It Must Be Fate (RCA: Royal Crown Academy #5)

Chapter One

Bellamy

“Alright girls,” Thayer exclaims, getting up and immediately stumbling. “Oops.”

She tries righting herself and is unsuccessful before ultimately deciding that staying seated might be the safest option for everyone involved. Dropping back onto the floor, she raises her glass to get our attention.

“I think we’re at the point in the night where we’re sufficiently drunk that I can suggest we play Truth or Dare and you’ll actually say yes. Who’s with me?”

I hear an excited squeal leave my mouth and join the sound of Sixtine and Nera’s. They immediately jump to their feet and dance around the room to the beat of the loud party music blasting on the speakers.

There are four of us in the room but the volume of noise we’re unleashing on the floors can closest be compared to a stampeding herd of rhinos running desperately from a lion.

Our poor downstairs neighbors.

Ah, well , I think to myself, the flash of guilt extremely brief, it’s our last night together.

Even though we graduated from RCA in June, we ended up extending our lease at The Pen through the end of summer so we could spend more time together. Sixtine’s parents had helped us keep our apartment far beyond the usual deadline, until the school had no choice but to kick us out because new students were moving in.

Until the very last moment.

And that moment is tomorrow.

After tonight, we’ll likely never live together again.

We’re sitting cross-legged around our coffee table, our couch wrapped and set on its side against the wall, ready to be picked up by the movers. Boxes containing all our possessions are strewn across the space.

When I look around me, it’s hard not to get choked up by the memories of the best year of my life, and the fact that after tomorrow, everything will change.

We’re good with change, as individuals and as a group.

I know that.

Since we came into each other’s lives, all we’ve had is change. Thayer and I moved to Switzerland. We met Sixtine and Nera and became instant best friends.

I went from hating Rogue to dating him.

Thayer went from dating Carter to falling in love with Rhys.

Phoenix didn’t speak to Sixtine for two years then dated her and married her within the next one.

And Nera… Well, she said ‘fuck it’ to teenagers and started dating her professor. Then she won a gold medal at the Olympics and became a global Nike ambassador overnight, for God’s sake.

We’re great with change.

And it’s all good change, because we each found the love of our lives.

Rogue and I are moving back to the U.S. so he can step into his role as CEO of Crowned King Industries.

Thayer is moving to London where Rhys just signed a contract with Arsenal, his dream team. Sixtine and Phoenix bought their second home, this one in Kensington, where they’ll live while they both go to college to study pre-law.

Tristan and Nera are going traveling for a while with no end date or destination in mind, just seeing where the journey takes them.

After tonight we’re all moving on to even more exciting chapters in our lives, but there’s something about no longer living with my friends that makes me emotional. We’re never going to have this moment in time again together and I really cherished it.

It changed me, it shaped me, it meant the world to me.

Neither Thayer nor I ever imagined how much our lives would be capsized when we moved here. It was the best decision we ever made and that’s in large part because of the friendships we found here.

And this apartment bore witness to almost all of it.

Eating breakfast at the kitchen island, bleary-eyed and gossiping about the night before. Watching reality tv on the couch. Going endlessly back and forth between each other’s closets to find the perfect outfits for every occasion, whether it was going to class or going out. Hugging each other in our rooms when our families disappointed us. Crying on each other’s shoulders when the boys broke our hearts.

These walls were constant during the highs and lows of the past year. They housed us, our emotions, and our memories.

So, we decided to give The Pen what it was owed – a proper farewell, one worthy of all the time we spent here together.

Last week with the date quickly approaching on our calendars, we’d opted to throw a girls-only, ‘final sleepover’ themed night.

Booze in ample quantity.

Snacks in ampler quantity.

And no boys.

This wasn’t about them. It was about us .

They’d been banished back to their mansion with a mandate that they weren’t allowed to text or call unless texted or called first.

They’d taken the news about as well as could be expected.

Poorly.

“You know you have to sleep in my bed every night,” Rogue grumbled, wrapping an arm around my waist and pulling me close. “Contractually.”

I grinned up at him. “Show me the paperwork.”

“Let me marry you and I’ll have the officiant put it in the vows. I can have someone here within the hour to make it official.”

I patted his chest. “After I graduate college.”

“One thousand three hundred and ninety eight,” he answered.

“What?”

“That’s how many days until your college graduation,” Rogue said. “I counted.”

I curled my hand around his nape and pushed up onto my toes. His face came down to meet mine halfway as I reached to kiss him. He mumbled a heated ‘fine’ against my lips when I pulled back minutes later.

Behind me, Phoenix groaned dramatically. “You’d do this to me during our honeymoon?”

I could practically hear Six’s eyes roll back into her head. “ Fiji was our honeymoon, babe.”

“The honeymoon phase is over that quickly for you, huh?” he pouted, crossing his arms. He was going to make a great lawyer one day.

She disarmed him with a soft look and equally tender smile. “No one’s loved anyone in this room longer than I’ve loved you, Nix,” she reminded him.

“That’s not true.” He wrapped his arm around her neck and pulled her into the crook of his shoulder as he fingered a strand of her red hair. “I saw you first, remember?”

“Come on, Rhys,” Thayer implored. “Distance makes the heart grow fonder and all that. And honestly, I’m being generous by calling it ‘distance’, it’s just one night.”

He crossed his arms, his eyes raking slowly down and back up her body. “I don’t need to miss you to want you, love. Never have, never will.”

I watched the man physically melt when she gave him a brilliant smile in answer to his sweet words.

Tristan, meanwhile, outright refused.

“Out of the fucking question,” he said, shaking his head. “I spent four months sleeping without you, Nera. I just got back into your bed, I’m not giving you an opportunity to find a way back out of it.”

“Baby,” she purred, hugging him around the waist. “I’ll let you…”

I didn’t hear the rest of her sentence because she pressed the words right up against his ear, but the way his shoulders relaxed in response told me he would also give in. She was just going to need to put in some extra convincing, but I knew she was more than willing to do it.

One thing about The Pen? The walls are thin.

Very thin.

“Earth to B?” Thayer calls out, waving a hand in front of my face and snapping me out of the memory. “You looked like you were in a trance just there. What were you thinking about?”

I laugh, smacking her hand aside.

“Just the boys and how dramatically they took the news that we wanted to spend one night without them.”

“For real, so dramatic. Except maybe for Tristan,” she quips back. “You really made that man suffer, Nera,” she adds, turning towards the woman in question.

“Hey!”

“Not a criticism,” Thayer adds, putting her hands up. “I’ve seen the man shirtless, you’re literally God’s strongest soldier. How you managed to resist the fanny flutters for that long is beyond me. You should teach a class or something.”

With no throw pillow nearby to toss at Thayer, Nera picks up a loose roll of toilet paper lying in a pile of random items we still need to put in a ‘miscellaneous’ box and lobs it at her.

Her target ducks just in time and the roll bounces off the wall before hitting the ground.

“Missed!”

“Have you been watching Love Island without us again?” Six asks. “‘Fanny flutters’ sounds suspiciously un-American.”

“Guilty,” Thayer answers, putting her hands up for the second time in less than a minute.

“ Anyway ,” Nera says before turning towards me. “Are you up for Truth or Dare , B?”

“Absolutely.”

***