Chapter Seventeen
Kalen
“Don’t forget we have an initiation thing tonight,” Slate reminds me as he strums absentmindedly on his guitar.
We’ve been hanging out in my room since dinner ended and Amelie left, and Slate has been working on some damn duet song he has to perform with Amelie.
I’m tone deaf but it makes me want to switch electives to be with her.
“Shit! I’d forgotten!” I exclaim, groaning.
“We guessed,” Onyx replies dryly. “Given that Slate and I spent all morning racing around to set everything up, and where were you?”
“Busy,” I reply shortly. “You guys are going to have to run this one without me.”
“What? Why?” Slate asks.
“I have plans with Amelie.”
“Sure.” Onyx snorts. “Of course you do.”
Okay so maybe I don’t have plans with her, but I do have plans for her. I plan to show up at her door and refuse to leave until she hears me out.
“Guys, I plan to win Amelie back and I don’t care what you have to say about it.”
“Kalen—”
“No! Don’t ‘Kalen’ me! It’s driving me crazy, the way she keeps giving me the cold shoulder. She forgave Sawyer, why not me?”
“Technically, Sawyer didn’t do anything wrong, so there was nothing to forgive,” Onyx points out.
“Yeah, if anyone did any forgiving, it was the other way around,” Slate agrees.
“I still don’t get how he doesn’t hate her for what she did.” Onyx shrugs. He has a hard time understanding things like that.
“Do you hate her?” I ask pointedly.
“No, I don’t give a fuck if people know about my past. I think Dad’s rule is bullshit. But she didn’t lose me my dream job,” he tells me.
“Sawyer doesn’t care because he loves her too,” I say softly.
“You can’t possibly love her!” Onyx scoffs. “The pair of you barely knew her for a term. Right, Slate?”
Slate doesn’t rush to his brother’s defence. Interesting. Did he catch feelings too? I think Onyx has it bad; he protests far too much.
“Look,” I begin heavily, “Do you guys want to be friends or whatever with Amelie, or do you like the way things are right now?”
“You know Dad wants us to get her back on side.”
“Oh, I don’t give a fuck about Dad or The Order right now. I’m asking you. Do you want to put shit right with Amelie, for you?”
Onyx doesn’t answer, he simply purses his lips and folds his arms. I sigh. Stubborn bastard. “Slate? Do you?”
“Yeah.” He coughs nervously.
“Right, so understand this. I am missing tonight’s – and any other – Order shit until things are sorted with Amelie. Besides, it’ll be easier if I keep her out of the way. Last time in the woods was a close call and I had to owe Branson a favour for warning her to run.”
“She should be playing, she’s a pledge,” Onyx points out. “Grandfather will come and force our hand in making her take part, it's the rules.”
“I don’t give a fuck. Not tonight. It’s too soon. And it’s not fair to chuck her in at the deep end without her knowing what’s going on.” I glare at my brothers, daring them to defy me, but thankfully they both keep quiet.
I check the time and see that it’s later than I expected.
“Right, I should get going,” I tell them, getting to my feet and heading for the door. “Don’t fuck with my stuff.”
With that final warning, I leave my room and the house, jump in my car and drive into town. I grab some supplies because I don’t want to turn up empty handed at Amelie’s door, and then head back to campus.
Arms laden down with bags, I carefully knock on her door.
“What do you want, Kalen?” She gives me an exhausted, exasperated kind of look and I wonder if I’ve managed to successfully grind her down yet. I’ll admit, I’ve been pretty annoying.
“I thought we might hang out.” I give her my most charming, boyish grin but she scowls at me.
“No.”
“No? But...I brought slags!”
Her arms land heavily on her hips and she gives me a ferocious stare which has me scratching my head in confusion. I really thought that would work.
“You brought slags...here...to my room?”
“Yeah!” I beam at her.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?!”
“Should I have brought subs instead?” I frown, really confused now.
“I don’t give a damn what you do in private, Kalen, but you’re not fucking a sub in my room!”
“Why would I fuck a sub?” My nose crinkles in distaste.
“That’s generally what you do with them, where I come from.” She glowers. I’m starting to wonder if this is a cultural thing. Don’t even get me started on what she thinks I’ll do with a slag.
“Look, I think there’s a misunderstanding...I brought booze too!”
“Oh, well come on in then,” she says dryly. “We can make it an orgy.”
I ignore her blatant sarcasm and push my way into her room anyway. Crossing to the bed, I leap onto it and settle down cross legged in the centre, dropping my bags beside me. I quickly start to unpack everything – including a bottle of her favourite bourbon – before she can kick me out.
“What’s this?” she asks, crossing to the bed.
“A picnic. A pity party.” I shrug. “A pity party picnic? Honestly, it can be whatever you want. I just thought after ‘dinner’, aka Laura’s rabbit food diet, you might be hungry.”
“Okay,” she says, snatching the bourbon and drinking from the bottle. “What did you bring?”
“I told you,” I unwrap the packages and hold out my offering. “Slags.”
She looks down at the sausage sandwich in my hand and bursts out laughing, spraying me with her drink.
“Jeez, did that just come out of your nose?” I grumble. She ignores me though, wiping away the tears of laughter that are streaming down her face. “What’s so funny?”
“You are. Slags. Kalen, these are snags,” she heavily pronounces the word, plucking the sausage from my hand and tucking straight in.
“You really need to brush up on your slang if you want to avoid a faux pas.” My eyes light up as her anger leaves her and I realise that while I totally fucked that one up, I’m in her room and she’s no longer mad, so it can’t all be bad, can it?
“Maybe you could give me a refresher lesson,” I say slyly. She doesn’t answer me though, she’s too busy demolishing the sausage, sauce dripping down her chin, and making all kinds of distracting sounds as she does.
“Will you stop staring at me, you perv?” she snaps.
“Can’t,” I groan, subtly readjusting my jeans. “Will you stop making sex noises over a sausage?”
“Can’t.” She grins back. “It’s the best thing I’ve had in my mouth since coming to this godforsaken country.”
“Ouch. Burn,” I quip, hand on my chest and shoot her a wounded look.
She snickers at me and carries on eating, occasionally swigging from her bottle of bourbon. At least she hasn’t kicked me out. I join her with the drinking, but my poison tonight is looking for a good time tequila.
“Put some music on.”
“Yes, boss.” I know when Amelie drinks she likes to listen to old-school R our father makes us get tested before each school year starts, claiming he doesn’t want an STI epidemic starting in his school and the source being one of his sons.
I think he regrets it every year because we also make him get tested and I’m relentless at making him panic for no reason.
One time, I put itching powder in his underwear and took him a pamphlet on genital warts. I told him I was worried I might have them. His face dropped as he read the symptoms. Good times.
Speaking of good times, Amelie huffs impatiently below me, and I snap back into the moment.
This moment means so much to me, but it’s clear Amelie isn’t ready to accept what it means. She just wants fun times Kalen, so that’s what I’ll give her.