one
Rumor Has It… A certain member of the elite didn’t come home last night. Has this year’s new elite found love at last, or is he out sowing his wild oats?
Gloria Walton
I’m turning the combination on my locker when yelling echoes down the hall of Willow Heights.
“Damn,” Harper says from beside me. “Looks like your boy got busted.”
My stomach lurches, and I spin around, expecting Colt for careening second, until my brain catches up with my heart. Colt is not my boy. Harper doesn’t even know about yesterday’s locker room episode.
“You’ll stand like a queen before me.”
My mouth goes dry, and my pulse stops, but Harper’s too busy watching Rylan being escorted down the hall by our two resource officers, the headmaster, and his assistant to notice. The resource officers grip his elbows while he wrestles valiantly to free himself.
“Get your hands off me,” he yells. “I didn’t do anything. It was him.” He snarls the last word, glaring bloody murder at some hidden by a locker door.
I know who he’s blaming. I’ve avoided looking at that locker for so long it’s embedded in my mind deeper than if I stared at it day and night. I didn’t like to see her gloating in triumph even before she took me down. She already had Colt, and that was hard enough, especially because he’s always beside her, loyal as only love can make a man. Now… Now it’s worse than last year.
Some knocks the door closed, and Colt comes into view, leaning casually against the locker like nothing’s happening, even as Dixie gapes, gagging with anticipation at the latest gossip fodder for her blog. She’s friends with Rylan now, as apparently they both think they’re edgy and different from the others in the elite group, even though they’re exactly the same minus a few superficial details. That won’t save him from the same fate as the rest of us, though. If she’d throw her own boyfriend under the bus for a juicy tidbit, there’s no hope for my ex.
“I’m going to kill you,” Rylan snarls, lurching in the grip of the officers, like he’s going to go after Colt.
Colt looks less than impressed by his efforts. “You might want to watch what you say in front of the admin,” he says, his voice echoing down the hallway, which is dead silent as every watches the procession, eager for this week’s drama. “Did I hear a death threat?”
“I didn’t do anything,” Rylan seethes. “You can’t prove anything. But you—you—”
“Yes?” Colt asks, cocking a brow and crossing his arms, waiting for Rylan’s response. “What did I do?”
“You know what you did,” Rylan says through clenched teeth. “And you’re going to pay for it.”
“Sounds like you’re threatening me,” Colt drawls. “Though I have no idea what for. But there are an awful lot of witnesses, Ry-Ry. You sure that’s a good idea?”
“What you did—” Rylan starts, then sees me and breaks off.
I smile and give him my cutest little wave. Whatever Colt did, I’m sure he deserved it.
He twists around in the grip of the admin as they drag him down the hall, throwing a glare over his shoulder at Colt again. “You locked me in a room all night. That’s kidnapping! Imprisonment! I’ll have you arrested, you fucking freak!”
“Oh, I’m not too worried about it,” Colt says, pushing off the locker. “After all those threats, I’m sure they’ll need to check your locker for weapons.”
Rylan’s face goes ashen, and he turns to the headmaster. “He’s setting me up! You heard him. He probably put a gun in my locker!”
“Mr. Woods, we are going to need you to open your locker for us,” the Headmaster says, almost out of earshot now.
“I don’t have anything,” Rylan insists. “If there’s anything in there, it’s not mine. He planted it! This is illegal search and seizure!”
He keeps yelling as they haul him toward the office.
“You okay?” Harper asks.
“Me?” I say, turning back to my locker and starting over on the combination. “Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?”
She gives me a look. “I mean, he was your boyfriend.”
“He was,” I agree. “A long time ago. I hope he goes to jail. Then he’ll know what it’s like to have no choices in life.”
“Damn.”
“Besides, I’m with Maverick now,” I point out. “I’m over it.”
“Sounds like it,” Harper mutters, side-eyeing the massive Starbucks cup in my locker filled with some kind of Frappuccino and heaped to the domed lid with whipped cream and chocolate shavings. I glance around, taking it out carefully, like it might explode. It’s still frozen, so some must have just put it there. Lots of girls from cheer and dance have my combination, since we used to keep our stuff in each other’s lockers all the time. For a second, my heart swells at the possibility that of my sisters wants to make amends.
More likely they’re trying to poison me.
I hand it to Harper, thinking I’ll toss it on my way to class, and grab my books. But when I turn back, I see the name scrawled on the side of the cup.
“Queen Gloria the Wicked.”
My stupid heart does something stupid in my chest, but before I can even turn around, strong fingers grip my hip, solid pecs bump against my shoulder blades, and he leans down and murmurs, “And your teeth are perfect, so drink it.”
He gives my hip a quick squeeze, and then he’s walking away, and Dixie’s screeching at him, demanding to know what he said, and my head is spinning so hard I have to steady myself against my locker. I close my eyes, taking a few deep breaths to keep the stampeding animal in my chest from tearing through my sternum, leaving my ribs shattered and twisted like the bars of a cage as it breaks into the world and lays waste to everything standing in my way, everything stopping me from going to him and throwing myself on the floor at his feet and begging like the whore I’m not allowed to call myself anymore.
I can still feel the answering need of his animal, the heat of his body where it made contact with mine flowing down me to my toes, dripping like warm hy over my skin, spreading in the wet heat pulsing between my thighs. The last time his chest pressed against my back, skin to skin, he was inside me. I shiver at the memory.
Maybe, if yesterday hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t think he was tricking me too.
Maybe, if he hadn’t walked away like it was nothing after he brought me back to life; if he hadn’t left me to curl in a ball on the floor of the locker room and sob; if he wasn’t linking the fingers that just touched me with Dixie’s… Maybe then I would tattoo his fingerprints onto my hip where he squeezed, the way he tattooed my fingernail marks onto his arms.
I don’t need tattoos to remind me. His touch is burned into my skin like he’s burned into my memory, a curse I can’t shake, the way a brush of his fingers lights my body on fire and incinerates everything I still fake, turns the fa?ade to ash, leaves me bare and raw as a heart.
The sound of Harper clearing her throat brings me back to reality, and I open my eyes to see my only friend watching me with a brow quirked. “You want to tell me what that was about?”
“No,” I say, taking the drink from her and sucking down a few gulps of cold, sweet, chocolate cookie heaven. I can tell it’s not skim, not decaf, not sugar-free syrup. It’s like drinking a milkshake for breakfast. My mother would have a fit.
I take another drink, avoiding Harper’s narrowed eyes.
“So, you and Colt are fucking, and you don’t want to tell me about it?” she says. “That’s disappointing. With all that big dick energy, I would have thought he was worth at least a mention.”
“Shut up,” I hiss, widening my eyes at her and cutting my gaze to the buzzing hallway.
“Does he lay there and make you do all the work?” she asks, smirking. “Because I could kind of see him as a lazy lay too. Just please don’t tell me he can’t find the clit. It’ll break my heart a little.”
“Stop talking,” I say, grabbing her elbow and dragging her down the hall.
She laughs her ass off all the way to the bathroom.
A couple girls give us dirty looks from their spot at the sink. “Dykes,” mutters of my former teammates from dance.
“If you’re jealous, just say that,” Harper says. “It’s not your fault your boyfriend doesn’t know how to eat pussy, and you wish you could get some who does.”
I used to tell her not to make things worse, but how can things get worse? I let my mask slip, and she saw. My heart stutters in my chest, and I can barely breathe.
She knows.
“Gross,” says the dance girl, giving Harper a dirty look. “And I’m with Duke, so…” She gives us a haughty look.
“And?” Harper asks.
“Obviously he knows what he’s doing,” the girl huffs, clearly pissed Harper’s not impressed with her Dolce girl status. “Ask the skank beside you.”
The answer is on the tip of my tongue, programmed into me after so many years of defending and talking up the D-boys while being discrete and ladylike at the same time, so as never to reflect poorly on my own family. The Dolces value class above even beauty.
But I am not their puppet any longer.
“Can’t recall,” I say with a shrug. “It didn’t make an impression. Then again, so many people have licked my pussy since then, it’s hard to remember man from the next.”
“Ugh, let’s get out of here before we catch something,” says a voice from the stall, and my sister emerges, fixing her skirt. She barely glances at us, as if she doesn’t know me at all.
“Dixie’s right about you,” says the other girl at the mirror, who’s been watching our exchange. “You were never fit to be in the elite. You’re trash, just like her.”
She nods to Harper, who makes an obscene gesture with her tongue and two fingers.
“Oh my god,” Eleanor shrieks, grabbing her friends. “Let’s get out of here before they assault us. Were they looking under the stall at me?”
They leave, and Harper rolls her eyes and shakes her head. “God, how did you ever like those girls?”
“Well, of them is my sister, so it’s not like I had much choice,” I say. “And it’s different when you’re part of it. You want to go along, to belong.”
“Yeah, I get it,” she admits, leaning back against the sink and resting her hands beside her hips. “But anyway, now that we’re al… Spill.”
She wiggles her brows at me and grins, and I can’t stop the smile from creeping onto my face no matter how hard I try to hold it back. I’ve kept this secret for so long, and it makes me giddy with excitement as well as fear now that some finally knows. It’s a relief to tell some, to spill the entire story, and Harper’s the only person I trust enough to tell. So, I do.
Starting with the game of hide-and-seek, and how it led us to realizing that I was the girl he’d been looking for since the night in the pool house, and he was the boy I had made sure to never look for since that same night. And how we said it was a fluke, and then we tested it, and we found out it was a hundred other things, but never a fluke.
And since I’m being hst, and she’s a better friend than I have any right to have, I tell her something I can barely admit to myself. That I couldn’t forget, even when he had, and I couldn’t move on, even when he didn’t know there was anything to move on from. Because I love him.
I’ve loved him for a long time.
Even when I couldn’t show it, couldn’t let myself so much as think it, I loved him. And once I didn’t have to worry about the Dolces torturing or killing him, it was better, but it was also worse, because I was the only person stopping me from doing the unthinkable. He makes me so weak that some days I thought I was going to just blurt it out, that he’d strip away all the gilded lies and expose me, and instead of the Dolces being there to see, it would be him—or Dixie.
When I finish, I drop my head into my hands in defeat. “I don’t know what to do.”
“I think you do.”
“He must know,” I say miserably. “I barely keep it together when he’s around. You saw me. I can’t hide it.”
“You have to tell him.”
“If some bothers to look, they’ll know, and trust me, he’s looked. He could have me if he wanted me, and he damn well knows it. Which means he doesn’t want me.”
“I wasn’t talking about that.”
“You don’t have the right to tell some how you feel when you already know they don’t feel the same,” I point out. “Especially if it might fuck up their perfectly happy relationship. He doesn’t love me, Harper. He loves Dixie.”
“No,” she says, shaking her head. “You have to tell him what you just told me. Not the love part. You have to tell him what happened last year. He deserves the truth.”
“I told him,” I whisper. “Yesterday. But what if he didn’t want to remember? What if he hates me for it?”
“He might,” she admits. “But you did the right thing. He has a right to know what happened to him.”
I close my eyes and hang my head. “I know.”
“I’m not mad about it, but you could have told me sor,” she says. “If there’s ever anything you want to talk about…”
There are a million things I want to talk about, but she’s not a therapist. She doesn’t want to hear about how I lost my brother even before he died, how he changed as much as we did once the Dolces took us in, how the boy I grew up with slipped away until I didn’t even recognize him anymore, but I still miss him so bad I don’t know how I get out of bed some days. Or how al I felt at home even with two sisters there who looked like my best friends at school, or the things her boyfriend did to all of us that turned us into the monsters we are.
So I just lift my head, nod, and smile. “Heard.”
*
When I step into the office, I’m surprised to see Rylan still sitting there, sulking. “What are you doing here?” he demands, glowering at me.
“Oh, you know,” I say, batting my eyes at him in mock innocence. “Just offering to testify on your behalf if they need a witness.”
“A witness to what?” he asks, his eyes narrowing.
“To what kinds of things you’ve been doing since you started here,” I say, lowering my voice and sliding into the chair next to him so the receptionist won’t overhear.
“What the fuck, Lo,” he snaps. “You’re trying to frame me for that dickhead just because he went down on you?”
“How do you know that?” I ask, and then his words in the hallway earlier come back, and the realization dawns. “You were watching?”
“Not by choice,” he snaps. “That fucking scumbag locked me in the storage room. You know there’s a peephole in there.”
“You didn’t have to spy on the girls’ locker room,” I point out. “I mean, it’s not like he was twisting your arm behind your back.”
I let my words sink in, and Rylan scowls at the reminder. I have to hand it to Colt, that’s some karmic level retribution. There’s a certain beauty in the simplicity, even if it twists a knife deeper into my heart to know that yesterday was all for show. I try not to think about that show, the Rylan got from the other side of the wall.
Like Cotton got last year…
Last year, when everything was different, when I was queen and my sisters still talked to me and my brother was still alive…
Mr. Montgomery bursts into the office, providing a welcome distraction before I can spiral. “Rylan,” he thunders. “What is this I hear about them finding illegal substances in your locker? I gave you a credit card. What do you need my for? And this better be good. I got called out of work!”
I hide a smile and stand to go talk to the receptionist and offer to help if they need witnesses. From the sound of it, Mr. Montgomery’s not going to fight the expulsion though. I don’t know the guy well, despite living next door to him for a few years. He’s usually quiet and keeps to himself except to participate in the obligatory neighborhood events—Christmas lighting with the yearly chosen theme, Superbowl watch parties, Fourth of July cookouts, and neighborhood Easter egg hunts and trick-or-treat for the little kids.
Other than that, all I know is that he lost his wife a long time ago, and he doesn’t spy on girls when we swim in his pool, so he’s decent compared to some of the other dads like Mr. Dolce. Not sure how his son ended up such a creep, but then, you never know what goes on behind closed doors. I know better than any that what you see is not always what you get.
Rylan goes to sulk in a chair in the corner, ignoring his stepdad, and Mr. Montgomery comes to the desk to ask when the Headmaster can see him.
“I’m sorry you’re dealing with this,” I say to Mr. Montgomery when the receptionist goes to check if they’re ready to see him. “You know, it’s not all Rylan’s fault. This school is tough—especially the elite. You probably remember a little bit of what that’s like. You’re a founding son too. Not every’s cut out for that, and they kind of pulled him in. I don’t think he was prepared for how brutal it is.”
Mr. Montgomery looks a little surprised I’m talking to him, like he’s not sure what to do with himself. “You’re right,” he says at last.
“I mean, he’s under a lot of stress,” I say. “With how hard the classes are on top of that, and the secret society… I don’t know if he’s in it, of course. But he’s more the sensitive type, a musician, and to be lumped in with all those athletes… I know when we were dating, he always felt inferior. And the breakup’s been hard on him. Is he okay?”
“I—I think so,” he says, glancing at Rylan, who’s slumped in a chair with his arms crossed, glowering at the wall.
“He threatened a guy in the hall,” I say. “He said he was going to kill him. It was Colt Darling. I don’t think he’d do it, of course, but Colt’s family has been through so much. In fact, they had their own problem child. Maybe Sullivan’s dad could give you some insight.”
“Uh, thank you,” he says, shifting uncomfortably.
“I’m just saying, if he’s a danger to himself, there are places he can get the help he needs,” I say. “You don’t have to do it yourself. Cedar Crest has a troubled teen program. I know a couple of the Darlings have been in there, so they must have the best care.”
Mr. Montgomery looks so relieved when the Headmaster calls him back that I almost laugh. When I walk out, there’s a bounce in my step. I just went to talk to the admin, but planting that seed was so much better.
And even if Mr. Montgomery thinks I’m crazy and nothing comes of it, I know there’s less creep to worry about in the halls of Willow Heights. And now that I don’t live next door, I never have to see Rylan Woods again.