“And what would you tell the cops when they showed up?” he asks, leaning an elbow on the seat in front of us and turning to me, so we’re blocked from some of the prying eyes. I’m also boxed in. I try to steady my heartbeat. It’s fine. I’m fine. He can’t take more from me. I have to remind myself of that every time.
“You’re afraid I’d rat you out?” I ask. “I already told you I wouldn’t. So if that’s what you’re so concerned about, you can rest easy. You got away with it. Y’all all did. Now can you leave me alone?”
“Then what would you tell them?” Royal asks, cocking his head and watching me with curiosity.
“Get off the bus or you’re riding the route,” the driver calls back. One girl who trailed her friends on leans down to kiss her girlfriend, then hurries off the bus. Royal doesn’t move.
“You’re going to ride a public school bus?” I ask, quirking a brow.
“I guess so,” Royal says, not moving a muscle to get off the bus.
I sigh. “Seriously, Royal. Why won’t you leave me alone?”
“Why won’t you answer the question?”
“I don’t know, maybe I’d get a restraining order,” I say. “Since you keep stalking me.”
“Then I better stay on the bus,” he says. “If this is my only chance to talk to you.”
The bus driver mutters and closes the door, shifting into gear. I’m glad for the noise of the bus, which drowns out the silence. A few seats around us are quiet, but everyone else starts talking, and I relax a little.
“How did you even know I’d be here today?” I ask. It’s my first day at Faulkner. Has he been skulking around there all week like a perv, since he knows I’m not at Willow Heights?
“Are you going to come on Sunday this time?” he asks. “You wasted last weekend’s chance.”
“Do I have a choice?”
He takes my hand gently, and I quickly hide my other hand under my thigh, not wanting him to see my bloody thumb. I let my left hand go completely limp in his, so he knows I won’t fight and make this fun for him. He turns my hand over, flattening it and stroking my palm with his thumb. His touch—god, his fucking touch nearly kills me. I can feel the familiar warmth blooming along my skin, taking my breath, sending prickles through my blood. I close my eyes, trying not to react. It’s all a deception. His fucking touch is a lie.
“You’re bleeding,” he says quietly.
My eyes fly open, but before I can think what to do, he pushes up the sleeve on my wrist. My gaze locks on him, but he’s staring down at my arm, pushing the sleeve higher. He swallows so hard I can hear it. I look down, feeling sick at the sight of the first two cuts, which were just thin lines of scab, now torn open and ragged from my thumbnail. The next five or six lines are still small and neatly sealed over.
Royal pulls my sleeve back down and raises his gaze to mine at last. “You need to get some help, Harper.”
“Like you did?”
“You helped me,” he says quietly.
“And look where it got me,” I say. “Fucked up people do fucked up things and make more fucked up people. So here we are. I’m as fucked up as you, and my pussy can’t be your therapy anymore. Are you going to get real help? Or just give me shit for the way I’m coping? At least I’m not hurting anyone but myself.”
“You’re wrong,” he says, stroking the back of my hand with his thumb, his long lashes casting shadows over his cheeks as he watches our linked hands.
“What’s your excuse?” I ask. “Don’t tell me you can’t afford a psychiatrist. What are you afraid of—that they’ll tell you you’re a psychopath?”
I know I’m being a bitch, but I don’t owe him anything. He took everything already, left me hollowed out and scraped clean, empty of all meaning. I want to hurt him back, even if it’s only in some petty little way that makes me even smaller than I already feel. This must be how Preston feels. Bitter and resentful and smart enough to know he’s beaten, but too stubborn to give up the last inch.
“I can’t be fixed,” Royal says, his dark gaze rising to mine.
I wonder if he’s stating a fact, or if he’s telling me that’s what he’s afraid of. I hate the way my throat tightens when our eyes meet, the way I can still feel him, the darkness that always called to mine. I should be immune now, and I want to scream and rage at the whole world because I’m not, and it’s not fucking fair. I endured things no one should endure. I walked through hell, and I made it back, if not quite alive. If there’s a merciful god, I should get to feel nothing when I look into the devil’s eyes. I fucking earned it.
“I can’t, either,” I say, my throat tight. “You made sure of that.”
I turn to the window and swallow past the agonizing ache. I will not cry.
twenty-one
Harper Apple