005.

~ BRIELLE ~

The silence in the room stretches out between us like a stubborn chain that refuses to break.

Kade doesn't move. He is just watching me with that stupid smirk on his lips and those whiskey eyes still digging into mine. I wonder what he sees. I wonder what he will find if those eyes dig in deeper and deeper because sometimes, I feel like I don't know who I really am.

Nevertheless, I refuse to give him the satisfaction of finding out.

“Are you going to be productive, Merrick, or are you just going to keep staring at me?” I demand, feeling a blush rising on my cheeks like a tell-tale sign of my internal discomfort that I absolutely detest right now.

I push my statistics textbook forward, “We have limited time, and unlike you, I have an actual future to protect.”

His lips twitch into a smile. “Yes. Your future. So shiny and so perfect just like everything else around you, I suppose.” He drops my pen on the table and locks his hands behind his head, still watching me. “You think you’re so different from me, don’t you, princess? You think you're so above everyone else?”

“I am different from you and I am not ashamed to say it.” I retort, my voice gaining strength. “I am not above everyone else. I am Brielle Danvers, not ‘everyone else’. As for you, do you think being rude to people is okay? You're not a fucking child, so wake up, Kade Merrick. I am not the one who negotiated some hush-hush deal to get in on parole.”

The playful mockery in his eyes vanishes, replaced by a cold, simmering anger. The faint scar above his eyebrow twitches against his skin.

“You know nothing about me, Danvers. Or about any deals.” His jaw clenches. “You just see what you’re told to see, don’t you? You're the Dean’s flawless puppet, dancing on his strings and believing every fucking lie he feeds you.”

I laugh. “So you can be angered. Good. Now listen to me you fucking asshole. You speak like you know me or my father, but you don't. You have no right to accuse my father of anything and if you can't stand me, maybe this arrangement isn’t worth anything.”

“Calm down princess,” he scoffs. “I know your father better than you think. I know plenty about the rot that festers right under the pretty surface of this school. You just haven’t bothered to look.”

My mind races.

What the hell is he talking about? What does he know? What stupid rumors has he heard?

My father is meticulous—always has been—in protecting his reputation. Any whisper of scandal that threatens his image is immediately suffocated. Silenced.

“You’re delusional,” my voice trembles slightly, despite my efforts to control it. “Now, are we going to work on statistics or not? I have a C+ that needs fixing and quite frankly, I have no interest in your conspiracy theories and bullshit lies.” I spit out the words in a dismissive tone.

“Fine.” He finally reaches for his own textbook, that same worn-out, dog-eared copy that looks like it has survived countless sufferings at the hands of its owner.

He flips it open to a random page before glancing at my textbook, then back at his own.

“Regression analysis, huh?” Those flecks of gold in his eyes glint. “You want to know how variables relate to each other? How one thing influences another? Well, that's perfect because that’s exactly what we’re going to be doing. Figuring out how your pretty little world correlates with the ugly truth.”

I ignore his stupid words and focus on the numbers right on my page. He is just looking for trouble.

“The least squares method is used to determine the best-fit line through a set of data points,” I recite the textbook definition, keeping my voice flat, “It minimizes the sum of the squared residuals, and it is fundamental for predictive modeling.”

“Predictive modeling huh?” He leans forward, resting his chin on his fist. “You mean predicting how much bullshit your father can get away with before it all comes crashing down?”

My pen stills over my notes. “Are you losing your mind, Kade Merrick? Please tell me now so I can go ask for help and get you fixed in some psychiatric hospital that will be kind enough to tolerate your madness because this is ridiculous. You are deliberately trying to provoke me.”

“Am I? Or am I just asking the questions you've never thought to ask yourself?” He gestures at my well kept notebook. “You have all the answers written down there, don’t you? Formulas, definitions, theorems. But what about the questions you’re too afraid to ask yourself? The ones that keep you up at night?”

“You're truly mad.” I shake my head. He is really trying to get under my skin, to chip away at all I have worked for. This dude doesn't know me, but he thinks he does.

“How about I ask you a question, princess?”

“And that is?”

“So, you know the formula for the regression line, $Y = a + bX$.” He picks up my pen from the table and twirls it between his fingers before he begins to scribble something on a blank page of his own textbook.

Done, he looks up. “Tell me. What does the ‘a’ represent?”

He is testing me. Not just on the subject, but on my ability to maintain my composure.

I force myself to focus. “The y-intercept. The value of Y when X is zero.”

“And ‘b’?” He asks.

“The slope of the line. The change in Y for a one-unit change in X.”

He nods slowly, still twirling the pen. “Good. You know your definitions. But do you know their meaning? Do you understand the implications?” His voice drops to a whisper. “Because sometimes, Brielle, a ‘zero’ isn’t really a zero. And a ‘change’ can be a damaging shift that destroys everything you thought was stable in your life.”