Rebirth Of The Lost Heiress

Chapter 5

Adrian

I sat in my usual seat and tried to focus on whatever the teacher was writing on the board. I really did try. But my eyes kept sliding across the room on their own, like they had somewhere better to be.

And they always found Brielle.

She wasn't looking at me. She wasn't doing any of the things she used to do—no stolen glances from the corner of her eye, no fidgeting with her pen whenever I walked past, no pretending to read while actually watching my every move. She just sat there, straight-backed, calm, eyes on her notebook, pen moving like she actually cared about the lesson and the rest of the room didn't exist.

Like I didn't exist.

That bothered me. I didn't want it to bother me, but it still did.

After class, Kenji dropped sideways into the seat beside me before the next group of students could file in. Kenji had been my best friend since we were twelve, and our level of closeness meant he always said the things that most people kept in their heads out loud.

"She broke Marcus's nose," Kenji said, like he was commenting on the weather. "The move was so clean. The guy was on the floor crying. Actual tears."

"I saw it," I said.

"Did you see how fast she moved though?" Kenji tilted his head and watched Brielle's empty seat like it might offer some kind of explanation. "That wasn't a lucky hit. That was training. Real training. Like someone who's been doing it for years." He paused. "When did Brielle become that?"

I didn't answer, because he didn't have one.

I’d seen the whole thing. One moment Marcus was standing there with that wide, stupid smirk on his face, enjoying his own little joke. And the next moment he was on the floor, making sounds I’d never heard from a grown boy before.

Brielle had moved so fast it almost looked like the space between standing and hitting him hadn't existed at all. And her face while it was happening… that was the part I couldn't stop thinking about.

She hadn't looked angry. She hadn't looked scared. She hadn't even looked like she was trying. Her face had been completely, absolutely calm, like this was just something she did all the time, and dropping someone twice her size was ordinary.

"Something's different about her," Kenji said.

"Drop it," I said.

Kenji shrugged and picked up his phone.

***

At lunch, the cafeteria was its usual noise and mess. I sat at my usual table with my usual group where everything looked the same as always. But my eyes kept darting across the room.

Brielle sat at the far end, alone.

She didn’t seem like she’d been rejected, or as though she was waiting for someone to notice her. She was just alone, and she looked comfortable in it. She had her food in front of her, one elbow on the table, phone in her other hand, scrolling through something, looking relaxed. She wasn’t even looking around to see if anyone was watching.

Nobody went near her table. Even Marcus's group, who usually had comments for everyone, had left a wide clear gap around her side of the cafeteria.

It was both interesting and unsettling at the same time, and I didn't fully understand why.

Just then, Lucy slid into the empty seat beside me, touching my arm the way she always did when she wanted my complete attention. Her moves were gentle, but I could tell that they were practiced.

“Don't let her get to you." Her voice was soft and I could hear the concern in it, but I knew it was fake. "She's doing all of this on purpose, Adrian. She wants you to notice her. She wants you to come running back to check if she's okay."

I looked at Lucy's face while she spoke.

Then I looked at where her eyes went. Just for a second, while she was focused on sounding worried about me, she was looking at Brielle's table.

And what I saw in her face in that one quick second wasn't concern. It was annoyance and fear. From her expression, I could tell things weren’t going the way she’d planned, and she was still trying to figure out what went wrong.

"She's not doing any of this for my attention," I said.

Lucy blinked. "What?"

"Nothing. Forget it."

I pulled my arm away and picked up my fork. The conversation moved on. Kenji started talking about something else. I could hear the noise of the cafeteria around me again.

But I wasn't really listening to any of it. The thing was, I had spent months thinking about Brielle, knowing I’d hurt her even though I hadn’t fully admitted it to myself yet.

She had always been so easy to read. I’d always known what she was going to do, what she was going to say, and how she felt about things. That predictability had made it easy to keep her at arm's length without letting myself feel too bad about it. She would always be there. She would always be the same. I didn't have to worry.

But this version of Brielle—sitting alone across the cafeteria without a single care in the world—I couldn't read at all.

The hatred I’d seen in her eyes this morning hadn't looked like the hurt feelings of a girl nursing a broken heart.

No, it looked like something way different.

***

That evening, I was at my desk with a textbook I hadn’t looked at in twenty minutes open in front of me. Then my phone buzzed.

It was a text from an unknown number with no name attached. I almost dismissed it. But I picked it up anyway.

It was just one line: "Ask your grandfather why he wants the engagement so badly."

That was all. Nothing else. I tried calling the number back. It rang twice and then disconnected. I tried again and got nothing, not even the ring.

I put the phone face-down on the desk. Then I picked it up and read the text again.

I set the phone down again, now staring at the ceiling.

Sleep didn't come for a long time.