I groaned, bracing the blankets he gave.
“You both were really fucking stupid,” he said, and though I couldn’t see him because he was behind getting these blankets on me, I heard the frustration in his deep voice. “What were you thinking, December?”
I wasn’t thinking. I was being stupid. She’d trigged some old shit about me, and I wanted to make her pay. That’s all there really was to it, nothing logical.
I blinked cloudy eyes, freezing when Royal was suddenly behind me. His fingers brushed my hair, and I turned, staring up into green eyes. “What are you doing?”
“You’re no doubt going to puke at least three more times tonight,” he said, the frown hard on his face. “I was just going to get it out of your way.”
I had no idea what he meant by that, but when he eyed my damp locks on my shoulder, I found myself angling my head in his direction. I couldn’t watch him, of course, unable to stare directly at him, but when he gathered my hair up in his mighty hands, a soft moan touched my lips for other reasons. Each pull and tug he made were like electrodes that shot straight into my brain, and when I opened my eyes, I saw him braiding my hair, actually braiding with precise fingers.
My lips parted. “How do you know how to do that?” I asked, his fingers quick as he looped and tugged. Done, he placed the thick braid over my shoulder.
“One of my best friends is a girl,” he said, his grin slight on his full lips. He shook his head. “A girl who likes to drink like a dude. Let’s just say I’ve done this more than a couple of times.”
Paige definitely could drink. I remembered that, though my sister and I didn’t often drink together since we lived separately.
I turned, Royal’s gaze following up from my braid to my eyes. “How did that happen? I mean”—I paused, shaking my head—“she never mentioned you, not once.”
His eyes escaped, nostrils flaring as he dampened his lips. “We grew up together, went to the same schools.” He shrugged a shoulder. “I don’t know. How did you make your friends?”
The same way, but my old friends weren’t like him. They weren’t him, a god at my current school and in society. I supposed he might have not always been that way, but somewhere along the way that’s what he’d become.
I braced sheets to my chest. “I came to live with my dad because I hoped she’d come home. I’ve been emailing her, sent texts and phone calls…” The latter had stopped altogether when she basically told me to stop at the beginning of the summer. She didn’t want to talk to me, anyone. Had she talked to him? Her apparent best friend? I bit my lip. “If you know where she is, please tell me. Has she called you? Are you helping her? If you’ve had contact with her, I need to know.”
I hit him with questions he didn’t have to answer, and if he had been helping her keep a low profile, he probably wouldn’t tell me anyway.
Royal’s lips pressed tight, and when he went for my hair, it wasn’t to braid it this time. He touched it, looping the end around his long finger.
“Believe me, if I could contact her, I would,” he said, a pain in his voice I didn’t understand. Maybe she hadn’t just left me and this town. Maybe she left him too, her best friend. His swallow was hard. “I’d give anything.”
I followed my hair up to his eyes. “Do you know what happened? Why she left? Was it Dad again? Were they fighting?” It always was in the past, every time she left. He was so hard on her, hard like he was on me but she was under his eye every moment of the day. Maybe he’d broken her in the end.
My hair fell from Royal’s fingers when he pulled back, and I felt every inch of the space he placed between us. Gripping the bed, he shifted a little. “I just came to make sure you were okay,” he said. “And if you’ve come for your sister, you should probably go home. She’s not coming back. I know her, and… She’s just not, not this time.”
“Did something happen?”
“Something’s always happening with her,” he said, his tone stiff. “And she wouldn’t want you here for it.”
“Well, I’m not leaving,” I said, watching him get up. “I’m not, and you tell her that.” I meant my reasons behind coming here. I wouldn’t go until she came back. She’d been there for me, time and time again. She brought me back when I was lost. She stayed and I would too.
Royal’s jaw pierced his skin, his gaze panning to Hershey, who was
up on her hind legs. She wagged her little tail, doing her dog smile at him, and he went over to her. He picked her up, cradling her close with only one hand and she looked so small near him.
He handed her to me. “Don’t get your hopes up,” he said, so many people saying that to me, and I was sick of it. Why shouldn’t I get my hopes up?
Why did nobody else care?
This guy obviously wasn’t her friend. He should care, care like me. He placed a hand to Hershey’s head, then headed back to my window.
“I need you to keep Hershey a secret,” I said to his back, making him stop. “I mean it. My dad doesn’t know about her yet, and you obviously know how he is.”
Dad would get rid of her. He would without preparation first or a valid argument. Neither of which I’d gotten a chance to come up with yet and wouldn’t if Royal didn’t keep his mouth shut.
He barely glanced over his shoulder. “I’ll keep your secret, princess. But this one… this one will cost you.”
Opening the window, he angled himself out, leaving me, and I shrank into the bed. I let Hershey guide me to sleep with her warmth that night, trying to forget about the other kind that had touched my back and braided my hair.