“Not even with Mabel?” I ask.
He gives me a funny look. “No way.”
“When your sister died?”
He shakes his head, his eyes sober for once. I know then that I did the right thing, that whatever he’s done, he’s also experienced pain, and adding to it would only make him worse. It might feel good, but it would do more damage to him, and through him, this town. Anyway, I’m not like Royal, like the Dolces, ruled by a thirst for revenge.
I reach out, take Duke’s hand, and squeeze. “Why me?”
He shrugs and pulls his hand away, reaching into his bag and pulling out another beer. “You saw me at my worst, what I’m capable of, and somehow you don’t hate me.”
“It’s hard to hate what you understand so well,” I say, watching him open the beer and tip it back, letting it slide down his throat. I know the relief that the bottle offers all too well. I’ve watched it pull my mother back in time and again, after every breakup, every attempt to be better, do better, get better. It always starts with drinking.
Duke finishes his beer and picks up his bag, shaking it before pointing to my beer. “You gonna finish that?”
I hand it to him with the same hollow, sad feeling I used to get when Mom would ask me for a drink. He’s on a binge, and I know how those work. He’ll leave and find it somewhere, so there’s no use in dumping it out to try to stop it.
“I better get back to school,” I say, standing and glancing at the door to the second room. “You’ll be okay?”
“I don’t know,” Duke says, his voice toneless. “If Dad can’t fix this with another donation…”
“Then you’ll go to Faulkner for the rest of the year,” I say, thinking how funny that twist of fate would be. “You never know. Maybe the change would be good for you.”
Duke just nods, staring morosely at his beer.
I don’t like the feeling of being watched, knowing Baron is in the other room, so I give the room one last sweep for my brass knuckles and then head upstairs. I don’t want to show up with ten minutes left in class, so I wait it out in the bathroom. At least the Dolces are suspended, so they won’t be here to mess with Magnolia at school. And she has a weapon now, one she can carry at school without being expelled. I might just let her keep the DOLL rings. She probably needs them more than I do.
As I sit there, I realize I had it all wrong. I thought if I could become queen, I could make a difference here. The social order isn’t just at this school, though. It’s something that happens at every school, in every state and country. I’m never going to change the fact that athletes and blondes are the standard, the most desirable and therefore in the highest positions.
And I don’t care to. That’s not my fight.
I took it easy on the twins, in part because I knew Royal wouldn’t survive losing another sibling. And even when I hated him, I still loved him. I saw a way I could get more out of his gift, make it last longer, so I took it. And then I tried to use that power to take them down in a different way, a way I thought was my own.
But it was never my way at all. I tried to show the twins their place, to show them they were no better than me. I wanted them to call me the queen, equal to their king status, so they could see that I was strong, that they couldn’t defeat me. I wanted them to see that I wasn’t ruined by what they did to me.
Now I see clearly, though. It wasn’t for me at all. It was all for them. I was trying to prove myself worthy to them and their people. To showthemI was strong by beating them at their own game.
But that’s bullshit.
I don’t need to prove anything to them. I am already worthy, a better person than they’ll ever be. I’m done playing Baron’s games, playing into his manipulations.
I want something for myself, something bigger than what I can do at this school.
In truth, I only wanted to be queen so that Baron wouldn’t be king, not because I have any interest in the position. Now that he’s suspended, gone for the time being, I realize I don’t give a single fuck about ruling the school. Gloria has that spot locked in, and she’s good at it in ways I have no interest in learning or imitating. If I wanted it, she’d show me how, even knowing it would mean losing her own spot. That alone—her support and friendship—means more than any spot at the lunch table or on a proverbial throne. She can have her title, her crown and all.
Hell, I’ll give her my fucking blessing. In the Dolce boys’ absence, she can run this place like she always has. She earned it, endured the Dolces in ways I couldn’t and don’t want to. If being their queen means being at their beck and call, I have no interest.
I disrupted the complacent obedience of the student population by showing them they had other options, and I brought attention to the school’s corruption with the little earthquake of my protest. The uprising of the cast-off Dolce girls and servers let people know that there is power in numbers, that they didn’t have to accept the way things were. Dixie and Magnolia’s video debacle showed that the Dolce boys are only human, that they’re not immune to all consequence. My job in that movement is done. I’ll leave the peasant revolt at Willow Heights to them.
I have bigger goals.
I need to use the power that both Royal and Preston gave me for something bigger than high school drama. That’s just a reflection of a bigger problem in Faulkner, an evil that’s run unchecked for too long. It’s the reason for Royal’s unquenchable thirst for revenge, the mold that formed the twins into the psychos they are. If I’m going to solve this problem in Faulkner once and for all, I have to go back to the root cause—their father.
eleven
Royal Dolce
“You going to tell me where we’re going?” Harper asks, locking her Escalade and climbing into my car.