Page 28 of Serpentine Valentine

The girl who kissed a girl and loved it.

Wanted it.

Begged for its return with a goddamn whimper.

Couldn’t stop thinking about it even after spitting bile off the back of my tongue.

I was both disgusted and aroused, a duality that made me feel like I was coming out of my skin.

I was so lost in my own head, I almost didn’t hear the argument.

Voices wafted out the open window beside me, honeyed light falling in a fat square at my feet.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Mina.”

A shiver bit sharply into the base of my spine and rattled up my back.

It was Professor Morgan’s office in Hippios Hall.

And with him, my mother.

“I’m serious, Dylan. I can’t afford to have any more fuckups. I’m interviewing at Cambridge University in the new year, and I have a real chance of being their new president.”

“And a fine one you’ll make,” he agreed easily. “A word of advice, though. Maybe do not antagonize your best professors, hmm?”

“I’m not antagonizing you,” Mom scoffed as I crept closer to the window, flattening my spine against the cold stone wall beside the opening. “Lex Gorgon has not gone gently into the night, Dylan. She’shere. The girl came back, and she isn’t doing it quietly. I’m worried she won’t let this go.”

“She’ll have to.”

He was so calm, so completely unrattled by Lex’s accusations. It seemed wrong, deceitful. If someone innocent had been accused of rape, wouldn’t they be horrified and panicked? Sorrowful, at least, that it had happened at all even though they weren’t involved?

“How can you be so calm?” my mom demanded, echoing my thoughts.

“She’s no one from nowhere. I’m calm because there is nothing to worry about. She has no power here at Acheron, Mina. I do. You do. And really, in the court of public opinion, Lex Gorgon has already been tried and found guilty. The girl has a terrible reputation.”

She didn’t before you, I thought as anger surged through me, bright and cutting as the edge of a knife through soft tissue.

It brought with it a certainty, a knowledge that Professor Morgan had raped Lex and left her for the carrion birds in the forest.

He seemed like the kind of man capable of taking what he thought he was owed.

And Lex…

Lex, with her breathtaking beauty and her aloof, ephemeral charms, was exactly the kind of prize a hunter would want to take.

Lex, the girl who had kissed me, was exactly the kind of girl who wouldn’t fall for Acheron U’s dreamiest professor.

And Lex…

She just didn’t seem like the type of girl to lie about her tragedy. It was seared so deeply in her soul it radiated sorrowfrom those wet stone eyes and emanated off her like dry ice. To be near her was to feel her anger and her malcontent.

I didn’t know her beyond a bite and kiss in Mathieson Library, but I felt more certain about her integrity than anything I ever had before.

My intuition cried out for her salvation.

“You’re right,” Mom killed me by saying slowly, convincing herself of his words because it was beneficial for her, not because she believed him. “She had a lawyer threaten to sue if I didn’t let her enroll for the semester, but I hope that’s the end of it.”

“Even if it isn’t,” Professor Morgan said flippantly, “no one will believe her now. She’s the campus pariah, and she’s too proud to speak out against the rumors about her. Trust me.”