"Nobody is taking my sister anywhere."

He walks over to me first, then turns and looks Mrs. Bellamy dead in the eye.

"Bennett, who do you think you are, raising your voice at me?" Mrs. Bellamy laughs at him. "The two of you lived off my family for years, and now you've grown a spine and think you can turn on us?"

"Lived off you?" Bennett laughs, and there's nothing behind it. He pulls a stack of documents out of his bag and slams it on the desk.

"Look at it. That's the accident report from the crash. Those are my parents' death certificates. And that's the NDA your family made everyone sign, so nobody would ever find out my parents died in your son's place."

He pulls out a thick medical file next.

"That's Clara's diagnosis. Severe claustrophobia. And those are the security stills from the hallway behind that stage. Your precious son almost tortured my sister to death in there."

"Your family built its life on my parents' bodies and spent ten years treating my sister like a dog. And you have the nerve to come here and ask for her back?"