by Eden O'Neill
Nineteen
Royal
“I’ll be right back.” I paid the ride share driver in cash to wait, easier and unable to be tracked. The last thing I needed was my dad to know I hopped a plane.
Let alone I was on the other side of the country.
None of that was his business, and how I spent the duration of my suspension he couldn’t give two shits about anyway. I’d already embarrassed him by getting kicked out of school, and he handed me my ass for it.
Those bruises finally starting to fade, I slid a dozen red roses off the seat. Shutting the door, I tucked them under my arm as I walked. I hadn’t been here before, but I felt like I knew the area well. The guys had described it in detail, the pictures they showed me only helped. I easily navigated the cemetery.
I easily found my best friend.
A sock in the chest hurt less, the pain of everything coming to fruition. Standing here, I had to face reality. I had to face her and all my failures.
I couldn’t do it…
My thoughts consumed me as my knees hit the ground, Paige’s headstone right in front of me. They buried her next to her mom, her mom like it was her time to be buried. Neither of them should have been, all of it too fucking soon.
I put my hand on the stone, the rock hot from the California heat. I hadn’t been out here for the internment of the ashes, telling myself it was for her. I’d been fighting and still was for her but I knew the truth now. I was weak. I failed her in every way, and I knew that just as well as I was on my knees now.
“I can’t find it…” I retched over her stone, shaking. I pressed the roses into the dirt, touching my head against the stone. “I tried, Paige. I tried, but I can’t fucking find it!”
I couldn’t do it… The one thing I needed to do to justify everything I’d done and had been willing to do. I’d been all in, fighting from my core to bring about some fucking justice in this world, to bring some fucking justice to my friend…
To find out her truth.
But I couldn’t even do that, weak and letting go of the roses, I reached into my pocket. I pulled out that dingy old handkerchief. One I’d let get dirty, one I’d let suffer through time to the point it was now. A quick tie and I had it around the roses, giving it back to her when I put the roses in front of her headstone. It belonged with her. It wasn’t good enough for me and never had been.
“Are… Are you all right, young man?”
Words from my side, I wiped my eyes, getting my shit together when I faced a woman. She came up herself with a bundle of flowers in her hands, daisies, and I recognized her. I’d never met her before, but she’d been at Paige’s reception.
I got to my feet before the middle-aged woman, one with dark hair and deep dark eyes that reminded me not of my friend but someone else.
The pain ripped raw again as I looked at her, and staring away, I stepped back from the stone.
“I’m fine,” I said, a bald-faced fucking lie. I swallowed, tucking my hands into my pockets. “Just paying my respects.”
The woman approached closer, looking so fucking close to December it really did hurt. I recalled the invitation to Paige’s reception mentioning it was at her aunt’s house and this woman looked so close to both Lindquist sisters this had to be her. Their aunt Celeste. She ventured slowly, but eventually, eased up and no longer looked at me like I was a freak. She crossed the rest of the grass over to me with her daisies in her arms, and my face must have healed up enough not to put her off. She stared right at me, her smile slight as she lowered the flowers.
“You knew Paige?” she asked, and I nodded. Her smiled lifted. “That’s so nice you came to see her. The second this week.”
“The second?” I questioned, standing back and letting her pay her respects. As it turned out, she had two sets of flowers. One bunch she placed on the headstone belonging to Paige and the other on Paige’s mom’s. The woman stared at that one a while, putting her hand on it like I had.
She nodded. “Yes, so nice. No one has come since the internment. No one but me.” She put hands on both stones, running her palms along them. “I hate that they’re together. I hate they’re like this.”
I hated so much more, none of this fair at all. Paige shouldn’t have died. She…
Her aunt dampened her lips before looking up at me. “Are you from Maywood Heights too? The other woman was.”
“Other woman?” I asked and she nodded again.
“So far to come, I thought.” She faced the grave. “She stayed for hours.”
My eyes narrowed. “What did she look like?”
“Tall, lovely…” She shook her head. “So many hours she was here.”
So many hours… So many…
“Did she say her name?” My voice stiffened, hard as I waited, and when Paige’s aunt shook her head, I found myself reaching into my pocket. I took out my phone, leaving.
“Young man?”
Her aunt called to me, but I was already making another call and walking away.
LJ picked up on the first ring.
“What’s up?” he asked. “You’re done already?”
He knew I’d flown here. All the guys knew, but what they didn’t and we didn’t was connecting someone to all this who hadn’t been in the cards before. We had no reason really, other evidence leading us in another direction.
Maybe it was leading us in the ultimate direction.
“We need to meet up,” I said. “I don’t think just my dad’s involved.”
Twenty
December
“Hey. Royal’s back,” Birdie tossed at me before gym class. She backed down the hallway. “Just wanted to let you know.”
I gazed up at the clock in the hall, minutes before I had to be across campus for my next class. I slammed my locker, heading instead in the opposite direction. Birdie probably thought to give me a heads-up for good reason. The last time Royal had been in these halls, he’d fought Ramses because of me.
I headed over toward his locker to find him, ignoring Jax’s warning. Some time had passed since those moments at his house, and maybe, the two of us standing in front of each other could talk some of it over.
I could only hope.
I braved up, hoping to God he was alone and willing to talk to me if I found him. I knew where his locker was, so getting there was easy. Rounding the corner, I fully expected to find him with a shit-ton of people around him.
Imagine my surprise when I found him alone.
He was pulling books out of his locker, his uniform pristine this time. It was no longer ripped and tattered, his hair no longer messy, and as I got closer, he’d healed. His bruises were gone, and the ones under his eyes the same.
I knew because he looked at me.
He stared right at me, only the two of us in the hallway. He must have heard me, but as I got closer, he merely moved those green irises back to what he was doing. He continued to mess in his locker, and I chewed my lip.
“Hi,” I said, the simplest thing to say when I got beside him.
A thick arm accompanied the grapple of a book from the top shelf. “What’s up?”
The chill outside was less cold. I pushed arms around my front. “You’re back.”
“Seems that way.” More chill, and I wanted to shake him, get him to open up… do something, but he just continued to fool around with his stuff.
I forced out a harsh breath. “I think we should talk. About some of the things you said?” He said so many things, confusing things, and I just needed some damn answers. “Royal—”
A locker slammed, and I blanched, Royal tossing his book bag on his back. He pushed a hand into his pocket, that green stare pinned directly on me. Royal and I had a few tense exchanges, ones where he’d wanted me to stay out of his way. But even in the past, it hadn’t been this, though. He hadn’t looked completely over me and something I said to him.
That was his look now, the boy taking the steps to move closer to me. He wet his lips. “Conversat
ion?”
What the…
Thrown, I blinked wide. “Our conversation we had. You know… That last one?”
Again he passed it off, a fucking shoulder shrug this time. “Gotta go. You probably should too. Probably shouldn’t get into any more trouble around here. At least me.”
He left me with nothing more than that before passing me, and my heart squeezing, I backed into his locker. I didn’t watch him as he walked away from me, down the hallway and to his own classes. I couldn’t.
I was having a hard time standing.
He was really doing this, shutting me out, and closing my eyes, I opened them only to almost run into someone. I hadn’t expected Mira to be there, his girlfriend, Mira, let alone her death stare.
She gave that to me full on, her arms folded over her chest. Knowing I ran into her, I passed her a mumbled “sorry” before passing around her. With the fragile state I was currently in, I didn’t feel like dealing with her too.
“I hope you don’t think you’re just going to walk past me like that,” she said, causing me to stop. “You’ve been avoiding me like a little bitch, and I think you owe me the courtesy of at least a chat. Especially after getting my boyfriend suspended.”
My jaw working, I forced myself to face this asshole. She was so in the wrong here it wasn’t even funny. I shook my head. “I don’t know what you’re talking…”
So quickly she got into my face, so fucking quick. In a flash, she had an acrylic fingernail pointed in my direction, and it look all I had not to rip her finger away and snap it in two. I stood there, my patience tested, but not for long if she didn’t back the hell up. “Mira, you seriously need to put some distance between us right now.”
“I need to put some distance?” She put her finger down only to prop hands on her hips. “You need to put some distance between you and Royal. What do you think is going on between you two, and why in the entire fuck is he getting into fights with you in the middle?”
“I don’t have time for this—”
She grabbed me. Like actually fucking grabbed me by the arm, and I swore to God I saw red. I swore to God it would be World War fucking three if she didn’t get her hand off me right now.
“I could end him, you know?” Paused me, though, the words seething from Mira’s ruby red lips. “I can and I will. I got something over on him, December. Something so terrible I wouldn’t hesitate to let come out if only to keep him away from you.”
I eyed her, my eyebrows narrowing. I started to question, but she let go of me.
“Stay away from my man,” she said and, with that, fluffed her hair out. She headed in the opposite direction.
What the fuck?
Twenty-One
December
So Mira had something on Royal, did she? Of course she did, and suddenly it all made sense. Suddenly, their relationship made sense. It’d seemed to come out of nowhere when it happened. I’d seen them together at my sister’s reception, something she’d definitely not been invited to attend, and the way it’d gone down had been so odd. He’d shut me out right after that, abandoned me and shipped me off to fucking Arizona, only for me to come back and him to tell me he needed her. Maybe he hadn’t needed her really.
Maybe he had no choice.
Things were starting to click, but what wasn’t were Royal’s secrets and the dangers I may or may not be in knowing information about what happened that night with my sister. Whatever was going on, more questions were warranted, though, and previous plans seemed to be in the wrong direction. I needed to reanalyze how I was handling certain things, so the note from Ramses in English 8 couldn’t have come at a better time. He’d tossed it right down my front, and I opened it.
Ramses: I hear Prinze is back. We probably should talk about some stuff.
I turned, his nod small. I watched him scribble down something again, and when I turned back, that note came down my front too.
Ramses: I also really do feel like you’ve been ghosting me. No jokes this time. We need to talk, ’Zona. What’s going on?
What was going on was I was fucking confused, confused about how we started this semester and where we were going now. I was confused about Royal and both his feelings and mine. A lot was going on.
I scribbled down words.
Me: Let’s talk at lunch. At the greenhouse.
Ramses and I had only gone out there that one time, the first time when he’d arrived at our school, and he’d been so candid with me. He told me who he was and why he was there, always honest from the beginning. He may have not gone into too many details surrounding that honesty, but he’d always told me the truth. I owed him that right.
We got out there in our coats and fully equipped with our lunches, Ramses opened the door for me. The heat from the greenhouse was heaven, and I had to say, it’d be nice to have an open conversation for once. I had been avoiding him, doing my own stuff behind the scenes like trying to find out more about my sister’s ex-girlfriend. I still hadn’t really found anything out about that, but I was hoping that wouldn’t be forever. It’d also be nice to have lunch for once where half a dozen people I didn’t know or cared about weren’t sitting with me. Ramses was kind of popular before the whole Court thing, but now, with that king ring on his finger, he’d turned into god status. Everyone wanted a piece of him, to be around him just because he was in Court now. It was crazy, but that amount of power had been what we wanted. It’d help us open some doors, doors I’d pretty much been avoiding until this very moment.
“So what’s going on?” he asked, passing me a pita chip. I noticed he started getting them through the lunch line especially for me. He always made sure to have some when we sat next to each other, no doubt just keeping up with the ruse. He was so much better at all this girlfriend/boyfriend stuff than me, a natural for him almost.
I took the chip. “I think we need to reconsider how we’ve been handling things.”
“Okay.” Taking the bag back, he ate a chip himself. “How so?”
I felt so guilty I hadn’t told him any of the stuff about Royal, our conversation right after Royal had been suspended or what happened when I went to his house. Ramses had been more than honest and upfront with me than I’d ever been with him, and I pretty much felt like a shit friend because of that. He’d been doing so much for me, putting up with this lie for me basically. I sat near the koi pond. “I talked to Royal.”
This had his dark eyebrows rising, and scarfing another chip, he took the all of two steps it took him to cross the greenhouse over to me with his long legs. He sat down with the bag. “You did?”
“Yeah, a few times actually. The latest was earlier today.”
He ate in silence, and I couldn’t get a read on him. He swallowed. “All right. So what does that mean? What did you guys talk about?”
Where did I start? I folded my arms. “Well, the first time was after the fight. Like right after. I cornered him, yelling at him about it. A lot of stuff was said, but it was short, so I decided to go talk to him. I went to his house not long after that.”
“Wait. What?” He sat back. “’Zona, have you lost your mind? He could be a serial killer. I mean, he basically is with the Route 80 thing.”
“But that’s the thing—I don’t know if it’s as simple as that. He pretty much told me the haze was my sister’s idea. More to everything that night than we believed. It’s basically what you said. We didn’t have the whole story, so didn’t know what to conclude.”
“He told you the haze was your sister’s idea?” he asked propping his elbows on his knees. “Like actually told you that and admitted it to you?”
“In so many words.”
His eyes lifted toward the heavens. “’Zona…”
“Seriously, Ramses, I don’t think what happened was necessarily his fault or the other guys’. He said he begged Paige not to.”
“Why had he let her? No offense, December, but I don’t remember your sister being a huge girl. He physically could
have kept her from doing something.”
“But could he have? Really? No offense, Ramses, but you don’t know my sister. If she wanted to do something, she was going to do it. To hell with Royal or not.”
“But why would she?” He dropped arms between his legs. “What would compel her to do something that crazy? A haze like that someone would want to make a statement, gain some clout against the brothers.”
“Maybe that’s why that one was so important. She was a girl, a girl who’s trying to be Court and not kept, and from what I understand, she did have a reason.”
“Which is?”
My jaw moved. “Revenge.”
“Revenge?”
I nodded. “And Royal told me that too. That was the reason for the whole thing. She wanted to get someone back and do so with the power of the Court.”
“Who?”
Thinking about previous investigations, I faced him. “I have my suspicions. But only that.”
Ramses considered that, reaching into his bag and crunching on chips again. “And Prinze admitted all this to you? Openly?”
“Pretty much.”
“And you believe him?” He now was almost angry and definitely judgmental from the way he stared at me. “Because he’s dangerous, December. Obviously with what we know.”
“With what we think we know, Ramses.” I stood. “Royal is a lot of things, yes, but there’s also so many things we don’t know, you don’t know.”
Like how he had a heart, a huge heart, and showed it when he didn’t think people were looking. I recalled the stuff he’d done for me in the past. Helping me with Hershey, saving me and Hershey at one point, and then the other things. He sent Knight to Arizona to watch over me, an action that ultimately kept something really bad from happening to me in the end. Thinking it over, Royal had done a multitude of things that, at the time, I hadn’t understood, but maybe I was starting to now. This thing with Mira only helped support it, his possible obligation to her and pushing me away. What if he really was just with her because he had no choice? What if he broke things off with me because of that choice?