five
Harper Apple
Royal stands there waiting, his hand out, the drizzling rain soaking into his dark hair and the shoulders of his shirt. They’re all still dressed for school, like they were waiting for me to come back with Colt. Royal’s white, button-up shirt is rolled to his elbows and unbuttoned at the collar, his broad shoulders filling it to the seams. If he weren’t splattered in my friend’s blood, I might still find him irresistible.
I know there’s no point in fighting when there’s three of them, so I climb out of the car, ignoring his offered hand even though I have to fight gravity to scramble out of the seat, since the car is on a slope. My feet hit the wet asphalt of the road, and Royal uses his hand to steady me, covering the fact that I left him hanging by refusing to take his help.
He lets the car door fall closed, and for a second, we stand there alone on the road, sizing each other up. “We need to talk,” he says, his voice emotionless.
“Are you breaking up with me?” I ask sarcastically.
“No.”
My heart beats erratically when he grabs my wrist and drags me toward the bridge. I’m not sure if it’s fear of the weird, detached way he’s acting suddenly or the thought of what he’s about to do to me. I race through the possible outcomes.
If he pushes me off the bridge, I think I’ll live. The water is brown and flowing faster than the last time I was here, but it’s not churning like it might during a flood. There are no limbs or branches from trees floating along to get caught under. It’s deep enough that I could jump without hitting the bottom, and though it would be scary as fuck to jump from a bridge this high, it’s not high enough to make the water’s surface feel like concrete to a falling body. It’s November, and I’m sure the water is cold as hell, but this is Central Arkansas, and even this time of year, the water won’t be deathly cold, the kind that makes your limbs seize up so you can’t swim.
All these thoughts race through my mind as Royal pulls me across the bridge until we’re in the middle. He pulls me to a stop and turns to face me. His eyes are dark and intense, his wet hair sticking to his forehead as raindrops trickle down his sculpted face.
He looks like he’s waiting for me to say something. “Is this where your sister died?” I ask, unable to keep from pushing just one more button.
“No questions,” he says. “That was the deal, remember?”
“Or is it where Mabel tried to kill herself?” I ask. “Your brothers were obviously upset about you coming here, so it must be one or the other. Maybe both? Why’d you pull her out, Royal? That’s what I want to know. That should have been your ultimate victory. You didn’t even have to do the dirty work. Just push her so far she did it for you.”
“Did you fuck him?”
I can’t help but let out a little snort. “That’s what this is about?”
His expression doesn’t change. “Did you?”
“What does it matter?” I ask. “He’s right. You’ve done nothing but tell me I’m worthless, and a whore, and trash, since the day we met. I have every right to assume, as does he, that you’re not interested in anything but torturing me.”
“I’m going to ask you one more time,” he says slowly. “Did you fuck him?”
I open my mouth to tell him he can ask a hundred times, and it’s still none of his fucking business. But then I remember Colt lying there on the ground, crumpled like old rags in a ditch as we pulled away, and how I couldn’t stand to look at him, so I focused on my backpack because if I didn’t…
“No,” I whisper, my throat suddenly so thick with frustration I think I’ll cry. I could tell Royal to go fuck himself, that I can fuck whomever I choose and it’s none of his goddamn business. But if I did, and he went back to finish the job, that would be on me.
“Good,” he says, an indulgent little smirk on his lips. He reaches out and tucks a stand of wet hair behind my ear, his gesture casual and leisurely, as if making sure I get the message. He is entitled to touch me if and when he chooses. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
I fight the urge to slap his hand away. “No.”
“Good,” he says again, stroking my cheek. “I’m going to make things easy for you, too. I know you like to spy on people, dig around in their lives and try to get your claws in their secrets so you can push their buttons. So let’s just get this out in the open, where you can’t pretend you didn’t know. You are mine, Harper.”
I blink at him, wanting to laugh even though my insides are trembling. “What?”
“You are mine,” he says slowly, like he’s speaking to someone too dumb to comprehend, which I guess I am. What does that even mean?
“I am?” I ask, trying to keep the incredulous from my voice but not quite managing. “So, what, because I sucked your dick, you think we’re dating or something? That you’re my boyfriend?”
He shakes his head, a little smile on his lips. “No, no,” he says. “I didn’t say I was yours. If I want to sit in the town square and let the whole fucking parade file by and bounce on my dick, I can do that. But if one guy so much as touches you…”
“You’ll cut off his finger,” I say, remembering Colt’s dad sharing the same disfigurement as his son. Who did they touch?
“He’ll lose more than a finger,” Royal says.
He takes my wrist again and steps toward the edge of the bridge, climbing through the wooden beams that support the structure. I start to protest, my heart racing as I watch him step onto the narrow ledge that extends past the railing. There’s only about a foot of boards extending, and they’re wet and slippery. If a car crossed the bridge, the vibration alone would send him plunging into the water if he didn’t hold onto the support beams.