“Yes, you are,” he says, giving me an appreciate once-over.
“She took the whole football team at once, dude,” mutters another guy, snickering. “Better nail a two-by-four to your ass so you don’t fall in.”
“Yeah,” I say, giving him a demure smile. “I’m sure a little boy like you isn’t big enough to satisfy me.”
Colt grins and slides his arm around my shoulder again. “Oh, Sweetie, guys like Shaun don’t care about satisfying you.”
Shaun’s friend starts slugging his shoulder and ragging on him, and Lacey giggles and turns to her friend, both of them whispering and glancing at me so obviously that I have to roll my eyes. I’m grateful for Colt deflecting the attention, but I can’t stop dwelling on what Shaun said.
So, there it is. The rumor I knew was coming. It’s just what I expected, but it still makes my stomach sour. If there’s one thing I know, it’s how rumors catch fire and spread, starting with a seed of truth or a lie and then raging out of control, getting bigger until they swallow a person’s whole reputation.
I shouldn’t care. I know the truth. But as the snickers and the looks, half of them disgusted and the other half thirsty, follow me for the rest of the day, I can’t help but feel it, even when I walk with my head held high like I don’t feel a thing. I’m strong, but I’m not impenetrable. I may have armor, but it cracks with every blow, with every snicker and dirty look, with every whistle a football player lets out as I walk by.
By the end of the day, I’m planning how to convince my mother to take me back to New York with her. Yes, I had my problems there. Every day I fought the demons that whispered in my ears that I’d been found out, that everyone knew I was a fraud. My brothers may have been royalty, but I no longer felt like their Dolce Princess. When people found out, they began to fight for my throne. They wanted to take me down. Half of being queen is believing you are, after all. Believing you deserve it. I spent my last semester there falling. Falling from grace. Tumbling from my throne.
Here, I had a chance to start from nothing. I was excited to try again. I thought I’d do it right, that I could be just another pretty face in the halls, no one special. And that’s what Colt did for me this morning, stripping my titles like Devlin stripped Lacey’s. But I’m not a no one. I’m the girl who let the team run a train on her. I’m a girl they’ve seen led around on a leash like a dog, a girl they’ve groped and watched a live show of in the locker room. They’ve seen me naked. I can’t be a nobody any more than I could the first day I walked through those doors.
I’d rather go back to New York. I’d rather run away, just like my parents do, than face this. I’d rather go back to Manhattan without my brothers’ protection, fight my way through the next two and a half years as the girl who bullied someone to near death than be what I am here. I hate this school. I hate walking these halls where the ghosts of my trauma wait around every corner. I hate the terror that grips me when I have to walk into lunch in the same cafeteria where my attacker sits, a girl on his lap and his friends around him like he’s a monarch, not a monster.
When we get home that afternoon, the house stands big and silent. After having all the uncles and cousins and grandparents around, it’s eerily quiet and still.
“Mom?” I ask, moving from the back hallway where we entered into the dining room. I wander into the kitchen, then upstairs to the guest room where Mom’s been staying. The bed is made up tight, the room looking as barren as the rest of the house. I step inside, my heart hammering. Mom does not make her own bed. She leaves it a tangle of sheets, with shoes toppled under the bed and dresses flung over chairs. But this room—this room is empty. I can feel the absence in it, and I know better than to hope the new maid fixed it for Mom while she was downstairs.
I sink onto the edge of the bed. I shouldn’t be surprised. But my throat aches, anyway. My house is full of brothers, and Daddy will be home soon. Somehow, though, I feel utterly alone as I sit there.
I go to my bed, and I sink down on it and close my eyes. I thought when we found Royal, everything would be good again, that it would make everything okay. But nothing is right. The big house is haunted by the ghost of the boy my brother used to be. And maybe it’s haunted by the ghost of me, too.
No amount of ice cream, online shopping, or other wallowing techniques can fix this. When I close my eyes, I just see Devlin’s face. I’m supposed to hate him for all he’s done. I’m supposed to be happy that I made him fall for me, that I gave back what I got.
But how can I be happy knowing I hurt the boy I love?
two
Crystal
Yes, I used my body to get what I wanted. Yes, I let a boy use my body—again, I let him. I let him to get what I wanted. Anyone who has a problem with that can go fuck themselves. It’s my body to use as I see fit. My choice to do so. Who are you to disagree?
When I open my locker the next day, a cup of coffee sits right inside, still steaming. I pull it out and look up and down the hall, my heart doing a funny little twist in my chest. Is something still alive in there, some seed of hope that’s taken root and is winding up, a tender green shoot that could be crushed under a single careless boot?
People are watching me, but I can’t tell if it’s more than the day before. I can’t tell if it’s because I am rumored to like a good gang bang on a Friday night, or if there’s some other reason. Am I an idiot to hope? Maybe Lacey put a coffee in my locker, spiced with cinnamon and laced with arsenic.
I get my books and close my locker. My heart nearly stops. Devlin Darling is walking toward me, a cousin on either side of him. A hundred thoughts go tumbling through my mind. Will he talk to me? Look at me? Does he hate me? Does he love me?
I stand there, rooted to the spot, my heart beating so hard I see black spots behind my eyes. I ache for him, for anything. A touch, a smile, a word, a look.
Each step he takes brings him closer and closer. So close I can see the way his shirt stretches over muscles on his broad shoulders, the strength in his jawline, the ice of his blue eyes. And then he’s here. He’s right beside me, so close I could reach out past Preston and press my fingertips to his skin again, feel the heat of his body, the beating of his heart. I curl my fingers so I won’t do it, not even to make sure he’s real, to convince myself that it was all real. That I really had Devlin Darling, and I lost him.
No, I didn’t lose him.
I threw him away.
As he walks past without so much as a flicker of a glance, my body deflates. The tension sweeps away, and I’m left shaking. I turn and slam my locker, relishing the bang of metal on metal. What is wrong with me? I’m so fucking pathetic I could puke. What am I doing, waiting for a look from Devlin Darling like I’m one of his lovesick puppies, like I really am a dog?
I remember something Dolly said to me, that they ruin the Darling Dog, and when they’re done with her, she wishes she could go back, that she had their attention again.
Fuck. That.
I’m not some pathetic dog. Even if no one will ever believe me, and I’ll never be more than the whore who took the whole football team at once, I know the truth. Devlin wanted me. He liked me. And I broke his fucking heart.