Chapter 26

Belle peeked over at Danny's laminated schedule—the same exact sheet she'd lost after the first week.

She groaned, seeing they had small group meetings next. It was easy enough to hide the high school goth in a lecture hall with over two hundred bodies, but in a group of ten, he might be a tad more obvious.

"Do you mind hanging out in the union for a bit? I have a small group thingy."

Belle winced apologetically as she asked the question.

"Whatever, but you can buy me something to drink," Damien demanded.

She dropped him off at the Student Union, finding him a phone charger and a comfortable table near a plug socket. The little sign said 'laptops only' but Belle had never been one for following rules. She stopped at the bar to grab him an energy drink before running off to the classroom.

'I should have got one for myself,' she thought, beginning to feel exhausted. The brain fog, headache and triggered as soon as she was a few feet from him. The accompanying panic caused her heart to race, leading swiftly and predictably to the morbid anxiety.

'It's just an hour, you can do this,' she told herself, but her brain didn't want to listen.

She took a seat next to a girl she vaguely recognized, smiled, and looked down, hoping there wouldn't be any conversation to deal with. It was hard enough just existing, without any extra pressure.

The teacher—a PhD student called Ben something or other—was youngish and cute looking. Usually, this was enough to keep her attention on him, but today wasn't an ordinary day. She found herself slipping.

"Are we keeping you awake, Annabelle?" Ben asked.

Belle felt her cheek sliding from the fist that propped her up. "Uh?"

A couple of students snickered as she straightened up, giving the teacher a questioning look.

"You were yawning," he pointed out. He seemed offended by it, though to be fair he should have come to expect it by now. He was teaching first-year students whose number one priority was staying up all night partying.

"Sorry," Belle muttered, but she could tell by his face it was too late; she'd made an enemy for life.

He grouped the class into three's and told them to create a presentation on their topic. When he passed out the assignments, he stopped at Belle's table and told her she had to be the speaker of the group.

'He's punishing me!' Belle thought. She laughed out loud, confusing him.

"You think that's funny?" he asked, hands on hips. The arrogant smirk on his face triggered instant hatred. It made her want to punch him. Strangle him to death.

Belle tried to control herself. To reign herself in. But she couldn't bring herself to care about her future, her course or anything else.

She continued to laugh as she lifted her leg and pulled up her skirt, showing him the crisscross web of bruises and welts on her upper thighs.

"You want to punish me? That's fine, I like punishments."

The arrogance on his quickly shifted, giving way to shock.

"Put your legs away," he gasped, moving away from the table.

"What the heck?" the girl next to her whispered. "Who did that to you?"

"My... boyfriend," Belle told her.

Her innocent face twitched with questions, but the other member of their group cut her off. He was of the rare few that cared more about getting good grades than getting drunk and partying.

"Come on, let's get started," he huffed.

Belle couldn't concentrate on the words on the pages. They shifted about like angry little ants, crawling up her arms and into her brain. She had no choice but to let Mr. Brainiac and the timid girl write up her speech.

When it came time to give her presentation her brain froze. Standing in front of the group, all eyes on her, she was tempted to try and beg out of it.

'No,' she thought, glancing up at Ben's smug face. 'I won't give him the satisfaction.'

She read the words on the paper flatly, without understanding their meaning. It was uninspiring, boring, and barely passable, but it was enough. Just.

When she pulled up to the final punctuation, she fell silent and sat, eliciting a lackluster round of applause from the room.

'I want Damien,' she thought. By the time an hour had passed it felt like days. The second Ben dismissed them she practically flew out of the building and into the Union.

'Where is he?' she panicked, stopping at the comfy chair. 'What if he's left? What if I can't find him and—'

"Belle?"

The world was set right when she turned to see Damien at the pool table holding a cue. He leaned over the table, took a shot, missed, and handed the cue to a burly looking guy with a messy beard and tattoos. She vaguely recognized the guy and his group as their motorbike society occasionally came on the metal soc's nights out. They were the Universities equivalent of the 'cool kids' in school, but why were they with Damien?

"How was your group thingy?" Damien asked, rolling his eyes.

"Awful, the teacher tried to humiliate me because I had the audacity to yawn," Belle revealed. "Well, the jokes on him, because I already lost my last shred of dignity."

She hadn't meant it to be funny, but the comment got a laugh from Damien's new friends.

"Dignity is overrated," the biker girl said in a husky voice.

'Even her voice is cool,' Belle sighed to herself.

"You guys should come to our house party later," the burly guy said.

"Oh, I have plans for this one," Damien flashed a maniacal grin as he pulled Belle into his side. Her slim hip grated painfully against his studded belt as he squeezed. Yet, his hand on her hip wasn't unpleasant. The feeling of his arm around her, of belonging to him, was oddly comforting.

'Oh God, I'm developing Stockholm’s Syndrome.'

"Lucky you," Biker Girl said. The funny thing was, she didn't say it sarcastically. The girl's eyes lingered on the collar around Belle's neck and the cuffs attached to Damien's belt. "Kinky guys are the best."

This widened Damien's smile further. He turned to Belle with a crazed look in his eyes. "You're lucky."

Belle nodded. "I am lucky."

'I am lucky.'

As they walked away, Belle wrapped her arm around Damien. They probably looked like any other couple as they drifted down the halls and corridors.