Kings of Lockdown: A Dark High School Bully Romance (Brutal Boys of Everlake Prep Book 2)

by Caroline Peckham

  “You’re determined to corrupt me tonight, Nash,” she commented as I lifted a slice of pizza from the plate and held it out to her.

  “Only a little,” I joked, trying not to grin like an idiot at the sound of my name on her lips. I could almost pretend that we were just a girl and a guy when we were alone like this. Imagine that there weren’t solid walls between us that forbid us from being anything more. It was intoxicating and dangerous at once.

  Instead of taking the food from my hand, she parted her lips and I instantly pressed the food into her mouth, my pulse racing as she closed her eyes and moaned in a way that really had to be sexual. My dick definitely thought it was. And the rest of me did too until I forced myself to look away.

  We fell into silence as we demolished the pizza and I leaned back against the couch with a sigh of satisfaction, letting my gaze remain on the fire as it crackled.

  “So…you can tell me to fuck off if you like,” Tatum began, inching closer to me until her knee pressed against my thigh and I was forced to look around at her. “But, do you wanna tell me why you hate Saint and his family so much?”

  My heart leapt then pounded then shrivelled away into the deep darkness that had been left in the wake of what Saint’s family had done to mine.

  I didn’t want to tell her. But I also hadn’t talked about it with anyone in a hell of a long time. And I felt like she would understand. At least in some part. She’d told me about losing her sister. She knew enough about pain, betrayal, heartache, grief…

  “It’s not a pretty story,” I warned her.

  “I promise you can trust me with it,” she breathed, reaching out to take my hand. And I let her. Because I already had a student locked up in my house with me alone at night and that went against so many rules that I couldn’t even count them. Holding her hand was the least of my problems.

  I curled my fingers around her small hand and ran my thumb back and forth across her soft skin.

  “When I was growing up, we never had much. My dad wasn’t around and my kid brother Michael didn’t remember him at all. To be honest, I don’t either really. I know he was tall and shouted a lot. And that my mom said good riddance to bad rubbish whenever his name was mentioned after he left. We had a small house but a nice one. Mom worked as a nurse and picked up extra shifts a lot so I used to have to help out with babysitting Michael pretty often…”

  I frowned as I thought back over those happy days. I didn’t do it nearly enough. It was like my grief and anger coloured all of that black and made me forget. I kept the raw heartache close, but maybe I was losing some of what I’d had by focusing on the way it had been stolen from me all the time. But until I got even for what had been done to them, I couldn’t see any other way to move on from my pain.

  “Anyway, when I was eleven I managed to secure a partial scholarship to this fancy ass high school – not quite as elite as Everlake, but the education I could have gotten there was way superior to anything I could manage at the local high school.”

  “What did you want to be?” she asked me and it took me a moment to remember the dreams of that foolish kid.

  “I wanted to go to med school,” I admitted, knowing it was a million miles from where I’d ended up and feeling like an idiot for saying it. “My mom always used to come home with tales about the surgeons she worked with who earned six times her wages and were labelled as heroes for their work. I guess it sounded like an impossible dream. But I wanted to have that life, look after my mom, meet a nice girl and have three perfect kids.” I sighed and forced myself to continue. That man I’d imagined myself becoming was so far away from my reality that I couldn’t even picture him now. He hadn’t had any darkness in him. No grief, no burden of revenge. “Anyway, Mom started working even more shifts so that she could pay the rest of my fees and I picked up a paper route and a job in a hardware store on the weekends. Even Michael started helping with my paper route so that he could pitch in and he was only nine.”

  “Your family sound amazing,” Tatum murmured, but the way her eyes glimmered as I turned to look at her said she already knew this didn’t have a happy ending.

  “They were,” I agreed. “They were everything to me. It was the three of us against the world and then… One night, Mom got back late from a shift, it was gone nine and there hadn’t been anything in the fridge for dinner so me and Michael had eaten cereal on the couch while watching TV. But when she got back, she was smiling so much that we couldn’t stay mad at her for it. It turned out she’d been offered a promotion with a pay rise which meant more to us than I can even really explain. She’d been struggling to make up the difference in my school fees and that money was like an answer to all of our prayers. To celebrate, she took us out to a twenty four hour diner on the other side of town and we all ate pancakes and drank coke floats and talked about going on a holiday to California when I had my doctorate and a fancy surgeon’s job. It was like, this perfect fucking evening. We were all just happy. I used to dream about that night a lot…” I trailed off as half a smile tugged at my lips while a frown drove into my brow. These memories were precious, but they cut me open and left me bleeding too.

  “You don’t have to tell me the rest if you don’t want to,” Tatum said, shifting closer again as she leaned her head on my shoulder.

  I took comfort in the warmth of her body and the sweet scent of her skin and before I could overthink it, I curled my arm around her and pulled her into my lap.

  She didn’t gasp or flinch or do anything to say she didn’t want me to hold her like that. She just curled her body against mine and laid her head down on my chest like she was listening to my heartbeat through my shirt.

  I wrapped my arms around her and rested my cheek against her forehead, knowing she had her own grief too. That she knew this feeling, she’d lived it, survived it, learned the battle of coping with it every day. And knowing that she understood made it that bit easier to tell her the rest of it.

  “We got back in our car and started to drive home. We’d been having so much fun that it was past midnight and Michael was practically asleep on his feet. I remember him crawling across the back seat and lying down with his head on his arms. Mom laughed and kissed his forehead, promising to drive slow because he didn’t have his seat belt on.” A lump rose in my throat and Tatum brushed her fingers across my ribs, back and forth again and again in a soothing motion that gave me the strength I needed to go on. “I got in the front with Mom and we began our journey home. We were crossing an intersection when the car hit us. The lights were green, I can remember it clear as day. The lights were green and Mom was driving slow because of Michael, but the other car ran the red light and…”

  I was momentarily overwhelmed by the memory of that crash. Of the world flipping over and over, pain driving through me, Mom screaming, me screaming and Michael-

  “By the time our car stopped rolling, I could hardly see straight, let alone think straight. It landed on its roof and I was hanging upside down in my seatbelt with blood dripping down my face from a cut on my neck. I’ve still got that scar. Mom was screaming and screaming and at first I didn’t even realise it was my brother’s name she was saying until I managed to focus on the view beyond the windshield, of the little broken body laying in the road. There was so much blood, so much fucking blood. And then I was screaming too and suddenly someone was ripping me out of the car. I didn’t know it then but that was Saint’s father. Troy Memphis, our fine upstanding Governor. All I knew at the time was that he reeked of whiskey and was calling my mother a stupid bitch over and over. He dropped me in the middle of the road and I crawled away from him, ignoring the pain in my body as I fought to get to Michael. I knew it was too late, but I had to try, I had to see.”

  The memory of his broken body, his eyes staring lifelessly at the starry sky above would never leave me. Sometimes all I had to do was blink and I was looking at him lying there again, clutching onto his hand and begging him not to leave me. That night tore me a
part, ripped me open and stole everything from me in one fell swoop.

  “Troy Memphis was on his phone and some other people arrived, calling for ambulances and the police. But when they came, they didn’t arrest him. The police chief greeted him like an old friend, wrapping an arm around him, comforting him. I didn’t realise what that meant at the time but when they took my Mom away it began to sink in… My memories of the rest of that night aren’t that clear. An ambulance took Michael’s body away and another brought me to the hospital to get patched up. When I was released, I was put in emergency foster care. My mom was charged with drunk driving and running a red light even though she hadn’t done any of it. Even though it was him. Troy Memphis in his top of the range bullet proof car that smashed through ours like cannon fire. We used all of the money she’d worked for to pay my school fees on a top lawyer but of course, all of our money was nothing at all to him. He had even better lawyers prosecuting, no one would listen to our side of the story, he’d paid off officials and the chief of police, hell he probably paid off the judge too. In the end they upped her sentence to eighteen years because they claimed she’d caused Michael’s death by dangerous driving as well as being under the influence. It was a fucking farce. All of it. She never drank. We’d had coke floats. And when she was sent to jail, I was given a permanent place in a group foster home. But I didn’t give up. I wrote to newspapers, posted online, created petitions, even managed to find some security footage from that night which showed his car swerving all over the road a couple of blocks away from the site of the crash. Mom sold the house, we got a new lawyer and we were working on an appeal.”

  “Did he stop that from going through too?” Tatum asked as I paused, her fingers still stroking back and forth along my ribs. It was soothing in the most instinctive way. Like that touch against my flesh was her way of letting her soul connect to mine. Of saying she could feel my pain and she understood it. That it hurt her too.

  “Of course,” I scoffed bitterly. “But not in the way I’d expected. One afternoon I was leaving the lawyer’s office downtown and this van pulled up beside me in the street. These huge guys yanked me inside it before I even knew what was happening. We drove for fucking ages with me rattling around in the back and these fucking psychos just sitting there glaring at me, as we headed right out of town and up into the mountains. We came to a stop and they shoved me out again in this clearing in the woods. There was another car parked up, some stupidly expensive thing with blacked out windows. Troy Memphis got out of the car and a boy followed him. Saint must have only been about seven but the way his upper lip curled back as he looked at me told me he was already well on his way to becoming a monster just like his father. Troy told me that it was over, that I needed to stop dwelling in the past and move on with my life. He said he was sorry that it had had to come to this, but that it was my fault for not just letting the past stay there. I didn’t know what he was talking about at the time and I remember asking him why. Why had he done this to my mother after what he’d done to Michael. And he said because we live in a world where most people are ants and a few of us are giants. And sometimes the ants must get squashed so the giants can rise. Then he shoved me into the dirt and told me I’d be next if I didn’t leave it alone. I looked up as he stalked away and found Saint staring down back at me. And he was smiling.”

  My grip on Tatum tightened until I was sure I must have been hurting her, but she didn’t flinch or wriggle away from me. She just held me, her hand stroking back and forth on my side, the material of my wifebeater the only thing parting our skin and for a moment I let myself forget what she was and just enjoyed holding her in my arms. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d done that. I wasn’t even sure if I’d done it at all since my family was destroyed.

  “They drove off and left me up there. I managed to make it back to the road and walked for hours before a passing car pulled over and offered me a ride. By the time I got back to the foster home, I found the police waiting for me, those falsely sad faces they give as they offer up condolences about someone they never even knew. The said my mom got into a fight in prison and had been killed. That woman would never even raise her hand against a fly. She was stabbed sixteen times. And I know for a fact that Troy Memphis was responsible.”

  “Nash-” Tatum began but I cut her off, needing to finish this now that I’d started.

  “I also knew that there was no point in me coming at him the way I’d been trying to. No point in me using the legal route with its corruption and lack of morals. Money and power were the only things that mattered to all of the people who should have helped my family and I didn’t have either of those. So instead I came up with a plan. I worked tirelessly to get the qualifications I needed to teach and made all the connections I had to to get this job. I changed my name, bided my time and made sure that I would be here when Saint came to this school. He’s my way in. And now, thanks to you, I’m closer than ever before. Troy Memphis took my family from me and I intend to take that and so much more from him in return. His money, his power, his reputation, all of it. I’ll give my life to take him down. And if Saint wants to stand in my way then I’ll gladly make him burn too.”

  Tatum didn’t say anything, but I could feel her tears soaking through my shirt as she stayed locked in my arms.

  I wasn’t sure how long we sat there, our grief hanging in the air around us and bonding us together as we wallowed in it. But for once, I didn’t find I was consumed by all the bad things. I was actually able to remember the good times too. I could almost hear their laughter, see their smiles. And as we stayed there together, I let my eyes fall closed as I soaked it in. And I wondered if there might just be something good in this world for me after all.

  I woke for the third time this week nestled in the arms of a beautiful man. I was wedged between the back of the couch and his side, his arm locked around me as my cheek rested against his chest. His breathing was slow and steady, matching my own. I didn’t want to move in case I disturbed this moment. It was as fragile as glass and as temporary as a thunder storm.

  Everything he’d told me about his family last night had broken my heart and made my hate for Saint Memphis solidify. His father was a villainous bastard and Saint clearly took after him.

  My soul ached for Monroe. To have gone through so much pain at the hands of one man made me want to tear through time and space to reach the perpetrator and throttle him in his sleep. I hadn’t known what a vengeful person I could be until I’d met the Night Keepers. But what was one more person to add to the list of my enemies now?

  Monroe stood at my side through anything, a fierce protector with a dark heart. And I would be his protector too. His knight. His ride or die. We were in this together, more deeply than I’d ever realised. Despite knowing he had his own pursuit of revenge, nothing could have prepared me for the intense bond I’d feel toward him when hearing his reasons for seeking it. I’d help in any way I could to bring him justice. But I knew with a heavy grief that weighed down my entire body, nothing would ever heal the wounds of losing his family. I may have lost Jessica, but no one had taken her from me, ripped her life away. She’d died because of an illness. There was no one to hate for it. Just a cavity in my chest which she’d once filled and no one ever would again. Having someone to blame would have eaten me alive. But in a way, maybe holding onto that blame gave Monroe purpose. I’d spent so long after losing Jess feeling utterly helpless. Better to hate than to drown in despair. And as I thought that, my mind turned to Blake and my gut knotted as I suddenly understood him far too well for my liking. What he did would never be okay, but maybe it made a twisted kind of sense at last.

  Birdsong carried to me beyond the patio doors and peace enveloped me like a cloud as my worries ebbed away. Nash Monroe was safety embodied. I could have laid in his arms forever and never wanted for anything more than his comforting touch. But darkness called to me beyond this haven. There were too many harsh truths I couldn’t ignore. Like the fact
that he was my teacher. Or that we’d aligned ourselves as allies against the Night Keepers and I didn’t need the complication of crushing on him. Sometimes, I was sure he felt it too, this crackling, electric energy between us. But I couldn’t see him ever giving into that urge. We may have been fighting the same war, but there was plenty standing between us too. He was on a mission to destroy Saint Memphis’s dad and nothing or no one was going to draw his eye away from that target. And I didn’t want to distract him from it either. But sometimes…

  Better get out of here before I do something stupid.

  I brushed my hand down his chest as I moved to get up and he caught my wrist before I could try and make my escape. His eyes opened and I gazed down at him, half propped up as I leaned over him, caught red-handed.

  “Princess,” he said in surprise, his voice gruff from sleep and making me ache for him.

  “Hi,” I breathed and a frown pulled at his brow. His dark blonde hair was messy and fell into his ocean blue eyes. He looked so tempting, I wanted to graze my nails across his stubble and ravish him. Probably not the best plan though, huh Tate?

  He released me, pushing himself up to stand and I swung my legs over the edge of the couch with a yawn. My eyes travelled to the Night Keeper tattoo on the back of his neck with my gut twisting. He’s one of them.

  “I didn’t mean to fall asleep there,” he muttered, his hand slipping into his sweatpants and rearranging his junk as he strode away into the bathroom at a brisk pace.

  I was left with my throat dry and my nails biting into the couch either side of my legs. He was pissed. At me? Maybe. Maybe not. It wasn’t my fault we’d passed out together and I couldn’t say I regretted it either. Coach Monroe clearly felt differently.