Tease, Part 3 (Chapters 15-The End) by Sophie Jordan

Author:Sophie Jordan
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780062367389
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2014-04-23T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 19

I FROZE, EVERYTHING INSIDE me wilting at the voice, too fresh in my mind.

I stared ahead, Mom’s face in my line of vision, and if I hadn’t recognized the voice already I would know who was behind me based on her body language. And her eyes—the only thing in her plastic face that revealed any emotion.

Her gaze flashed to shock and then dread. I glanced swiftly at Shaw, embarrassed; mortified that he was here for this. Even though I had shared my past with him, seeing it firsthand, witnessing it—living it with me—was an entirely different experience and I just wanted to shrink away until I was invisible. And anywhere but here.

I assessed his face. He looked confused. He’d heard the voice, too—the ugly words as clearly as anyone else near us—but he didn’t yet realize they were directed at me. Several people around us had stopped talking. They stopped and stared.

Run. Get away. The urge pounded through me. I just wanted to escape before this twisted from bad to hellishly bad. I stepped to the side and tugged Shaw after me, hoping to avoid Justin altogether. Maybe it was crazy or delusional, but I thought I could leave the room without a confrontation. Without having to look at my stepbrother one more time.

“Did you hear me, Emerson?”

A shudder rolled through me. There was no mistaking who he was talking to now.

Shaw stiffened beside me—went rigid in like one nanosecond. His fingers tightened around mine, and I knew there was no breaking that contact. That he wasn’t letting go of me.

Justin’s voice kept coming, a barrage of knives I couldn’t duck. “Where do you think you’re going? I’m talking to you, bitch.”

Yes, he was talking to me. Because I had come here. Because I’d thought that maybe things could be different. That I could be a normal girl who didn’t have a totally messed-up family.

Shaw turned slowly, taking me with him. I looked somewhere above Justin’s shoulder, staring blindly ahead, unwilling to even look at his loathsome face. “What did you call her?”

I’d never heard Shaw talk in a voice like this before. He’d lost his temper in front of me, but his voice had never been like this. Low and chilling, with an undercurrent of menace.

Justin didn’t answer him. There wasn’t a sound coming from anyone around us. All conversation had ceased. The orchestra played on, oblivious.

I brought my other hand to Shaw’s arm. “Let’s just go.”

“Oh, now you want to leave?” Justin’s face twisted. “After you trash-talked me to Melanie and convinced her to call off the wedding? Now you’re happy to go.”

“Oh, Emerson,” Mom cried behind me. “You didn’t!”

“Oh, she did.” Justin nodded. “I should have known she would do this.”

I tried to deny this. “I didn’t come here to—”

“You came here to do just what you did.” Justin closed the few feet of space between us. He didn’t even look at Shaw. It was as if he could see nothing beyond me. His eyes, so full of rage, fixed solely on me.

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