sixteen
Harper Apple
I spend the first day back at Willow Heights looking over my shoulder, haunted by a ridiculous paranoia, as if I’m going to be stopped by cops for trespassing when I set foot inside the hallowed halls of the old stone building. As if Mr. D might show up in the flesh, walk into my class, and announce to the whole school that my scholarship is rescinded because my raunchy sex stories got boring. Royal would fucking kill me if he knew what I’d told Mr. D about our hookups, and I can’t help but wonder if Mr. D will expose me as punishment for failing him.
But I’m not leaving Willow Heights until they haul me out of there, and no one makes a move when I step into the familiar hallways full of bleary-eyed kids who stayed up too late on their last night of freedom. Still on edge, I head to my locker and then to class. No one bothers me. I’m a Dolce girl, after all. Nothing has changed.
Except that it has. Everything changed on Sunday.
I knew I was falling for Royal, but until that moment, I don’t know if I realized how truly fucked I already am. I haven’t exactly forgiven Royal for what he did to me—making me kneel naked on the floor and blow him in exchange for the promise of a video being erased, only to release the video to show me that he could. I don’t know if colleges will see it, if some will decide not to offer a scholarship to a girl like me.
But I know that I can’t hate Royal. Not anymore. Not for that, and not even for what he did to Colt.
Yeah, Colt was my friend. But I fucking love Royal.
There, I said it, if only to myself. I love this confusing, terrible, broken, vulnerable, monstrous boy. And it’s fucked up as hell that I think knowing about his little side hustle is what sealed it. How can I love him more, even knowing he’s fucking other women? It doesn’t make sense. But when I think about Gloria on those steps crying as she told me, I want to cry, too. I want to hug Royal and hold him and never let go. I want to tell him I love him, the same way Gloria does, and then some. That it doesn’t matter to me what he does. I love him, all of him, for exactly who he is.
But when I sit down next to him in class, I don’t know what to say. No words come, and he doesn’t seem especially chatty. I’m grateful for the silence, for the time to adjust to being in his presence while knowing what I know. Though I always felt that darkness in him calling to me, I didn’t realize how truly I’d answered, let my own darkness join him. His is so much bigger, though, more powerful, I can’t hold it off. It’s wearing on me, eating me alive, pulling me under. Eventually, I couldn’t hold my breath, and I had to breathe it in. Now it’s inside me, festering like a disease.
I knew he had some fucked up shit in his life that made him that way, but maybe I didn’t quite know what his darkness meant. I thought it meant we were the same, but the shadows my shitty life left on me like bruises on my skin can’t compare to the bone deep fucking trauma Royal’s been through. Comparing it is like comparing a stubbed toe to a train wreck.
I remember the very first time we met, at the tracks when he took that video, and how they laughed at me when I said some naïve shit about how they were rich, so they didn’t know hardship. What a dumb bitch thing to say. I always imagined rich people just threw money at their problems, and they disappeared.
Wife leaves you? Get a younger, hotter one. Feel shitty? Go to therapy and get some expensive pills. Get arrested? Find a fancy lawyer to get you out of it. All that may be true, but now that I actually know some rich people, I know it’s not so simple.
And whatever is between me and Royal isn’t simple, either. I can’t tell him I know, and I don’t want to act differently or see him differently, but something about what he’s doing just crushes my heart. I want to know why he would do that, but of course I can’t ask. If and when he wants to tell me, that has to be his decision.
After school, Royal saunters up to my locker, looking less moody than in class and more like his usual asshole self. Baron and Duke flank him on either side.
“Cherry Pie,” Duke says. “I’ve barely seen you in a month. You keeping that pussy wet for my boy here?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” I say, closing my locker and giving him my sweetest smile.
“Cut it out,” Royal growls, glaring at Duke. “Harper’s cunt is my business and only my business.”
Duke flashes me a grin anyway. “I hear there’s a welcome back party coming up. Maybe you can get busy with my brother against the car the while I’m passed the fuck out inside again, like you did last time.”
I quirk a brow and glance at Royal. “You sure that was us?”
“I just gotta say, I need a repeat when I’m not wasted,” Duke says. “I can’t believe I missed the whole thing.”
“Where’d you hear all this?” I ask.
“From my boys,” Duke says. “And I don’t hear a denial in there anywhere.”
I grin and lean close to him, standing on tiptoes to whisper toward his ear. “It was hot thinking about you right there behind us, knowing you might wake up at any moment and see us.”
“Fuck,” he groans, grabbing his crotch like I kicked him and falling back against the lockers. “You’re killing me, Jailbird.”
“Don’t fuck with my brother,” Royal says, glowering at me.
“Pretty sure he’s the one fucking with me.”
“Come on,” Baron says. “We’ve got basketball.”
“You play all the sports?” I ask.
“Not all of them,” Royal says with a smirk. “But it’ll have to change our hookup schedule. I’ll text you later.”