So my blood was dirty to him. The pain in my hand throbbed up into my skull, making the world tilt. I stared at him, blank-faced, for what felt like forever before something that might have been guilt flickered across his expression.
He lowered his gaze. "I'll let it slide this time. I'll cover for you. But don't touch her things again."
Then he pulled out a sanitizing wipe and began cleaning the earring. Carefully. Methodically.
My palm was still bleeding. I could feel it trickling down to my thigh now, warm and steady, but I sat there like a fool. I couldn't form words. I couldn't make my hands move to stop it.
I just sat there. Perfectly still.
When he finished wiping it down, he wrapped the earring in a clean tissue, placed it gently in the glove compartment, and only then turned to look at me.
"What are you sitting there for? I told you to move to the back seat. Did you not hear me?"
Something in my brain finally reconnected.
"Don't bother. I'll get a cab."
"Fine," Adam said. "I have a company gala tonight anyway. I need to take her to pick out a gown. Get yourself home."
He let me out of the car and hit the gas, tearing off into the rain without a backward glance.
It was pouring. An absolute downpour.
He didn't even toss me an umbrella.
I made it to the bus stop soaked through to the bone. Every person waiting there looked at me like I was out of my mind.
And maybe I was. Because even now, even after all of that, my stupid brain kept replaying every kind thing Adam Sanchez had ever done for me.
The truth about my mother came out the year I turned eighteen. She was the other woman.
She'd driven the man's wife to suicide, along with the unborn child the wife was carrying. My mother thought that would clear her path. She thought she'd finally take the wife's place. But after his family was gone, the man woke up. He cut my mother off completely.
She tried to use me as leverage. He didn't flinch.
In the end, my mother had no choice but to raise me alone.
The reason it all resurfaced eighteen years later was because the man posted a public confession online.
People condemned him, and in the process, they dug up my mother's identity too.
Once my mother was exposed, it didn't take long for them to find me.
Even after the cyberbullying drove my mother to jump from a building, the women who'd been wronged by mistresses like her still didn't let me go.
They were everywhere. Inside school and out.
The classmates were milder about it. They'd whisper and point when I walked by, saying women like my mother deserved to die.
The women outside the school gates were far worse. Every day a crowd of them waited for me with rotten eggs and spoiled vegetables.
"A mistress's daughter will grow up to be a mistress herself," they'd say.
"Look at that face. She's even more shameless than her mother."
I knew my mother was guilty. I knew I wasn't innocent either. So I never fought back. I let them take it out on me.
That went on for the better part of a year. And then Adam Sanchez stepped in and saved me.
"Who says a mistress's daughter is destined to become one herself?"
He grabbed one of the women by the arm and asked, "What does your daughter do for a living?"
The woman puffed up with pride. "My daughter's an accountant at a big firm."
Adam turned to her. "And what about you, ma'am?"
The woman stammered, unable to answer. Another woman answered for her. "Her? She cooks meals at a construction site."
Adam smiled. "See? Your daughter turned out nothing like you."
After that, fewer and fewer of them came looking for trouble.
My life slowly found its footing again. And then Adam began pursuing me in earnest.
He held an umbrella over me in the rain. He shielded me from the sun when it was bright.
Every night after study hall, he walked me back to my dorm without being asked.
In the cafeteria, whenever he caught classmates dumping leftover soup and scraps onto my seat out of spite,
he'd step in. "Which one of you got to choose your parents before you were born?"
