“Me either,” Evan says, appearing in the doorway. “And I know Hunter doesn’t want this either. It’s wrong, bro. She’s so fucking different, so fucking broken and we did that to her. You need to leave her alone and pay for some fucking therapy for all the damage we’ve done to her.”

“I can’t let her go,” I confess.

“This Starling isn’t the girl you fell in love with. She’s fundamentally different, the shit we’ve put her through, it changed her and the truth is, bro, you don’t know her, not really. You know stuff about her, but you don’t know her,” Evan tells me.

“I love her.”

“I know,” he says sadly. “But she doesn’t love you. She doesn’t even like you. She hates all of us and she should.”

“I can’t just let her go, I can’t.”

“Even if you’ll know she was never with you by choice, that she’ll never feel anything but hatred for you?” Clay asks.

“She wants me.”

“Bro, we’re a walking fucking example that you don’t need to have feelings for someone to have sex with them. Lust is a hormone; it doesn’t mean anything. Sex is just sex.”

“She’s mine,” I say, the words sounding so right on my lips.

“Is she? Or are you just hers?” Clay asks quietly.

18

STARLING

As I watch Clay disappear from sight, I wonder if this is all some elaborate trick Sebastian has come up with to test me to see if I’ll run. It’s the type of thing he’d do, allow me a long enough chain to hang myself with and then enjoy punishing me for trying to get away from him.

For a moment I think about just leaving, walking out of the gates and not looking back, but what’s the point if he’ll just go back to having people watching me twenty-four seven? I might as well be here and getting a good college degree. I’m a prisoner either way, because I was never free of him, even when I thought I was.

I wait for Clay to come back, or for Sebastian to hunt me down, but no one comes and in the end, I decide to just go to class. If he really does have eyes on me then he’ll know where I am. My English class is a little more interesting than econ, and my sociology class even has me sitting forward in my seat as I listen to the professor speak passionately about the study of people and the things we’re going to be looking at.

When no one is waiting for me at the end of the period, I make my way over to the cafeteria and pick some food, choosing to take it to an empty table in the courtyard, rather than share with other students.

Sammy, the girl who followed me to freshmen orientation, spots me, shouting my name as she makes a beeline across the courtyard. Dropping her tray to the table, she plops down into the seat opposite me. “We should exchange cell numbers, that way we could arrange to meet for lunch when we can,” she says enthusiastically.