Page 65 of The Villain's Beast

“Scary,” he mouthed.

“Scary,” I repeated diligently into the phone.

“How is the Sinclair boy?”

“Hardly a boy,” I said, choking on the words. “We aren’t boys, Dad.”

“Compared to his father he is.”

Daren’s jaw ticked, but he said nothing.

“How do you know his father?” I asked.

“Doesn’t matter.” On the other end of the call, there was a commotion, rustling of clothes, and then my mom, voice still tear-stained.

“Bellamy,” she said my name.

“Hi, Mom.”

I felt numb, fingers tingling, and I gestured with my phone until Daren reached his hand out for it. With mine free, I tried to shake out the pins and needles, close to punching into the wall to change the way my body felt. Like it wasn’t my own. Instead, I wrapped both of my hands around my own throat, chasing after the terrifying press of Daren’s hold. I found it quickly, and I closed my eyes to lean into it, relief washing over me.

“Did they hurt you?” she asked.

Another fight on the other end of the line, and my father was back.

“I’ll call you soon, Bellamy,” he warned. “We’ll have plenty to discuss as the year goes on.”

My eyes flew open in time to see Daren’s go wide. He stabbed his finger into the hang-up button and offered the phone back to me. He didn’t acknowledge anything my dad had said, and he definitely ignored my mother’s desperate question. I didn’t know what to say because I had more questions than answers.

“Put your phone away,” Daren finally said.

Reluctantly, I took one of my hands away from my throat, hating how cold it felt, so I could put my phone back into my pocket. Daren studied me quietly, expression unreadable. Hiscool detachment left me feeling scared again, and not in the way that made me hard. And as quick as it appeared, it was gone. He bent down and picked up my bag, shrugging it up his own arm instead of mine. He picked up Gideon’s hoodie like he didn’t know what to do with it, then he handed it off to me.

“Who am I?” I asked, grabbing his hand, repeating his question back to him.

“The death of us all,” he muttered, squeezing his fingers hard around mine.

Chapter 46

Gideon

Four minutes and nineteen seconds.

It was a new personal best, but if I would have known my father would be sitting in the bleachers waiting for me to surface, I would have weighted myself down to the bottom of the pool and stayed longer.

“Chlorine can’t be good for healing that scar on your chest,” he said, mouth pulled into a smirk.

“It’s been two weeks,” I told him, toweling off as much of the water as I could with the small towel I’d grabbed out of my locker on the way in.

Two weeks.

Two weeks since the initiation weekend and two weeks since all of our lives had turned upside down. It had been two weeks since I’d seen Fletcher, even though I knew Luca and Daren were sneaking around together more than they should have. Bellamy spent most nights at Thorn Hill, and I would have been lying if I said I wasn’t jealous of the fact. Even though I didn’t know whose bed he warmed, the thought of it being Fletcher’s was enough to make me see red. But the return to “normal” was part of our plan.

We’d agreed to lay low, a task Daren and Luca were failing miserably at. Fletcher and I had done better. We didn’t even have classes in the same building at the same time, as if years ago someone had learned that lesson the hard way and the story had spread like wildfire. I had seen Bellamy in passing, but beyond a small smile, he didn’t offer me much.

Fletcher had wanted to strike against our fathers quickly, but I’d begged for patience. We’d all started the year with the plan to lay low and make it out alive, but the revelations of the initiation made that harder to abide. Staying away from Fletcher, now that I’d finally had him, was the hardest thing I’d ever done. And it was foolish of me to want him, to maybe even still love him. I loved him once before, and he’d betrayed me.

We still hadn’t talked about the why of it. But we would.