Wild Crown (ROYAL OAKS PREP #4)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

DREW

I saw her first.

That fact matters to me.

Maybe it shouldn’t.

Definitely caveman logic—maybe the offensive coordinator is right and I do, in fact, approach life like a man trying to tackle fate with his bare hands.

Doesn’t matter.

I saw her first.

The preseason athlete mixer is the usual kind of nonsense—expensive on accident, casual on purpose, and packed with beautiful people pretending this is all normal.

Somebody rented out a stretch of beach just south of campus and scattered bonfires, string lights, coolers, and enough branded towels and sponsored surfboards to make the whole thing feel like a marketing team discovered salt air.

Athletes everywhere.

Basketball boys with model faces and too much confidence.

Soccer girls with long legs and killer calves.

Volleyball players who look like they could ruin your life and then block you at the net.

Swimmers, rowers, tennis kids, a few baseball guys already acting like minor league legends.

And me.

Drew Travers.

Wide receiver.

Junior.

Built like a problem.

I’m in one of my hoodies with the sleeves hacked off because God made my biceps too jacked for standard fabric and I refuse to apologize for that.

The hoodie used to be black. Now it’s more like charcoal with ambition and frayed edges.

I took kitchen scissors to it sometime last year and never looked back.

“What?” I told Jace the first time he laughed. “My arms are an elite campus resource. Why hide them?”

I grab a beer from the ice bin, hook the neck between two fingers, and scan the beach like a man with excellent priorities.

That’s when I see her.

Tall enough to matter.

Tan enough to look like summer itself picked a favorite.

Deep brown hair with caramel in it, long and glossy even in firelight.

The kind of hair men want to ruin with their hands and women probably ask about in bathrooms. Lean, athletic body with curves in all the places a man like me stops pretending he believes in God’s fairness.

Tiny little gold hoops in her ears. White sundress.

Cowboy boots, because apparently the state of Texas itself showed up and put on lip gloss.

Beauty queen hot.

But not sweet.

I can tell from here.

She’s standing near one of the driftwood tables with two other girls, head tilted, one hand wrapped around a plastic cup, and there’s something in the set of her mouth that says if you say the wrong thing, she’ll cut you with it and sleep beautifully after.

I grin into my beer.

Well.

There goes my evening.

Kane wanders up beside me with a burger and the kind of expression people wear when they’ve already decided not to behave.

“You smiling like that means someone’s in danger.”

I nod toward the table.

“White dress. Boots.”

He follows my line of sight.

Then he lets out a low whistle.

“Yeah, okay.”

“Mine.”

He snorts.

“You haven’t even spoken to her.”

“Didn’t say I was subtle.”

He takes a bite of his burger and talks around it like an animal.

“I think she’s one of the freshman soccer girls. From Texas, maybe.”

I look back at her.

That tracks.

She’s got that polished Southern thing going on—the pageant face, the perfect posture, the lethal femininity that makes boys think she’ll be easy and men know better.

“Texas,” I say.

Kane smirks.

“You naming her before you even know her?”

“Efficient.”

“Delusional.”

“Jealous.”

He flips me off and heads toward the fire pit where half the basketball team is already turning a corn hole game into a moral emergency.

I barely see him go.

Because Texas just turned her head.

Not toward me.

Toward the shoreline.

I follow her gaze.

And there he is.

Tristan Vale.

Of course.

He’s standing closer to the water with a few of the basketball guys, one hand in the pocket of his board shorts, the other holding a bottle of something imported and overpriced.

Dark hair falling over his forehead the way it always does, like even gravity wants to touch him.

Tall, lean, tan, all that polished East Coast prince bullshit the cameras love.

Pretty bastard.

And she’s looking at him like she already knows it.

That annoys me immediately.

Not because I’m territorial.

Because she hasn’t even looked at my way.

I take one last pull of the beer, set it down on the nearest table, and head over.

No strategy.

No game plan.

I’m not that kind of guy.

I’m a route runner, not a poet.

You see a thing you want, you cut hard and get open.

That’s how life works.

Or should.

By the time I reach her side of the beach, one of her friends is laughing too loudly at something and the other is pretending not to check whether the basketball boys are checking them.

Texas notices me the second I step into her orbit.

Her eyes slide over me once.

Up.

Down.

Back up.

Not appreciative.

Assessing.

I grin.

“Evenin’.”

One brow lifts.

“You have nice feet for a neanderthal. Did you get a pedicure just for this party?”

I look down at my feet. They do look surprising good for a size thirteen athlete.

No flip-flops.

Barefoot.

I respect that she came out swinging anyway.

“Only for special occasions.”

“Is this a special occasion?”

I make a show of looking around.

“Pretty beach. Bonfires. Rich kids pretending they’re rugged. Yeah, I’d say so.”

That gets the tiniest movement at the corner of her mouth.

Not a smile.

A warning that a smile could exist if I perform correctly.

Useful.

I stick out my hand.

“Drew.”

She looks at my hand like it might be a trap.

“Congratulations?”

I laugh.

That one gets me.

Not because it’s nice.

Because it isn’t.

Because she says it with that perfect beauty queen face and enough dry bite under it to make it fun.

“Texas, right?”

Her eyes narrow.

“That obvious?”

“No,” I say. “You just look expensive and dangerous.”

Her friend makes a tiny choking sound beside her.

Texas doesn’t blink.

“Wow. Did you practice that in a mirror?”

“Don’t need mirrors. I freestyle.”

“That’s worse.”

I grin wider.

God, she’s annoying.

I’m in.

One of the boys from baseball drifts over then, offers the girls shots, gets politely dismantled by Texas in six seconds flat, and retreats looking stunned.

I watch the whole thing with something close to admiration.

“You collect men just to kill their confidence?”

She takes a sip from her drink and glances toward the shoreline again.

“No. They donate it voluntarily.”

I look where she’s looking.

Vale.

Still down by the water.

Still talking to people.

Still somehow managing to seem half removed from everything around him like he’s listening to another life under this one.

And there it is.

The first real annoyance of the night.

Because Texas isn’t looking at me or interested.

She’s fielding me.

Swatting me around.

Letting me be entertainment.

But the real track of her attention keeps circling back to Vale.

I shift closer.

Not enough to crowd her.

Enough to interrupt the line of sight.

“You gonna make me fight a basketball player for your attention?”

That pulls her eyes back to me.

“Can you?”

I look out toward the water again, let my shoulders roll once.

“I could probably fold him in half, but people get weird when you dent the NIL assets.”

Her friend laughs.

Texas almost does.

Almost.

Then she says, “You’re very sure of yourself.”

I tilt my head.

“You hate that?”

“Immensely.”

“Good.”

She gives me a look.

I lean a little closer and drop into the worst fake Texas drawl I can manage.

“I always get what I want, sugar.”

Her whole face changes.

Not because she’s charmed.

Because she wants to hit me with a folding chair.

The accent was deliberate.

So was the line.

So is the effect.

“No thanks,” she says.

Her friend loses it.

Actually doubles over laughing.

I grin like the menace I am.

“What?”

“That accent,” she says, horrified. “You need jail time.”

That gets me laughing.

A real one.

Loud enough that a couple people glance over.

And then, because the universe likes ugly timing, Vale does too.

He looks up from the shoreline.

Right at us.

Right at her.

Texas stills by half an inch.

Tiny thing.

Easy to miss.

I don’t miss much.

Vale says something to one of the guys beside him, hands off the bottle to somebody else, and starts walking our way.

And because I am apparently cursed with instincts and observation instead of peace, I clock the whole thing at once:

the way Texas subtly squares her shoulders,

the way she doesn’t look away,

the way Vale’s face changes when he gets close enough to really see her,

and the way whatever fun little moment she and I were building immediately gets replaced by something quieter and more dangerous.

Vale reaches us and glances at me first.

Not territorial.

Not warm either.

Just registering.

Then his attention goes to her.

And there it is.

That tiny, private shift in his expression.

That’s the kind of thing women fall in love with and men like me learn to distrust.

“Hey,” he says.

Texas says, “Hey,” back like she didn’t just spend the last ten minutes treating me like a gnat and the idea of him like a destination.

Interesting.

I let the silence breathe just long enough to be annoying.

Then I clap Vale once on the shoulder and say, “You stealing my conversation, prince?”

His eyes flick back to me.

“If it was yours, doesn’t look like you were doing much with it.”

Texas snorts.

I point at her.

“See? Hostile audience.”

Vale’s mouth moves at one corner.

Not a smile.

Almost worse.

Because it means he’s not trying.

He doesn’t have to and girls can tell.

That’s what makes him dangerous. Texas crosses one arm under her chest and tilts her head between us.

“Do all Stanford men speak exclusively in challenge coins and testosterone?”

“Yes,” I say.

“No,” Vale says at the same time.

That gets her.

The laugh slips out clean this time, low and quick and genuinely amused, and I feel it hit me right in the sternum because God, there’s nothing prettier than a sharp girl laughing when she didn’t mean to.

But the laugh lands on him too. Then she gives him the name she withheld for me. “Isabella Calloway… or Isa for short.”

Vale’s face softens for one second in a way most people wouldn’t catch.

I catch it.

And now I’m irritated for real.

Because I know this look.

I know this pattern.

I know when a man is not all the way available but still magnetic enough to ruin somebody anyway.

And worse—I know Texas doesn’t know it yet. Vale spent the entire last week trying to get with Stella Cortez. I heard he even missed a team weight training session to follow her dawn bleacher cross training sesh. Now he’s looking at Texas like he already forgot the other girl’s name.

We stand there a few minutes more, the conversation splitting and recombining around waves and lights and athlete small talk. She gives as good as she gets. Better, sometimes. Vale watches her when she looks away. I watch him do it.

Then the night opens wider.

Somebody starts a bonfire relay game.

Music gets louder.

The beach becomes one big blur of bodies and ambition and expensive teeth.

Texas gets pulled away by one of her teammates.

Vale gets called over by Jace and Nate.

And I’m left standing alone with sand under my feet and the very specific feeling that I just watched a play develop one beat before everybody else saw it.

Not the ending.

Just the route.

I pick up another beer and head toward the fire.

Kane catches up with me halfway there.

“How’d it go?”

I look back over my shoulder.

Texas is laughing at something now, but her eyes flick toward Vale between moments like she can’t help it.

I shrug.

“I met her first.”

Kane follows my gaze.

Then looks toward Vale.

Then back to me.

“Ah.”

“Yeah.”

He’s quiet for a second.

Then, because Kane’s a bastard but not a stupid one, he says, “Vale is going to be a tough opponent to beat.”

I take a drink and look out at the dark Pacific.

I know.

Not because Vale’s malicious.

That’s the problem.

He’s not.

He’s just finished in a way that makes everybody around him look less.

And somewhere down the beach, near one of the farther bonfires, another figure steps into view.

Tall.

Long-legged.

Dark hair.

Volleyball body.

On cue, Stella.

She doesn’t come over.

Doesn’t need to.

Vale doesn’t even turn his head in that exact second.

Still, the air shifts all the same.

Kane sees it too.

I know he does.

I laugh once under my breath.

Not because anything is funny.

Because I already know how this goes.

Texas is going to look at Vale and think she’s the next choice.

Vale is going to look at Texas and maybe even want to mean it.

And somewhere under all of it, there’s still another girl sitting like a live wire under the floorboards. But the way Kane look sat Stella--makes me wonder just what in the f is going on.

Kane glances at me.

“What?”

I shake my head and start walking again.

“Nothing.”

It’s not nothing.

It’s the beginning of a train wreck.

And if I’m being honest—which I usually am, at least with myself—the most annoying part is this:

I still want her anyway.

Maybe because she brushed me off.

Maybe because she looked right through me to another man.

Maybe because she called my accent a crime against humanity and made me laugh for real in the span of ten minutes.

Or maybe because even then, before she ever looked at me properly, before she ever needed a way out of heartbreak and gossip and pity—

I knew.

Saw her first.

Wanted her first.

And some stubborn, ugly, caveman part of me decided right there on that beach that if she was going to get her heart broken by Tristan Vale, I’d be around when it happened.

Not as comfort.

Not as friend.

As the man who was there first.

Still standing when the prince got it wrong.