Page 15 of The Ruling Class

“It was a good plan,” Ivy defended.

I picked up one of the cookies. Ivy took a single step forward, then paused, like I was a horse that might spook if she got too close.

“It might have been a better plan if I’d bought the cookies,” she admitted grudgingly, eyeing the burnt cookie in my hand.

“You don’t bake,” I inferred. I meant to stop talking, but two more words escaped my mouth. “I do.”

“You bake?” Ivy took another small step forward. “I wouldn’t have called that one.”

It was such a small thing—a tiny thing, really—to tell someone about myself, but the fact that I’d told Ivy anything felt like losing a protective layer of skin. I’d spent years building up my calluses. I hated that a stupid plate of burnt cookies could take them away.

Even as I clamped down on my emotions, Ivy saw through them. “Tell me what I can do, Tess. To make this better.”

Thisas in the new life she’d shoved me into without a second thought? Orthisas inus?

I couldn’t let myself wonder. “You can tell me about Adam’s father.” I wasn’t sure if I was trying to peel back one ofherlayers or testing her by asking for something I instinctively knew she wouldn’t want to give.

“His name is William Keyes.” Already, that was more than I’d thought Ivy would tell me. “I used to work for him,” she continued, each word carefully measured. “We had a difference of opinion. Now I work for myself. He forgets that sometimes.”

“What does he do?” I asked.

“He makes things happen.” Ivy took her time with the reply, and I could almost understand how time had worn away at my grandfather’s memory, blurring the lines between my sister and me. “Political things,” Ivy continued. “He has a lot of money, and a lot of connections, and he’s gotten used to calling the shots behind the scenes.”

I wanted to ask her why Bodie had been so adamant about my staying in the car. I wanted to ask her why Adam had thought that Ivy having made an enemy of his father meant that I would be better off in Montana. I wanted to ask her why William Keyes had come to see her.

Butwantinganything was dangerous when it came to Ivy and me. I set the cookie back down.

“Tess?” She shot me a questioning look.

I fixed my gaze on a spot just over her left shoulder. “I don’t want to sit. I don’t want to eat cookies. I don’t want to tell you about my day.”

When I was thirteen, I would have given anything for this Ivy. For after-school snacks and a bedroom in this house. For the phone to ring more than three times a year. I would have poured my heart out to her. I would have asked her everything I wanted to know.

“You can’t make this better,” I said, my throat tightening around the words. “You can’tdoanything.”

“Tessie—”

“I’m not broken.” My voice was low. “And whateverthisis, you can’t fix it. Not anymore.”

CHAPTER 11

The next morning, Bodie was the one who dropped me off before school. I made my way sluggishly to the Hut, wondering at the cruelty of a student coffee shopthat did not sell coffee.

“I have a job for you.” Apparently, that was the Emilia Rhodes version of hello. She’d appeared out of nowhere and waylaid me on my way to a bagel. When I didn’t reply immediately, she arched an eyebrow. Clearly, she was expecting that eyebrow arch to engender some kind of response.

“Hello to you, too,” I muttered. I hadn’t slept well the night before, and it was too early in the day for this. I edged past her and toward the counter. She sidestepped directly into my path.

No bagel for me.

“You can pretend you’re not interested,” she told me, “but if you’re smart, you’ll bypass playing hard to get and jump straight to negotiations.” For all the sense that Emilia was making, she might as well have been speaking Latin.

“I have literally no idea what you’re talking about,” I said.

Emilia pressed her lips together into an expression that was, at best, a distant cousin of a smile. “I have a problem.”

“Yeah,” I replied under my breath. “You have several.”

“It’s my brother,” Emilia continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “His best friend isn’t at school this week, and that means he’s bored.”