I used to want his attention. Now I just hated it when they reminded him that I existed. I wasn’t excited to leave town for college next summer, but I couldn’t wait to get out of that house, either.

So what bullshit did I do now that Kincaid needed to hassle me?

I left the bathroom, brushing the shoulder of another student as I crossed the hallway and entered the school office. Swinging the door open, I walked up to the long, dark wood counter and shot a glare to Mrs. Devasquez, the secretary.

“Have a seat,” she said, her short gray hair unmoving as she nodded to the chairs behind me. “The dean will call you when he’s ready.”

I simply turned around and propped my elbows up on the counter, waiting.

Drumming my fingers as my hand dangled over the edge of the counter, I noticed no one else was in the office, but I perked my ears at several voices coming from Kincaid’s office to my left. I looked over, seeing bodies rise up, as if from sitting positions, behind the frosted glass.

“Why aren’t you in uniform?” I heard Devasquez challenge behind me.

“Is it 7:45 yet?”

I didn’t turn around to look at her, and she didn’t open her mouth again.

I hated this room. Most of the classrooms in this old school had been updated over time, the fancy gray stone exterior preserved, and everything in a condition which was expected from parents who paid a substantial tuition every year, but this room reminded me of home. Dark wood, shiny with a noxious odor from years of layers of furniture polish, high ceilings with rafters that collected dust, and cobblestone floors that never quite made me feel like my feet were firmly on the ground.

Kincaid’s door opened and voices flooded out.

I turned to see Margot Ashby lead the way out of the office, saying as they all left, “Thank you, Charles. I know you and the teachers have gone above and beyond to help Winter re-assimilate.”

Winter… My eyes narrowed.

And then she appeared. Holding her mother’s arm and trailing slowly behind.

I stopped breathing for a moment. Jesus Christ. What the hell was she doing here?

The little girl in the fountain. She’d grown up. She couldn’t be more than fourteen or fifteen now, but the baby fat was gone, her white tutu gone, and her eyes on me…gone. She would never look at me again.

Her older sister, who was my age, squeezed out first, while Kincaid and their father, the mayor, trailed behind.

“We’ll keep her up here until Miss Fane arrives,” I heard Kincaid say as they all drifted into the main office. “She has all the instructions to help Winter through her first few weeks, and since they’re in the same grade, it was easy placing them in the same classes.”

Same classes.

Miss Fane. Erika Fane? She and Winter were going to be in the same classes? Then that meant Winter was a freshman.

And she’d come home to go to high school.

I fought not to smile, practically fucking delighted with the potential of this new distraction.

She came up alongside her mother and dropped her hand when everyone stopped, not needing to hang on any longer than necessary, and I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Her blue eyes still looked so innocent and carefree but probably only because she didn’t know I was less than five feet away from her. I wondered how well she remembered me.

But there was a defiant lift to her chin that intrigued me.

How easily one pain replaced another. How I could barely remember the hurt in my head just a few minutes ago and Miss Jennings seemed like a distant memory. I inhaled a deep, quiet breath, filling my lungs with the welcome fresh air.

“Does she have to wear the blazer?” Mrs. Ashby asked. “We tried to get her to wear it, but—”

“Oh no, it’s fine,” Kincaid answered. “As long as she’s in Thunder Bay colors, we’re good.”

Winter wore the standard blue and green plaid skirt, but while most everyone wore blouses or Oxfords under their blazers, I could see a white Polo hanging out from under the hem of her navy blue hoodie.

Rebel.

“What’s the dress code say about wearing shoes from dumpsters?” Arion, her sister, chimed in as she knelt down to tie Winter’s Doc Martens that were scuffed beyond repair on both toes with laces dragging. “You’d think someone who needs a hand to walk everywhere so she doesn’t trip would know how to double-knot.”

“Bite me.” Winter yanked her foot away and felt for the counter next to me. I wasn’t sure how she knew it was there, but she found it and then knelt down to tie her boot, her long, layered blonde hair hanging around her.

Everyone in the room suddenly fell silent, and I looked up to see her parents staring at me, suddenly realizing I was in the room. Three inches from their daughter.

Winter rose, her hand brushing my jeans.

“Oh, excuse me,” she said, finally noticing someone was here.

Her mother inhaled, darting toward us. “Um, actually, Charles, we’ll wait with Winter in the library.” She came up and grabbed Winter, pulling her away from me. “If you could send Erika there when she arrives…”

“Of course.”

Margot, Arion, and Winter filtered into the corridor, and my head started swimming with all the possibilities now laying in front of me. I wasn’t sure if she thought about me or what she thought about me, but I knew she wouldn’t forget me. She would never be able to forget.

The door closed behind them, and I saw Griffin Ashby, our city mayor, start to follow, but then he stopped as he reached me.

I stared at his profile, his dark gray suit and blue tie perfectly pressed as he focused ahead, refusing to spare me any eye contact.

“Someday you’ll be in a cage,” he said. “And hopefully sooner rather than later, so you can’t do any more damage. Mr. Kincaid will fill you in on the do’s and don’ts while my youngest is in attendance at this school.” And then he finally turned his head to look at me with disdain “Mark my words, if you fail to behave, I will end you, and it’ll be for good.”

Turning away, he left the office, and my lips twitched with a smile. Six years ago, his little girl and I changed each other, and while I couldn’t change her back, I could certainly give her some new memories of me.

Now that… I could do.

It was settled, then.

I heard Mr. Kincaid clear his throat as he held his office door open for me. “Mr. Torrance, if you please?”

Damon

Present

“Ten moves and you have me,” Mr. Garin told me. “Do you see it?”

I stared at the board between us, calculating the moves I needed to make for checkmate while trying to anticipate his counter moves.

Yeah, I see it. But what fun would that be?

I reached for my pawn at E2.

“Don’t,” he scolded.

And he shot me the same look I’d seen since I was a kid.

But I couldn’t resist. Unable to hold in my small smile, I ignored him and moved it to E4.

He let out a sigh and shook his head, exasperated with the lack of control and strategy he failed at drilling into me all those long afternoons after school, years ago, when he worked for my father.

Or he thought he failed at drilling it into me, anyway. People assumed I behaved strictly on impulse, when actually, it required quite a bit of strategy being this fucked up.

House music pounded downstairs, the club already packed with college girls, young professionals, and anyone else in the twenty-something set able to spring for the three-hundred-dollar bottle of vodka or champagne just to be able to sit at a damn table.

I’d spent plenty of time down there in the crowd and noise in high school with my friends. Now I just kept a private room upstairs on reserve to catch up with Kostya Garin, one of my father’s old bodyguards who now organized security for this club. Fifty-nine years old, gray goatee, and the same black suits he always wore when he worked for my father, he still had more muscles than me, and he was one of the few people I had, at least, some regard for.

I would do business with him.

I would trust anything he had to say.

I would attend his funeral.

There weren’t many people I’d sit through a whole service for.

But we weren’t friends, and we never discussed anything personal. He taught me things, but he never complicated it with trying to be my father. He was one of the perks I came here for.

The other…

“I want to leave,” a girl spoke up from the other side of the room as if on cue.

As Mr. Garin contemplated his next move, I turned my head toward her.

She wore a tight pink dress of sequins, glittering in the dim glow coming from the sconces on the wall, and her ass was planted on some little prick’s lap whose name I didn’t know. Her boyfriend across from them, on the edge of the black leather couch, watching his buddy putting his hands on his woman. I observed them, trying to put myself in each of their skin.

Did she like another man touching her? Was her boyfriend jealous? Turned on? Angry? Was his best friend living out a long-held fantasy for her? Was he enjoying this? Was he hard?

I blinked, waiting for it to come. His jealousy. Her degradation. His desire. Their fear and excitement at being watched.

But it didn’t come. Not yet. It was getting harder and harder to empathize over the years.

Fuck.

Maybe if it was my new little wife being fondled?

Or…

The guy touched her hips lightly and hesitantly as his mouth grazed a path across her shoulder, probably trying to hold back so they didn’t know how much he was enjoying himself.

“Can we leave now?” she asked me, the man underneath her not giving the slightest hint he wanted to leave quite yet.

But I ignored her, turning back to the board and seeing that Mr. Garin had matched my move with his pawn to E5.

I smiled to myself.

“Look closely,” he continued. “You can still get me. Ten moves.”

Ten? I grabbed my knight and moved it to F3, hearing Mr. Garin let out a sigh as he plucked his knight and sat him back down in C6 as if on auto-pilot.