“Does that mean your answer is a yes for bringing me here with you?” I asked.

He nodded curtly. “Yes.”

Adam lifted his shirt up from the ground and pulled it up over his head, only letting go of my hand for the split second that it took to shove his arm through the sleeve. And the whole of me regretted that we had been caught. Yes, Julian had looked out for me ever since I was a kid, but with Adam?

There was something different about him. Something that was more unhinged or primal. And it resonated with me in a way I’d never felt before.

Not even with Julian.

“You know there has to be an overwhelming reason to transfer.” Marta shook her head at Adam as she spoke. Her voice was harsh and condescending, and the way she looked at me made me feel like I was standing there naked, which, of course, I was not. “And of all the Goldshire girls that you could have chosen to break the rules with, you picked this one? You know who she is.”

“Yes,” Adam said. “I do. But there isn’t anything in your rules that excludes specific people. I love her, and I want her with me here.”

The single word sounded much louder in my head and made me dizzy. Adam couldn’t have loved me. It was just a game of pretend to get Marta to allow my entry into the school. Even Julian and I, throughout all the years we’d known each other and all of the things we’d been through together, never once said we loved each other. You can’t count the “love ya too” phrases that we would throw back and forth, but that didn’t mean the same thing.

I watched as Marta rubbed her temple and sighed while she paced the perimeter of her office. It was unbelievable that she was even considering Adam’s request in all honesty. He was definitely laying it on thick, but she must have had some strange soft spot for him.

“Marta, please,” he said. “Remember what you first told me when Michael brought me to your office and asked for my acceptance into Lineage? You said that we were all a family here and that family protects each other. I can’t stop my feelings for Lisette. I am in love with her, and if I can’t bring her here to be with me, then I won’t have any happiness. I know who she is and who her mother was. But the only thing that should matter now is who she is to me.”

Marta stopped her pacing and looked at him. It seemed like she was being swayed, and I wanted to close the deal, even if I couldn’t exactly reciprocate the same sentiment. I stepped forward and opened my mouth to talk, hoping that I wouldn’t end up regretting it.

“I have been devastated by my father’s reputation, which has lingered over me ever since I was a small child. With my mother gone as well, nothing is tying me to Goldshire.”

“And you would betray your parent’s legacy there in order to come to Lineage and be with Adam?” Marta asked.

I felt as though it was the final tipping-point in what seemed like an interrogation. So, I dug my heels in and prayed to any God listening that my parents forgave me.

“Yes. There is no legacy there for me anymore,” I answered.

She looked behind me toward Adam as if I were no longer in the room.

“Michael will not be pleased about this,” she said to him.

“I’ll handle Michael,” Adam said.

“And she’ll have to go through the entire vetting process…without any help or interference from you.”

I looked over my shoulder at Adam, who looked as though he had just swallowed something sour. “I understand.”

I had no idea what the “vetting process” was, but I could tell by Adam’s reaction that it wasn’t going to be something to look forward to. Regardless, it didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was gaining entry into Lineage. I could deal with the rest later. Leaving Goldshire wasn’t a big deal either. If the transfer was approved, the two schools worked out the arrangements for having all the student’s possessions sent over and literally wanted nothing to do with the transferring student again.

I’m sorry, Julian. I hope you can forgive me.

Once someone deserted, it was as if they had never existed in the eyes of their original college. Grades would transfer, records would transfer, and that would be the end of it. All the rules would be reversed to the opposing school, and I would no longer be welcome on the Goldshire campus, which posed a bit of a problem with Julian, but I’d figure that out somehow too. I would feel a little bad about what I was doing, simply because it meant so much to my mother to see me graduate there but avenging her death and bringing Lineage down meant much more. Besides, I had no one left at Goldshire who would miss me or even care, except for Julian. It would be as if I had never existed in my former life.

We stood in awkward silence as we waited for Marta to deliver her decision.

“Fine,” she said finally with a giant sweeping motion of her hand that indicated how much of a burden this decision would be on her if it ended badly. “But if things don’t work out between the two of you, Lisette will be thrown right out on her ass. And I hold you fully accountable for all of her actions here starting right at this exact moment.”

Adam lowered his head toward her in a single nod of gratitude.

“Thank you,” he said. “I will gladly accept responsibility for her, you have my word.”

I felt doubly bad as he made his promise.

If Adam only knew what I was planning to do, he wouldn’t be so eager to accept any responsibility for me at all.

Marta dismissed us, and Adam took my hand as we turned to leave her office.

“You can’t go back to Goldshire again now,” he whispered as we walked out. “Not even once to get anything or see anyone. You have to stay here now and wait for your initiation to start.”

I nodded. I hadn’t really given any of this thought ahead of time. I guess I was too sure that my plan would probably fail and that I’d end up trudging back to my own campus later tonight in defeat. If I had thought it through, then I would have said something else to Julian before I had left that morning. There wasn’t any kind of chance of reaching him and telling him anything. Even my cell phone would be monitored, and one mistake would bring the whole ruse collapsing down. There was a whole lot more at stake besides just me. My actions would affect what happened to Adam and Julian too, and I couldn’t bear the burden of guilt if I was the reason either of them got hurt or expelled. Not even Adam.

“Where are we going now?” I asked him.

He tugged me along. “Let’s go back to my apartment.”

“But what about—”

“Michael,” Adam finished my sentence as we both looked up to see Michael walking into the building toward us. Michael glanced down at our interlocked hands, and his entire face turned a burning scarlet.

Guess I don’t need your phone after all, asshole.

9

Adam’s apartment looked like a war-zone by the time Michael was done throwing things up against the walls and smashing things against the table. When Marta said he “wouldn’t be pleased,” it was a drastic understatement. Michael was absolutely outraged.

Adam stood there calmly, though, watching him have his temper tantrum and not letting go of my hand. He kept his body squarely between Michael and me, however. And eventually, Michael spun himself out and flopped down onto the couch with a rage-filled pout.

“Are you done?” Adam asked.

I was hoping that he would tread lightly so that I didn’t wake up dead in the morning, but he seemed to have other plans.

“You don’t love her,” Michael scowled at him. “What a stupid thing for you to have said. She’s conning you, can’t you see that?”

For a second, I got nervous that Michael could see through my ambitions and was going to call me out, until Adam changed his mind.

“I can get a different apartment,” Adam said as he ignored Michael’s accusations. “If that’s what you’d like me to do.”

“What I’d like you to do,” Michael sneered, “is to get rid of her.”

He shook his head. “That’s not going to happen.”

The two of them stared at each other for a few moments in a battle of wills.