“Why not?”
“Because I haven’t decided how I want to kill him.”
“You don’t kill people,” I remind him. “You said death is easy. Life is suffering.”
“Some people don’t have the capacity to suffer.”
“Are you serious?” I ask, watching him carefully. My heart starts pounding in my chest as I study his grim face while he stares straight ahead. I can’t tell if he’s really thinking about what he’s saying. Not that I’ve never heard of someone our age murdering someone. There are gang shootings on my side of town on occasion, but it’s so far outside my reality, outside what I associate with, that it’s hard to comprehend an eighteen-year-old just going around murdering people who wronged him.
“He did all that to you,” Royal says quietly. “It’s his fault.”
“Part of it,” I admit. “A lot of it, even. But he gave me the scholarship that got me here. I’d never even have met you if it weren’t for him. He brought us both to the party on Friday, knowing we wouldn’t talk otherwise. And… He was my friend, sort of.”
I watch Royal’s reaction from the corner of my eye. It makes me feel all kinds of pathetic to admit this, but Mr. D was the only friend I had at times. I remember last Christmas, when he was the only one who texted to say Merry Christmas. I imagined some lonely old guy at the time, someone thinking of me because he was just as lonely. When I thought it was Preston, that made sense. Now, I imagine Baron surrounded by family up in New York, stepping away from his brothers and taking the time to text me. I’m surprised he even thought of me. Royal didn’t text, and we’d been fucking for months by then.
I don’t know how to feel about all this. Baron is so much worse in person than he is online. Mr. D was a creepy pervert. Baron is… I’m not sure what he is. He’s complicated as fuck, I know that much. But I can’t sort out my feelings on one car ride to school.
The mind is a funny thing. Feelings don’t just vanish the instant someone hurts you, like they should. They take as long to disappear as they do to be created—maybe longer. It’s like realizing I still loved Royal, even after he destroyed me. My love didn’t disappear. It just twisted into something else, something malformed and toxic and unpredictable, into hatred and betrayal and… Understanding.
Royal pulls into my parking spot, the one next to Colt’s Ridgeline. I can see my friend sitting inside, but I turn to Royal.
“You can’t just murder your own brother in cold blood. You don’t want to live with that on your conscience. And I don’t want you to. You shouldn’t have to.”
“Why not?” he asks flatly. “I murdered my sister.”
My heart twists inside my chest. “Royal…”
“What?” he snaps.
This time, I’m the one who reaches out. I lay a hand on his knee. “That’s not true.”
He snorts and brushes my hand away. “Fuck off, Harper. You don’t know shit about my sister.”
“I know plenty about her,” I say, arching a brow. “You’ve told me.”
“Guess I forgot to mention I killed her,” he says. “Now you know.”
“I know she drowned,” I say. “You weren’t even there.”
“Get out of my car.”
“Okay. If that’s what you want.”
“It is.”
We sit there a minute, and then I climb out of the car. I’ve barely gotten the door closed when he roars out of the parking lot without a backwards glance.
I’ve been so busy dealing with my own fucked-upness that I forgot for a moment how fucked up he is. I’ve let myself be caught up in Dolce fever so many times—in the excitement and danger that surrounds him; in my own crushing desire for a pre-formed insta-family to have my back; in his insatiable, suffocating need for me; even in his single-minded pursuit of getting me back. It’s intoxicating.
He’s intoxicating.
But he’s also a real person, one with his own shit going on that has nothing to do with me. Since he found out I was alive, he’s moved worlds to prove himself to me. He bought me food, furniture, and a fucking car. He gave me power and let me use it the way I wanted, not deciding for me. He delivered my revenge on a silver platter. He gave me a scholarship so I can blow out of this town when this year is over. He opened up to me, and he sat beside the man he says assaulted him because I told him it was the only way to be with me.
Royal has done everything he could to take care of me and heal me these last few months. I don’t know if I’ll ever completely recover, but I’ve healed enough to recognize that he hasn’t. That he’s done all this for me but nothing for himself. He’s helped me, but no one has helped him. He’s still the same fucked up man who dragged me into that swamp and let his brothers punish me.
“Harper,” someone calls, and I turn to see Gloria mincing toward me on her high heels. She gives me a little wave and a beaming smile, but I can see the wariness in her eyes.
“Hey, Lo,” I say, waiting for her to join me. Maybe I should be pissed at her for blowing Royal at the party the other night, but I can’t afford to make enemies. I need all the friends I can get, and even if she won’t join me at our lunch table, if people see their Queen B seeking me out, it makes me seem more desirable. I’ll take any edge I can get.