So this was the game, I thought. I hurt him, and he hurt me back, but only as much as I could tolerate.

I ran my tongue along my teeth, savoring his warm, salty blood. When I looked at him again, he looked incredibly mortal all of a sudden. Boyish, even. With a red slash of blood smeared over his mouth, waiting for me to say something.

To acknowledge he wasn’t the only screwed-up person in the room.

“You were wrong. I didn’t want you to kiss me.” I licked the corner of my lips, mocking him.

He smirked, leaning down and capturing the tip of my ear with his teeth, whispering. “You wanted it, you enjoyed it, and next time I touch you, Good Girl, I’m not only going to dirty you up. I’m going to make you filthy, like me.”

Three things happened simultaneously from that day onward:

1. Vaughn began to monitor my interactions at school, especially with the lads. Guys stopped acknowledging my presence completely, in all grades and statuses, other than Knight and Hunter, who weren’t scared of their lunatic mate. Everyone else caught word that Lenny Astalis was Vaughn’s unwilling possession, and even though I had no interest in any of them, I still thought they were cowards for listening to Vaughn.

Of course, I was the worst type of property—the neglected kind. Vaughn went even farther out of his way to make sure people knew I was nothing to him. There was a brief rumor about my catching chlamydia from a Brazilian male model I’d allegedly had sex with over the summer, but it died quickly when Vaughn said no one was desperate enough to fuck me.

2. The girls, who all heard different versions of what happened in the janitor’s room (exclusively from Alice and Arabella) and knew now without a shadow of a doubt that Vaughn had taken an unlikely interest in me, went from disliking me to actively despising me. Poppy often had to skip some of her after-school activities just to see me home and make sure no one was following or harassing me. Arabella and Alice continued to call me Vampire Girl because of my attire and fondness for all things black, and they nagged me about Vaughn whenever they came to visit Poppy. Their questions were met with silence.

3. Vaughn began to show up at my house nearly every day to work on his mysterious project with my father.

Papa had taken a liking to Vaughn when he’d first witnessed his artistic greatness at summer session, and now that Vaughn had expressed interest in working closely with him, I guess Papa felt flattered. Even though Vaughn wasn’t aware of the fact that I was too starstruck to talk to my own father about my art, he knew he was hurting me by coming here. Every time I opened the door and he was on the other side with his sculpting equipment, he gave me a lopsided grin that reminded me he’d kissed me not too long ago, that no matter how disgusting I found him, I’d once had his blood in my mouth.

His bottom lip was still bruised from my bite.

“Given up on that internship yet?” he’d ask.

“In your dreams,” I’d answer, and he’d laugh good-naturedly and shake his head, brushing past me.

On the day Knight broke up with Poppy, I sat in her room, stroking her hair.

The boy who’d warned guys off of her because he was so worried for her precious heart ended up stomping all over it like it was a dance floor.

I kept busy trying to keep my sister from flinging herself off our roof.

The rumor that Poppy had been prematurely disposed of for a college girl spread like wildfire in a hayfield at All Saints High. Her locker had been graffitied, and when she’d opened it today, she found a real human turd on top of her books with a Post-it note: Dumped!

Knight had been nowhere in sight today, and Poppy had sworn off going back to school for the remainder of the year. I hugged and consoled her all evening. Poppy rightfully couldn’t trust her so-called best friends, Alice and Arabella, who had been the first to spread the rumor of her breakup down the corridors of the school.

The queen bees of All Saints had turned against my sister, now that she was no longer under the protection of The Knight Cole.

The year had been crappy with a side of shite to me, but Poppy actually liked it here before the whole Knight debacle. I’d made no friends, gone on no dates, and collected no memories. In a lot of ways, it felt like a long, excruciating night, with no dreams or even nightmares to occupy my mind—a big, fat nothing of staring at the ceiling that made me wonder if I really even existed.

At least we were nearing graduation. I still hadn’t applied to any colleges, in Europe or elsewhere, praying for that internship. Wherever Vaughn went, even if it was to England with me, I’d be in my home field. He wouldn’t have so much power there. Anyway, he still wasn’t done with his piece, and who knows what he’d actually sent them when the internship application was due. It had been a month now, at least. But I had bigger fish to fry.

Knight wasn’t a bad person, but as a boyfriend, he was rubbish, and I thought Poppy deserved a lot more than what he’d offered her.

“Let it all go.” I stroked Poppy’s light hair, kissing the crown of her head while she nestled in my arms on her bed. She had a canopy-style princess bed, all baby pink and white, and a vanity desk the size of my entire room. I didn’t care about those sorts of things, but Poppy did.

I didn’t fault her for that. We were who we were. She had to take care of me at school because I got into trouble all the time.

Poppy blew her nose into the hem of my kilt, and I let her.

“He is such an arsehole!” she exclaimed, bursting out in a fresh bout of tears.

“A world-class one.” I nodded, rallying behind her statement. “He should be internationally recognized for the level of arseholeness he exhibits.”

“But he’s so gorgeous.”

“Sure, if you’re into that Shawn-Mendes-meets-Chase-Crawford look. But there are a lot of gorgeous guys, and you deserve one who will recognize just how special you are.” I gently removed the hair that stuck to her damp cheek, tucking it behind her ear.

Poppy sat up, patting her eyes with a tattered tissue.

“Am I, though?” She narrowed her puffy eyes at me.

I plucked some fresh tissues from her nightstand and handed them to her, along with a bottle of water.

“Are you what?” I asked.

“Special. You are special, Lenny. With your art and quirky attitude and the way you pretend not to care when gorgeous, rich guys like Vaughn Spencer make you a walking target. But I’m not like that. I’m not talented or strong or particularly interesting. I don’t have any special looks or clothes or abilities. I’m not even book smart.” She sniffled, eyeing me with a suspicious frown now, like it was my fault she chose to wear mainstream, high-end brands and put highlights in her hair and have normal, popular “friends.”

“You can be talented and completely horrible,” I said cautiously, thinking of Vaughn. “And you can also have not even one artistic bone in your body and still be the rarest thing in the universe. It’s in your actions. It’s your soul. You are special, Poppy, because you make people feel good. No one can take that away from you.”

She sank into my arms, and we sat there for what seemed like forever, hugging and rocking back and forth, relishing the bittersweet agony of loving a boy who didn’t love her back—not that I knew anything about that. Heartbreak was a mystical, double-edged sword from where I was standing. And I had no desire to experience the full range of emotions in a car crash of feelings. Not ever going there.