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She stood up and brushed sand off her legs “We didn’t hook up Besides, I can look after myself”

“I thought you could, but then I find you alone on the beach with him? Come on, Celia…”

“We atching thebeside Celia

“Yeah, right” Grahah “Telltohim what you did, so you better be prepared As for you," he said to Celia, grabbing her arhly away from me, "you come with me”

I wanted to defend her, tell hi He was right to take her away from me I was bad for her

I stood and watched the two of the lot where Grahalanced back and waved at me

Graham's threat to tell Spencer made my decision so much easier I knew that if I wanted to have any kind of future, I'd have to make a clean break with my family I'd join the Marines and to start a life completely divorced from them

Little did I kno much that decision would cost me, and hoould drive me even more deeply into my family's clutches

Chapter 9

Celia

As we drove up the highway back home to Boston, I quietly fumed My self-appointed champion and protector—one I had no need of and resented completely—sat beside me, quiet now that he had taken me away from the party

He kne angry I was that he decided to butt into h of that fro from our family home to my dorm at Harvard was my escape from the tyranny of Spencer My mother wasn't bad, but she was too tripped out on OxyContin to argue with his so she could drift in her drug-induced haze

It wasn't her fault The car accident that broke her back and killed my father had left her immobilized with pain and alladly dozed on her sofa all day, sleeping through soap operas so she was no longer in pain Luckily, she had a legitiet prescription pain medicines, and so would never have to resort to heroin like so s did

But she had been an absent parent to me and Graham for the past twelve years That left it wide open for Spencer, bastard assistant DA, to rule over us like ere his own personal fiefdoht in his control overmore than a peasant under his authoritarian control

I’d thought that when Graham took me to Hunter's family house on Cape Ann, I'd finally be free to be an adult I had such a great day talking to Hunter and then, when I had so kissed—really kissed, and bycrush Then, Graham butted in