Yeah, maybe I want to make things right with Harper, but she’s not blameless. She was being shady all that time. Every minute we were together was a lie.
Baron was being shady, too, but not to me. He may not have told me he was talking to her all along, but he never touched her, never hurt her. He didn’t hurt me. When I was off the deep end for her, he was watching my back, watching out for our family. And he did it without touching a hair on her head, out of respect for me and my claim on her.
He’s not the one who betrayed me. She is.
Now I don’t know what to do with her, with this, with my fucking addiction to her. It was easy when I knew it couldn’t last, that I’d get rid of her when I was done. When I thought she was a Darling, I knew the end. Now we’ve passed that ending, and there’s no map for what comes next. She’s still wrapped around me like her spider’s web, and I have no clear direction, no way out. I destroyed her. She was supposed to die, to disappear like Crystal, to never come back. Instead, she rose from the grave, another ghost to haunt me, this one in the flesh.
I don’t know how our story ends, and it pisses me the fuck off. But I know I have to have her, that I can’t let her go. I know that her life is mine, and it always will be. I won’t let her take the easy way out, like she tried to do before. She’s in this with me, whether she likes it or not, until one of us draws our last breath. I just don’t know when that ending comes, what it looks like if she’s not a Darling, where destruction is the only option.
If I tell myself she was just doing a job in exchange for a scholarship, that it wasn’t personal, I can stop myself from wanting to destroy her all over again every time I think about what she did. So that’s what I’ll keep doing until I know where it’s going, what inevitable end is in store for us both.
three
Harper Apple
The rest of the week passes in a tense tightrope walk. I’m on edge, not sure how to feel about Baron’s blasé attitude about being Mr. D. He acted like it was no big deal, but I know better. It was a big deal.
Wasn’t it?
He’s so good at manipulating the situation that even I left the bridge second-guessing myself, trying to remember what he did that was so bad. I was so set on taking down the Dolces last year, on having Mr. D help me do it. I was the one who spun the fantasy that we were friends, that he was some powerful man who was on my side. I needed that powerful ally, so I turned him into that, even though he never gave me any indication he was looking out for my best interest—if anything, the opposite.
But if he’s the enemy, he needs to be taken down more than ever. Because he might not have done anything bad when he was acting as Mr. D, but he did plenty when he was being Baron Dolce—not just to me, but to other girls and the Darling men, too.
But how can I take down the Dolces without taking down Royal? He’s the center of it all.
I know I don’t have that power, anyway. Not alone.
Still, they need to be stopped from what they’re doing to this town, and I’m the only one who seems to realize it. Or at least the only one who can admit it. I don’t know how to heal the town, how to make it better, with the Dolces still running it—especially without sinking to their level.
I’ve done that before, and the price is too high. I barely survived it. Some part of me didn’t. Some part of me is gone and will never be replaced. I couldn’t live through it again, and I sure as hell won’t put anyone else in that position.
And if I can’t do it alone, and I can’t risk anyone else, how am I supposed to do it at all?
I keep mulling over it for the next few days. Royal doesn’t come to pick me up before school the next day or the next or the next. I know I should be happy about that, since he’s giving me space, but I can’t help but wonder how much Baron’s confession got to him, too.
I shouldn’t care. I shouldn’t want Royal to want me. But after we hooked up at the party, I crave him, crave his texts on my phone, his touch, the way he needed me. When he doesn’t show up every day to insist on taking me to school, my dumb bitch heart cries for his familiar hovering. Some masochistic part of me enjoys his crazy stalker tendencies. Without them, how do I know if he’s losing interest? Instead of being excited at the prospect, a sick terror grips me. I don’t think I could stand losing him again.
But fuck if I’m going to show my cards. I remember Gloria telling me not to stalk him last year on New Years, to let him want me. So, I do. I don’t text him, don’t tell him I miss his stupid car in my driveway and his controlling insistence on driving me places.
At school, Baron and I avoid each other, but we never stop watching the other, like we’re both waiting for the other to make the first move. It’s an uneasy truce. He lets me have my table at lunch, and everyone knows the new table where he sits as king is the center now. But his allowing me to exist, to claim their table with my rebel crew, to challenge him, takes the Dolce boys’ power down a notch. Everyone expected him to put me in my place, but he didn’t.
They watch me warily in the halls, unsure if they should worship me as the queen I proclaimed myself to be. They can see I have power, since Baron hasn’t cut me down, but I don’t exactly fit the princess mold they’re used to. The tension amps up every day at lunch, but the D-boys don’t try to take back our table or stop the handful of girls from delivering our food each day before scurrying back to their own tables and pretending they’re not part of this. Even I’m waiting to see what Baron has up his sleeve, if he’s really going to let me keep openly rebelling against the order that benefits him and his dude bros.
The rest of the school is too wrapped up in Homecoming preparations to notice aside from lunchtime. The girls are campaigning for queen while the guys worry about their tuxes matching the girls’ dresses. PTO moms fill the school, fussing about mums. Student council and other clubs plaster the halls with posters for the game and the dance the next day. There are pep rallies and spirit week activities, all leading up to the big Faulkner/Willow Heights showdown on Friday.
Last year, I didn’t go to the game. I was an outsider.
Now, I’m inside, but no one quite believes I’m queen. I’m more of an interloper, a usurper that the king has somehow allowed to remain instead of beheading me.
On Friday morning, I walk out of my house to see Royal’s Range Rover sitting in the driveway behind my car, and my chest inflates like a fucking balloon. Guess I really am just another dumb bitch who let the Dolce boys do whatever they wanted to her, and she still wants them.
Istill want him. I hate my decimated heart for filling with hope when I see his car, but I can’t stop it from happening.
I climb in like it makes no difference to me and give him a cool nod. “What’s up?”
He shakes his head and doesn’t say anything as he backs out of the drive.
“What?” I ask.