Boarding with the Bad Boy [COMPLETE + BONUS published edition]

Ice Cream Therapy

Seconds later, the door clicks shut and the room is shrouded in darkness. I breathe heavily, tucking my face into my legs the way I've heard you're supposed to do during a panic attack. It doesn't help. I'm suddenly crying the kind of loud, gasping cry I've only allowed myself twice before. My breaths tear themselves from my lungs and leave my throat in heaving moans, and the fear that someone—Mr. Ross or Sam or Brandon—will reenter the auditorium and find me here only exacerbates my distress.

I stay in the room until I've cried myself dry, then I stand and weave my way to the door, leaning against it to ensure the halls are silent before I sneak out and race through them, out onto the grounds, and down the hill that leads from campus to staff housing. In my twenty minutes of sobbing, I've decided on a couple things, and the first is that I am out of the Ross' house. For good.

I scrabble for the key and slam my way into their house in a fury, dazed as I toss clothes into my duffel and make up the guest bed. By the time I lock the door behind me, it's as if I've never even visited the Ross'. But it's also 2:30, which means that classes are letting out, and students will be heading to practice and clubs. I feel a wave of desire to take a good, hard run at cross-country, but there's no way I'm going to practice today, and I need to get out of dodge before someone spots me.

I go through the woods, like an idiot. The now-naked branches sting my face and arms as I move toward the ice cream shop, first at a run, then a fast walk as the size and weight of my duffel starts to dig into my shoulders. I'm nearly at the road when I give up, plopping to the ground and lying against my bag, digging my phone out of my back pocket. Ryan answers on the first ring.

"It's me," I say without preamble. "I'm in the woods just off Route 10, across from the bank. Can you come get me?"

Ryan snorts a laugh into the phone. "I have some questions, but yes. I'll be there in five."

True to his word, Ryan's old Acura pulls to the curb a few minutes later and he gets out, coming around to help me with my bag.

"You're lucky I'm such a sucker for you, Ms. Grey," he says, heaving my bag over his shoulder.

"I'm lucky you're such a terrible employee," I say back. I slide into his passenger seat and buckle myself in.

"So, you're making a break for it?" Ryan asks as he starts the car and pulls back onto the road. His voice is light, but he hits pretty close to home, and I'm embarrassed by the wave of self-pity that rises up in me. I shove my knuckles under my nose in an attempt to stop myself sniffling.

"Yeah, actually." My voice wavers, but I don't cry.

He glances over at me, eyebrows raised. "I sense a larger story," he prods.

I grin half-heartedly. "Just trying to see how many ways I can fuck myself over before I end up on the streets. Or dead."

The joke doesn't land, and Ryan's eyebrows pinch together as he navigates the car to a parking spot behind the ice cream parlor. "Wanna tell me what's going on?" he asks when the car is parked and the engine's off.

"Not really," I mutter. But I have to, because I'm hoping he'll let me live with him while I figure out my next steps.

Ryan shrugs and steps out of the car, unlocking the shop. Unlike Sam, he doesn't push me to answer. As soon as the thought enters my head, I push it out, cursing myself for it. Leaving the Ross' was my first major decision, but getting over Sam Evans is my second, and it's already proving more difficult.