Chaos at Westbrook High (The Kingston Brothers #3)

Chapter 19

I hidein the kitchen with my phone in my hands and wait for Kai to say something else. He doesn’t, and now I feel stupid. Not for texting him back, but for being disappointed that it’s over.

What is wrong with me?

“Hailey, you coming?” Wyatt calls, and I startle, hiding my phone in the front pocket of my apron as if I’m doing something wrong.

“Yeah,” I call back, grabbing more ice from the freezer like I was supposed to be doing before I head back to the counter.

He eyes me skeptically, and I slap a smile on my face, making polite small talk with the next few customers while I make their drinks. We’ve been getting a lot more high school and college aged people coming in here over the last few weeks, thanks to Kai, no doubt.

A couple of sophomore girls from my new school come in and ask for strawberry ice cream shakes, and since I make them look cute topped with whipped cream and pink and white sprinkles, Wyatt takes the opportunity to snap a picture of them for my Instagram. He says advertising on social media is good for business. I don’t know a thing about social media, so I let him handle all that. As long as he doesn’t post my name or my face, he can do what he wants.

Wyatt passes their shakes over, and the blonde girl on the left thanks him with a smile, clearly checking him out. He winks at her, his eyes giving her the same treatment.

“She’s a sophomore in high school, Wy,” I inform him when she walks away.

“What? I didn’t touch her.” He wiggles his brows. “You jealous, babe?”

I frown at the side of his face, but I don’t get the chance to ask why he’s calling me that before the atmosphere in here changes suddenly.

Kai’s here.

A few heads turn toward the door, and I’m stunned to find the few customers in line clearing a path for him to get to me. They just move right out of his way. Almost everyone in here knows who he is, and I guess word travels fast about who I am to him too. This is why he’s been on my ass at school everyday and implying that he’s fucking me. This is the way he wanted it to be for as long as he wanted to play. He wanted everyone to look at me and think, Kai’s. Has that changed now that he knows I’m his cousin’s little sister?

Leaning on the counter between us, Kai scans my face, checking for something, then slides his eyes to Wyatt. All five of the Kingstons are looking at Wyatt, glaring at him as he stands beside me. At first he doesn’t move, but then he does, hesitantly taking a full step away from me. Only then does Kai look at me properly. “Does he bother you?” he asks quietly.

“What?”

“I saw that. The way you were looking at him when I walked in. What did he say to you?”

I blink, then shake my head. “Nothing.”

He narrows his eyes. “Liar.”

I think about him saying that to me in my dream this morning. And last night, after I told him I didn’t care enough to hate him. My body heats.

“Tell me,” he demands.

Working my jaw, I step closer and lean on the counter to level with him. “Fine,” I whisper so only he can hear me. “He called me babe, but?—”

When he moves, I grab his throat and pull his face back to mine, enjoying the way his blue eyes widen in shock before they flare with heat.

“I have that security guard now,” I remind him, tilting my head at the SUV outside. “If you make a scene, I’ll have you thrown out of here on your ass.”

He laughs a little at that, his gaze never leaving mine. “Jamie’s my godfather.”

Of course he is.

When I realize I’m the one making a scene, I remove my hand from his neck and put some distance between us. He grins and straightens up to his full height, tipping his head to beckon me to him. “You gonna come out here all by yourself or do you wanna fight me in front of all these people?”

Sneering at him, I side-eye the other four Kingstons at his sides, Damon and Callie on his right, and Wren and Levi on his left.

I knew this was coming, knew they’d want to have a conversation with me even before Kai hinted it was happening last night, but I can’t help feeling anxious now that they’re all here in front of me. They’re all staring at me intently, picking me apart with their eyes, almost as if they might see Derek or my biological mother in me if they look hard enough.

“I’ll come by myself,” I finally answer. “You want coffees?”

“You can make mine. Get him to make the rest of them.” Kai flicks a hand at Wyatt.

“I can just make them all.”

“I don”t wanna wait that long,” Kai says, handing me a fifty dollar bill.

This fucking guy.

Sighing, I run their usual order through, place Kai’s change down on the counter, and get to making his drink, glaring at him over my shoulder when he leaves the money where it is.

“Take it.”

“Make me.” He grins with his tongue between his perfect teeth.

“What do you want, Hailey?” Wyatt asks as I hand Kai his iced latte.

When he takes it, he wraps his hand around mine, holding on to get my attention. Our gazes collide, and I see the unspoken question there. He wants to know if I know the truth about what Derek did to Callie. Chewing the inside of my cheek, I look away before he can see the emotions brewing within me. Anger. Regret. Disgust. It’s all swirling around inside, simmering beneath the surface.

When I glance back, I find Wyatt watching us with a look on his face I can’t read. “Hailey?”

“Yeah?”

He huffs. “Do you want a coffee?”

“I’m fine, thanks. Just make theirs.”

He gets to it, and I go to Kai, who peels his glare from Wyatt and follows me to the empty couch in the corner by the bookshelf. A few of my customers watch curiously as we pass them, the two sophomore girls from school included. Pulling my hat down over my eyes, I sit down next to Kai, his arm resting behind my head.

“How long have you known our dad?” Damon asks impatiently as he and the others sit down on the couch opposite us.

My eyes meet his dark blue ones. “What did your dad say?”

“I’m asking you.”

I raise a brow at that, my confidence growing as a little smirk plays on my lips. Elijah hasn’t told them anything. He’s giving me the power to tell them as much or as little as I want to.

“How long?” Damon asks again.

I lean back in my seat and cross one leg over the other. This is more fun than I thought it’d be. I consider stringing him along a little longer just to see how angry I can make him, but then I decide against it, wanting to keep this as short and painless as possible. “I met him six years ago. The same day I met Derek.”

“What do you mean you met Derek?”

“I mean I met him. Six years ago,” I say slowly, quietly, not wanting anyone else to hear what I’m about to tell them. “My aunt had been meeting up with your dad for years to see Der, but I didn’t know he existed until Elijah brought him to meet me. I was eleven. Derek was fourteen.”

Damon shares a look with Kai, similar to the one they shared last night, and I glance between them suspiciously, not forgetting the way Kai played me so Damon could snoop through my phone. I don’t think they’re planning to do anything like that to me now, but I can’t be too careful.

“Where?” Damon asks me.

“Where what?”

“Where did our dad bring him? To your apartment?”

“No. There was a diner my aunt and I used to go to off the highway just outside of Bridgeport.”

He frowns at that. “Why there?”

“Why not there?”

He glares. “You gonna be difficult this entire time?”

“If I wanna be, yeah.”

“Are you stupid?”

“Are you?”

Callie snorts, and Damon locks his jaw, looking back at her for a second before he sets his eyes on me again. “You don’t like me.”

“Not so stupid, then.”

“You don’t like any of us,” he goes on, his gaze flicking to Kai and back. “But you like our dad?”

“Your dad’s just as bad as the rest of you.”

“Yet you still let him pay for you to go to Westbrook,” he says. “Right?”

Rolling my eyes, I nod, already knowing where this is going.

“You didn’t want him to though,” he guesses.

“No. He…” I sigh. “I got kicked out of Bridgeport?—”

“For what?” Callie asks.

“Fighting,” I answer after a beat, ignoring the impressed look she hits me with.

“Nice.”

“And he forced me to go to Westbrook,” I finish.

“He forced you?” Damon cocks his head at me. “How? What does he have on you?”

Just as I’m about to tell him that’s not his business, Wyatt appears with a tray of coffees, a bottle of water for Damon, and a chocolate croissant for Callie. An awkward silence falls over us while he sets the coffees down on the table.

“Thanks,” I give him a small smile, and he squeezes my shoulder a little harder than necessary, shaking me a little before walking away.

My brows pinch.

What is going on with him?

“Motherfucke—”

“Kai,” Damon says, shaking his head. “Don’t.”

“Why the fuck not?”

They stare each other out for a few seconds, and then Damon’s mouth does something that resembles a smile. “Go.”

When Kai moves, ready to stand, I grab his thigh to stop him. He looks down at my hand, my fingers curling into the denim of his jeans, and slowly eases back into his seat.

When Damon’s strange little smile turns into a knowing smirk, Kai mutters, “Prick.”

Damon laughs. Fucking laughs.

That’s when I note the expression on Callie’s face. She looks like she’s trying to hold in her own laughter as she takes a big bite of her croissant.

I feel like a piece of shit for all the things I’ve said and thought about her over the last few months. All this time, I thought she cheated on Damon with my brother. I thought she was just another girl using a Kingston for the life he could give her. Like Freya Thorne, Wren’s ex-girlfriend, who really did fuck Derek behind Wren’s back. And Katherine Kingston, Callie’s witch of a mother and Elijah’s ex-wife, the woman who’d been sleeping with Derek since he was a minor, right up until the day she went to prison for three murders, the boys’ mom being one of them.

When Callie’s amusement dies and she watches me intently, I tuck my feet up under my thighs and grab one of the decorative pillows beside me. Pulling it onto my lap, I play with the daisy pattern on it to give my hands something to do. Just as I’m trying to think of something to say to Callie, she says, “It’s this shop.”

“What?” I ask, lifting my eyes to hers.

“That’s what Elijah has on you.” She eyes the pillow I’m holding before moving her eyes over the walls and shelves. “Do you own this place?”

“No,” I reply. “Elijah does.”

“The fuck?” Kai mutters beside me.

“But it’s still yours,” Levi says. He’s leaning back on the couch with his husband tucked into his side, running his hand through Wren’s hair. “Or it will be, so long as you stay at Westbrook like Elijah wants you to?”

I nod reluctantly, finding it a little strange to watch another version of Kai laying back against Levi’s chest. I’ve never met a pair of identical twins before. It’s freaky how similar they are and damn near impossible to tell them apart. I think I’m starting to get it though. Kai always has that little spark in his eyes when he looks at me, like he’s planning something wild and filthy, whereas Wren doesn’t. He’s the quiet one, the one who shows the least amount of emotion, if any. That should probably scare me. The quiet ones are usually the most dangerous, but that’s not the case with Wren. At least I don’t think it is. He doesn’t look very dangerous over there. He looks like a damn cat, so calm and blissed-out as if Levi’s touch is the only thing he needs to settle him.

My heart softens despite myself, and I smile a little. Good for him. I mean, I still don’t like him, and fuck him for giving Kai my number, but it’s kind of nice to see him so content after how broken he looked the night I found him at the cemetery not so long ago.

“Who’s Valerie?” Levi asks, tilting his head toward the sign on the window.

I stiffen, and Kai curses under his breath. “Your aunt,” he guesses. “Fuck, Hailey.” When he wraps an arm around my waist and tries to pull me into him, I reach out and grab his jaw, holding him away from me. Not just because we’re in public, but because if he hugs me right now, I’ll cry again.

Damon’s jaw is tight as his gaze bounces between me and my hand on his brother”s face. “How did she die?” Damon asks.

I swallow as my eyes start to sting. “Car accident,” I lie.

“Sounds familiar,” Damon mutters. “What really happened to your mother?”

My eyes close briefly as a traitorous tear slips free.

“Answer me?—”

“Damon,” Kai growls. “Knock it off.”

“Was she killed?”

Removing his jaw from my grip, Kai leans forward and pins his brother with a glare that rival’s Damon’s. “I swear to God, brother,” he warns, his hand sliding into mine between our thighs. “Watch your fucking tone with her.”

Silence follows, and I try to wiggle my hand out of his, but he doesn’t let me go. He holds me tighter, flexing his fingers between mine as he wedges our joined hands between my legs, resting against my pussy. My face heats as I tighten my grip on the pillow. When he runs his thumb over the spot where my tattoo is, I peek up at him.

“Relax,” he whispers, touching his forehead to the brim of my ball cap. “No one can see.”

His siblings most definitely can, but still, I don’t try to move his hand. It feels good there, though I’ll never admit that. The smirk on his face tells me he knows it anyway.

Damon’s still leaning forward with his forearms on his knees, waiting for answers. “Was she killed?” he asks again, softer this time.

“What do you think?”

“I think she was, and I think you know who did it. I know you know.”

“How?”

“Because it’s written all over your face,” he informs me. “You’re afraid of him.”

Him.

I swallow past the lump in my throat, unable to help the way my eyes dart to the windows and back. James went home to get some sleep after he dropped me off, but he introduced me to another one of the guards before he left and assured me he’d be out there watching the place until James returns later today. Still, I can’t help the paranoia creeping up my spine. If those guys managed to slip past a trained bodyguard once, they can do it again. It’s just a matter of time. And I can’t rely on a guard to save me. I need to be ready to run. Fight if I need to. Anything to ensure he never gets his hands on me.

“You know it wasn’t us who attacked Derek in the hospital that day,” Damon goes on, and I search his face, pissed at my lying bastard of a brother when I realize he’s probably telling the truth.

Derek never told me outright that it was them, but he never said it wasn’t either. He led me to assume, maybe because he knows who really did it and he’s trying to hide it from me.

Because if they didn’t do it…

“Who was it, Hailey?”

“I’m done with this.” I stand, freezing when Damon’s authoritative voice hits my ears.

“You’re not done until we say you’re done.”

Slowly turning to look at him, I lift a brow, leaning over to level with him while I grab the empty mugs off the table. “Boy, you’re out of your damn mind if you think you can sit there and try to tell me what to do,” I say quietly. “The only reason we had this conversation is because I allowed it. And when I decide I’m done, I’m done. Whether you like it or not.”

Whatever reaction I was expecting from him, it wasn’t this one. The Kingstons are all usually so cold and emotionless around me, except Kai and Callie sometimes, but right now, they’re all hiding big ass grins behind their hands. Even Damon’s rolling his lips to hide one, side-eyeing Kai before he looks up at me again.

“One more question,” he says.

“Make it quick.”

“Why don’t you live with us?”

I scrunch my nose. “What?”

“Our dad is your legal guardian, right?”

“So?”

“So why is he letting you live with Derek in an apartment building all the way across town?”

Still holding the cups, I take a breath, kicking Kai in the shin when I feel him running his fingers up the inside of my thigh.

“Your dad tried to force me to move in with you after my aunt died,” I explain.

“What did you tell him?” Kai asks, spreading his fingers and wrapping his hand around my leg, gently pulling me closer.

I smile at that. “I told him I’d burn his shit to the ground.” Balancing the cups with one hand, I reach back and grab a fistful of Kai’s hair, pushing his face away from my hip. “Your dad doesn’t tell me what to do either.”

“Not unless you allow it,” Damon adds with a little smirk on his face. “Right?”

“Get out.”

With that, I walk away from them and take their cups to the kitchen, already knowing what’s coming before two hands grab my waist from behind.

“Hey!” Wyatt barks at Kai. “You can’t?—”

“Fucking watch me,” Kai says, not looking back at him as he rests his chin on my shoulder.

Wyatt storms away as Kai walks me forward, allowing me to place the cups on the counter next to the sink. “You can’t be back here,” I say.

“It’s okay. I’m with the boss,” he teases, guiding me into the corner next to the freezer.

When he turns me to face him and presses me into the wall with his hips, I flatten my hands on his chest, unsure whether it’s to push him away or pull him in closer. He doesn’t give me the chance to decide though. The assuming bastard is already on me, locking his arms around me to slide his hands into the ass pockets of my work shorts.

“Kai.”

“Tell me who wants to hurt you,” he says quietly. “I promise you can trust me.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Tell me or trust me?”

“Both.”

Sighing, he looks deep into my eyes. “Why not?”

“Why are you here?” I ask, making no move to try to escape. “What do you want from me, Kai? You got what you wanted, right? You know who I am now and why I act the way I do around you. The game’s over, so why are you still playing?”

“I don’t want it to be over. I still want you,” he breathes into my mouth, sounding just as surprised by that as I am. “Fuck, I can’t stop wanting you. It’s driving me crazy.”

“Try harder then.”

He squeezes my ass, and I curl my fingers around the back of his neck, my heart pumping fast and hard against his. He feels so big and warm, so much harder and stronger than I am. It’s messing with my ability to think straight.

His mouth teases mine, the tip of his tongue sliding over my lower lip, and fuck me, I want him, too.

“Tell me not to, Hailey.”

“Not to…?”

“Kiss you.”

“You’re already kissing me.”

“Am I?” he laughs, gently dragging my lip through his teeth before he hovers his mouth over mine, just out of reach. “Baby girl, when I kiss you, you’ll know about it.”

I dig my nails into the back of his head.

“Hailey, a bunch of people just walked in,” Wyatt says from the kitchen doorway, making me jump and back away from Kai. There’s a wall at my back and nowhere for me to go though, so I stay put with his front pressed against mine.

“Fucking cockblock,” Kai mutters, not moving an inch. “Can I hit him?”

“No.”

“There’s a party at Rachel’s house tonight. Let me take you.”

Even though it’s a demand, not a question, I still say, “No.”

“Meet me there.”

“No.”

He huffs against my mouth. “Please.”

That makes me smile a little. I roll my lips to hide it. “No.”

He nods, expecting that. “I’ll text you the address just in case you change your mind.” His mouth brushes mine as he speaks, but he still doesn’t kiss me properly, the tease. “Later, beautiful.”

“Where’s my daisy?”

Grinning, he reaches into his pocket and hands it to me.

I take it. “Thank you. Now get out,” I say again.

This time, he listens. He makes a point to adjust himself over his jeans while he passes Wyatt, and I curse him under my breath for being so shameless.

Turning to avoid the look Wyatt’s giving me, I go to the register and get back to work. I tell myself to forget the fuck boy and focus on my customers, but I can’t help the way my eyes seek him out when no one’s looking. Walking toward the door where his family waits for him outside, a few of the girls in here track his every move, moving their greedy eyes over his form the same way I am. I don’t think he notices their attention on him because he’s looking at me again, and that both confuses and excites me all at once.

Shit. I’m in trouble.

“Out,” I mouth, and he grins again before the door closes behind him.