Even in clothes that fit me as if they’re tailored to my every proportion, I feel suddenly out of place, as if I’m playing dress up. Yeah, the rich clothes fit my body, but they don’t fitme.The little freshmen girls swooning over Royal might not know it, but Gloria sure as hell does. And though she’s on scholarship, too, somehow she looks every inch the polished, perfect southern belle, her long blonde hair flat-ironed and hanging down her back and topped with a gold headband, a schoolgirl skirt with her freshly pressed shirt, and perfect makeup.
I realize I don’t know her life at all anymore, not even in the superficial way I used to. I open my mouth to say we’re not together, but Royal gives me a warning look, like he’s reading my mind and knows exactly what I’m about to do. I shut up and smile at Gloria, wondering if my betrayal got back to her, if she’s an enemy now.
I won’t underestimate her again. She may look sweet as pie on the surface, but she’s savage underneath—and stronger than me. She’s been where I was. She didn’t break. She used that shit to propel her to the top, to become a queen.
“Move along, Lo,” Royal says, his voice bland as he straightens and faces her.
She cocks a brow, but her knuckles whiten as she clutches her books harder to her chest. “Shouldn’t you be off at college instead of chasing jailbait in high school?”
“I’m less than a year older than Harper,” he points out.
“It’s fine,” I say, sliding my arms around him from behind. It’s for show, but I don’t miss the way he tenses in my arms or the way my stupid heart swells until it aches at the familiarity of his body against mine, the casually intimate gesture I used to do as a matter of course instead of faking it for status. “I’m fine. Go.”
“I was just leaving.” He turns in my arms, squeezing me against him so hard I can’t breathe for a second, and I wonder if he’s feeling the same ache I am, the ache of missing what we had. We might be right in front of each other, but we’re not each other’s anymore. Faking a touch, an embrace, almost makes it worse than not doing it at all. It only reminds me that it’s all been destroyed.
“For the record, I don’t approve of this,” Royal says, stepping away from me and gesturing between me and Gloria. I search his face, his eyes, for something real, some hint of longing for what just passed between us, but I can’t find even a trace. I’m not surprised. Royal shows the world what he wants them to see, and he wants them to see that I’m still his, that I carry his mark of approval, and that I’m off limits.
I don’t fight it. There’s no point. Like Colt said, his claim is forever. I can’t escape it. All I can do is use it for whatever the currency of his status is worth here.
It must still be worth something, because a crowd of preppy freshman girls giggle behind their hands and cover their hearts and roll their eyes back in their heads like they’re about to swoon when Royal walks away. Irrational irritation rises inside me, the urge to knock their heads together and tell them to find a boy their own damn age. I’m far too aware of Royal’s complete and utter dismissal of them, the way he doesn’t even spare them a glance, and of the idiotic satisfaction it brings me.
“Oh my god, it’shim,” squeals a doe-eyed, dewy-skinned girl with blonde ringlets and pouty pink lips.
“I can’t believe we got to see him,” says her friend, a short, full-figured brunette with flat-ironed hair and what looks like her first attempt at winged liner. “He doesn’t even go here anymore.”
“I feel like I just saw Brody Villines,” agrees another friend, one who obviously hasn’t gotten through her awkward, pimply adolescent phase, though she’s wearing a pound of makeup to try to hide her pimples. “I heard he broke, like, every football record at this school last year.”
“I heard he’s running his own company now,” says the blonde. “Dolce Sweets. That’s him!”
I turn back to Gloria just in time to see the girl at the next locker rolling her eyes before closing the wooden door and hefting her backpack over her shoulder. I don’t recognize her from last year, and it’s a small enough school that I’m pretty sure I would remember a tall brunette who wears flannels that are definitely bending the dress code’s ‘collared shirts’ policy.
“Who’s that?” I ask.
Gloria wrinkles her nose as she watches the girl clomp off down the hall in her Doc Martens. “That’s Josie,” she says. “Transfer student. Obvs on scholarship. Might be pretty if she bothered to try. Did she even comb her hair this morning?”
I cock a brow and give her a meaningful look. “Judge much?”
“Speaking of trolls,” she says, scrunching her face up like she smells something bad and looking someone up and down as they approach behind me.
I turn, and my heart nearly stops beating. “Colt,” I choke out.
“Hey, Appleteeny,” he says with a slow smile, the one that might look casual, but if you know him, you can see the guardedness in his eyes. “Or should I say… Hey, Darling?”
“For the love of all that’s holy, please don’t.”
Didn’t take Preston long to spread that around. Guess that answers the question of whether or not they’re close.
“Considering I hear we had our own little afternoon delight last year, I think I’d rather forget it was ever mentioned, too,” he says.
“You guys hooked up?” Gloria asks, looking at me like it’s a personal affront to her that I’d dare to hook up with someone she considers beneath her. I guess if I want to be her friend, I have to keep up appearances like she does.
“No,” I say firmly. “We just hung out once.”
“Yeah,” Colt says with a smirk. “That’s what happened.”
“Why are you talking to us?” Gloria asks in her bitchiest voice. “Go crawl back into your creepy little cave like the goblin you are.”
I sometimes forget that she wasn’t just my friend last year. She was the bitch queen of the school. Now that she’s a senior, her reign will be supreme. It’s hard to imagine anyone could rival her even without Royal on her arm, but if I know Gloria, she’ll secure one of the other top dogs just to make sure.