two
Harper Apple
After my talk with Gloria, I send Royal a quick text that night. I don’t hear back. Sucks to look desperate, but I console myself with the fact that I’m not the first girl to throw herself at him. What sucks worse than being ignored is that I’m back to square one, with no idea how to gain access to their inner circle.
As much as I don’t want to use her that way, I might have to go through Gloria. No matter how stupid my heart is, my brain is still functioning just fine. My brain tells me that Royal being a dick is the best thing that could have happened this week, drilling it into me that he’s not my boyfriend. He’s my enemy. If he’d gone all-in, I might have forgotten, might have gotten swept up in the seductive pull of his power, too lovesick with Dolce fever to remember that this is all a lie.
His ignoring me gives me time to refocus, to get my head in the game. I still need to find out something on the Dolces, something that can take them down. And Gloria knows their secrets.
I need to learn what she knows, something that can destroy them once and for all. I don’t even need all their secrets. Just one. Something better than their dad being a lush or a creep, better than the fact that they have a rape room under the school. I need a secret that’s as shameful as the secret I had, the one that Royal exposed in front of the whole school.
Why shouldn’t I do the same to him?
If I were a girl like Lo, if I’d had anything to lose, the tape of me giving a blowjob to an ugly old teacher would have destroyed me. But I had no shining reputation, no money, nothing. Still, he made my life hell, exposed my darkest shame and humiliation. My desperation. Everyone knows what I am. He might think I’ve forgotten that, but I never will.
So now it’s my turn to dig up his dirty laundry, something as good as the video he took of me blowing Mr. Behr. I don’t know what secrets the Dolces have, but they have them. Rich people don’t get rich by being nice. The Dolces have skeletons, and I’m about to dig them up. I won’t give up until I’ve found it, the one piece of dirty laundry that can ruin them, a secret that can topple an empire. Even if I have to go through Royal’s ex to get it.
By the end of the week, I still haven’t figured out how. It’s driving me fucking insane. Five days of walking by Royal’s table in the café and refusing to look his way. Five days of forcing myself not to look at my phone like a pathetic little bitch. Five days of ignoring him in the class we share, wanting to scream in frustration. I thought I’d gotten a foot in the door. Worse, I don’t know where I slipped up. I replay our last exchange a million times. He said was for me to be ready for him on Monday, but he doesn’t talk to me in class, harass me in the café, or drag me to the basement to fuck.
And here I am, obsessing like every other dumb bitch at Willow Heights. I bought into his game, and I hate myself for it. Between the hot and cold, I can’t tell if I’m scalded or frostbitten half the time, and the fucked up part is, I don’t care. I want more. I’m one hundred percent not interested in being his girlfriend, but some dumb bitch part of my monkey brain keeps pushing the lever, hoping this time I’ll get a treat.
Friday morning, I’m at my locker before school when I hear a hush fall over the hall. Royal Dolce is walking right toward me. Nothing else can get everyone’s attention that fast.
I tense, always ready for the other shoe to drop. Just because he’s ignored me, I’m not dumb enough to think he’s done with me. He’s been biding his time, waiting to strike, probably loving that it’s killing me. Because he knows me well enough to know I’m not the kind of girl who walks away without an explanation. I want answers, and he knows it. He also knows I’m impatient as fuck, and from the smug look on his face, he knows just what a relief this confrontation is for me.
I tell my racing heart to go fuck itself, and I give Royal a cool look when he meets my gaze. Just because I’ve never dated doesn’t mean I can’t play this game, too.
Ignoring my feigned indifference, Royal stops and swings his bag off his shoulder, unzipping it and pulling out a wad of gold and black material. “Be at my game tonight,” he says, pushing the fabric into my hands. “In this.”
“Yeah, see, I kinda already have plans,” I say. Fuck if I’m going to jump to obey after he ghosted me all week. If he wanted me at his game, he should have said something before I booked a fight.
“Cancel them,” he says. “Be there. Wear this.”
I glare at him and lower my voice to a whisper, stepping behind my locker door so no one can read my lips. “We fuck once, and you think you can tell me what to do and how to dress?”
He gives me the asshole smirk that makes my fucking nipples harden just seeing it. “I was already telling you what to do and how to dress,” he says smugly. “And we fucked more than once. If I recall correctly, you came, like…” He pretends to count off on his fingers before finishing, “Six times?”
My face heats at the memory of how many orgasms he gave me last week, but I don’t flinch. “Your point is?”
He takes the cloth I’m still holding and shakes it out. It’s a jersey, though not a real one. It’s one of the tiny ones girls wear to the games, with his number on the back—the number one, of course. “Go change into this. All the Dolce girls wear them on Fridays.”
“Oh, now I’m a Dolce girl?”
He slides his hand over my hip just above the top of my jeans and pushes me back against the locker, stepping in until our bodies are almost touching. “No, Cherry Pie. You’re my Dolce girl,” he says, his head lowered so we’re both behind the locker door. “Now go put that on. I want to see my number on your back all day. I won’t be able to see it tonight.”
“Because you think I’ll be cheering at your game?”
“Because you’ll be on your back,” he says, sweeping his thumb along the top of my jeans, brushing my bare skin over the ridge of my hipbone. “Where you belong.”
The tiny contact is more erotic than if he was grinding up against me, and I have to fight to keep my head on straight.
“Not on my knees?” I ask, batting my lashes at him. I’m fucking with him, but I’m also testing him, watching for the slightest reaction when I hint at the conversation I had with Mr. D. “Or… On all fours?”
“Baby, I don’t care if you’re standing on your head,” he says. “As long as my balls are slapping that pussy, I’m a happy man.”
Either he’s the world’s best liar, or he’s not Mr. D. Not that I really thought he was, but it’s nice to eliminate one person.
“So, is that how this is going to work?” I ask. “You ignore me all week, and then on Friday I wear your jersey and go to your game, and you fuck me as a reward and then go back to pretending I don’t exist the next Monday?”