Royal takes a step forward, backing me against the wall where Gideon stood. He shucks me under the chin, bringing my gaze to his. For a second, we just stare at each other. Then he gives a little snort of breath. “And I didn’t tell the twins what happened to you, Harper. And yet, somehow they seem to know. Funny how that works, isn’t it?”
He turns and pushes through the crowd on the porch and out the screen door, letting it slam behind him. I stand there reeling from his words.
He can’t mean what I think he means. There’s no way.
No.
Preston would never. He might be cold, but he isn’t violent.
But was the old Preston?
I think of how different he is online, as Mr. D, and my stomach lurches like I might be sick.
I try to get a grip on myself. Yes, Preston is a dick online. He’s bold and demanding, but he never asked me to hurt anyone. Being a voyeur who likes to hear about someone else’s sexual exploits doesn’t make him a rapist. It makes him sad and creepy. I understand what made him that way, though.
What Royal’s saying he did…
No way.
Suddenly, Preston’s words in that gazebo come back to me. He told me what he did to their sister, the thing he tried to do that the Dolce boys succeeded in doing to me. What was it he said?
I’d never have let anyone from the team touch her… I might have, though.
The beer in my stomach churns. I close my eyes and try to breathe, feeling the plastic cup crumple in my fingers, the cold liquid sliding over my skin.
I shove away from the wall, pushing through the people in front of me without seeing them, out the back door and down the steps. My feet slide on the wet grass, the soft earth. Drizzle splatters onto the shoulders of Preston’s leather jacket. I stop and suck in a few breaths, bracing my hands on my knees, until the familiar scent of marijuana smoke reaches me. I straighten and move toward one of the huge oak trees in the backyard, hating myself for caring, for still being drawn to him. He’s a magnet, and he filled me with shards of jagged metal so I can never, never stop going to him.
When I reach the tree, I see him sitting in a rope swing, watching me approach in the dark. Fat drops of water fall from the leaves onto us, but the drizzle is kept out by the thick leaf cover.
“Why’d you tell me that?” I demand. “Why do you have to keep making it worse?”
“Why do you keep talking to me when you know that’s what will happen?” Royal asks, his voice quiet in the darkness.
“I can’t help it,” I admit, the words coming out strangled. “I can’t get away from you even when you leave me alone. You’re in my head, in my blood, in my nightmares.”
“I know.” Royal lights the joint, takes a drag, and hands it to me.
I take it with shaking fingers, relishing the dank smoke in my lungs, the way it stops the spiraling, careening thoughts. I lean against the thick, wet trunk of the tree and lay my head back, closing my eyes. Then I take another deep drag, not caring about etiquette right now, when I’m about to completely lose it if I don’t find something to calm me down. It’s either this, or I’m going to have to go find a razor and open my skin to release the pressure, and god knows what Gideon would do if he found me spilling the truth of my blood in one of his pristine bathrooms.
“You know the worst part about it?” I ask. “I can’t move on. I can’t just pretend it didn’t happen and go about my life like I did before. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t date some nice, normal guy like Gideon. I don’t know what normal is anymore. I don’t know how to function around functional people.”
“I know.”
“How’d you do it?” I ask, handing the joint back at last.
“You think I’m going to give you advice on how to act normal when you fuck some other guy?”
“You know what, fuck you,” I say, pushing off the tree. “Yes, I do want that, because you owe me that fucking much, Royal. Maybe the same thing happened to us both, but the difference is, I didn’t even know you existed when that happened to you. You did this to me, Royal.Youbroke me.”
“And I moved the fucking world for you trying to make it right. You threw it back in my face and told me to leave you alone. What did I do then? I respected your wishes. You’re the one who followed me out here.”
“You chased away a guy who was interested.”
The flame of his lighter flickers on, and he tilts his face, lighting up and taking a long, deep drag. The firelight flickers over the angular features of his face, so beautiful it’s not fucking fair.
“I’m not helping you hook up with someone else,” he says through a mouthful of smoke. “I’m done granting your wishes. I’m not your fucking genie.”
I remember Mr. D calling himself that in one of our first conversations. He asked my three wishes. Now I know the price of those three wishes. Nothing in life is free, after all.