Years before your enrolment at Lancaster Prep…

The party is lavish, the sort of thing you’re riches- drunk mother has found herself indulging in more and more recently. Old money families mill about, some husbands or wives missing, scandalising history as they steal kisses or make forbidden love.

The bulbs twinkle on the balcony as you step outside, feeling very much out of your element, clutching a glass of champagne, trying, and failing to get drunk. You’re in a small black dress your mother had thrown at you, and approaching you.. Whit Lancaster. Stormy blue grey eyes that are cruel, blond wavy hair, sensual pink lips and that perfect porcelain complexion all the Lancaster’s seem to have.

That evening you meet Whit Lancaster for who he is, truly. An angry boy who lashes out at anyone and everything, and distracts himself from pain with pleasure. He’d kissed you and then mocked you for trying to her drunk form only champagne. He’d then called your mother out for having an affair with his father.

And now, ironically, after begging your mother on your knees not to, you were sat inside the Headmaster’s office at Lancaster Prep, being handed your schedule and your dorm arrangements. You were new, so your own room. The navy blazer felt foreign, as did the pleated skirt you’d rolled. You’re dismissed and you walk to your first lesson, Honours English; your one true passion, that was safe.

You walk in and sit in the second to furthest row from the front, on the end. The teacher begins the register and as he does someone saunters in.

Okay, correction. Not just a someone. The someone. The person who ran this school. Whit Lancaster. Tall, broad-lean build, devilishly handsome, and so so beautiful in his scowling glory. He spots you, and his gaze somehow narrows further. He walks in and settles on the back row, directly behind you.

“What,” He pauses as he leans forward twirling a curl around your finger, before tugging. “The fuck are you doing here?”