Chapter 10 Broken already
Lily's POV
"We are almost late Wade! You need to hurry up!" I yelled from the bottom of the stairs.
Mia stood beside me already dressed, backpack on, watching the staircase with the patience of someone who had waited for her brother many times before and simply accepted it. She had been ready for twenty minutes. I had been ready for thirty.
"Few more minutes!" he called back.
"You are driving me to school if you spend another minute up there!" I said.
A brief silence, then he said, "You are joking right?"
I said nothing, I knew I wasn't joking.
He came down eventually, jacket half on, completely unbothered by the urgency of the situation he had personally created.
"Hope I did not waste too much time," he said pleasantly.
"Wade, I am late and there is absolutely no way I am not getting into that car," I said firmly.
"What if someone sees us arriving together? We cannot risk it," he said lowering his voice.
"That is a consequence of spending forty minutes getting dressed," I said walking toward the garage with Mia.
He exhaled. "Okay fine," he muttered and followed.
We dropped Mia off at her school first. She climbed out carefully, adjusted her backpack and turned to wave at me before walking through the gate. I watched her until she disappeared inside.
Then Wade pulled back onto the road toward Diamond High. I was already mentally sorting through my morning when I glanced at the back seat and saw Mia's lunch box. It was sitting exactly where she had been.
"Wade, Mia forgot her lunch box."
He looked at it briefly, then at the clock. "We are already late. Just use the delivery man to send it to her during the free period."
"You are right," I said and left it at that.
We pulled into the Diamond High car park and Wade cut the engine and looked at me through the mirror.
"I need to go in first," he said. "Give it a few minutes before you follow. Nobody, absolutely nobody, can know that you live in my house or that we arrived together."
"Wade—"
"Remember our deal Lily," he said quietly.
I closed my mouth, he was not wrong. Being seen arriving with Wade would generate exactly the kind of attention I could not afford on top of everything already being said about me. So I waited in the car, counted the minutes, then walked into school alone.
I went straight to my locker.
My history project was there, carefully compiled in a clear folder. Two full weeks of work, late nights at the kitchen table after Mia was asleep, every page checked three times. It was the best work I had submitted since arriving at Diamond High and I was quietly proud of it. I set it carefully on the shelf and began sorting my books for the morning.
Then I felt the corridor shift. I had learned to sense it before I could see it. A change in the noise, the way conversations adjusted around a particular arrival.
The arrival of Clara, and behind her Wade, Henry and the rest of the group, moving through the hallway like it had been arranged specifically for them.
I kept my hands moving and my eyes on my locker.
"Still showing yourself at school," Henry said, his voice thick with contempt. "Have you not gotten the message yet?"
"The message that you hate me?" I said without turning. "That has always been perfectly clear."
"I guess words alone are not enough then," Clara said.
I heard the sound of a drink being taken out and turned around.
She was holding a bottle casually, tilting it slightly between two fingers, watching my face for the reaction she wanted.
"You are going to pour that on me?" I said flatly. "How original"
I looked past her to Wade. Our eyes met and I held his gaze, waiting, wanting him to feel the weight of it. We had an agreement. He had made a promise less than twenty four hours ago in his own hallway.
He looked away and something cold settled in my chest.
"Pouring this on you would not even make much of a difference honestly," Clara said, eyes moving over me. "I know better ways to hurt a desperate try hard." Her gaze dropped to the folder on my shelf. "History project due today, is it not?" She glanced back at Wade with a slow smile.
"Do not," I said, gripping the folder tighter.
She moved faster than I expected. Her foot came down on the edge of the folder, pinning it to the shelf. I stopped immediately because pulling it free would tear every page through and two weeks of work would be gone in one second.
"Too bad," she said simply. "I do not care."
"Wade!" His name came out louder than I intended. "Stop them"
He looked at a fixed point on the wall beside him and said nothing.
Clara laughed, wide and satisfied.
"Do not tell me she is throwing herself at you now Wade," she said, tilting her head at me with theatrical pity.
"Next time you want to say my name," Wade said easily, "take me to the bedroom first."
The corridor erupted with laughter.
Clara tilted her bottle slowly and deliberately and the liquid spread across my project in a wide unhurried stain, soaking through page after page without rushing. She wanted me to watch every second of it.
I crouched down and began gathering what I could. The tears came before I could stop them, hot and immediate, rolling down before I could blink them back. I kept my head down and kept my hands moving because stopping meant letting everyone see exactly how much this hurt.
Part of me wanted desperately to stand up and tell every person watching exactly who Wade Harrington was the moment he walked through his own front door. That I locked his fridge. That I marked his homework and handed it back with corrections. That his little sister had chosen me over him within hours of meeting me.
But I knew how that would land in this corridor and it would not be in my favour. So I swallowed it.
I picked up the ruined folder and stood.
"See you in class, bottom feeder," Clara said, moving her foot toward my hand.
I pulled back just in time and she and Henry walked away laughing, the sound trailing behind them down the corridor.
I stood there holding my soaked destroyed project and looked at Wade. He was still standing in the exact same spot he had occupied through the entire thing.
I folded the wet pages and threw them at his chest. He caught them by reflex.
"What happened to our deal?" My voice came out quiet. Quiet felt worse than shouting.
"I promised to stop bullying you," he said, looking at the ruined pages in his hands. "I did not promise to protect you from everyone else."
"You started all of this," I said, keeping my voice steady through effort. "Every single person in that group learned how to treat me from watching you. Whatever they do to me, that belongs to you."
"Lily wait—" He reached for my arm.
I pulled free, "The deal is off," I said.
And I walked to class without looking back once.