Uppercut Princess: A Dark High School Romance (The Heights Crew Book 1)

by E. M. Moore

My heart skids to a halt inside my chest. “You shouldn’t have left them.”

  Inside, my heart splinters. Where’s Brawler? Where’s Oscar? Brawler wouldn’t know to come here. He’d head home if he’s alive at all. He was only there for me.

  Wait. Did Oscar fucking know about this?

  We make our way onto the elevator. When the doors open on the Penthouse floor, Magnum calls out before we step over the threshold. “It’s Magnum.”

  Eerie silence meets us.

  “Where are they?” I breathe out again.

  Magnum runs a hand through his copper hair. He takes me into Big Daddy K’s suite and sits me on the couch while he checks the rooms like I’ve seen people do on cop shows. When he returns, he says, “No one’s here.”

  “No fucking shit. I—” I stop mid-rant. Blood drips from Magnum’s arm, sliding off his fingertips in rivulets. “You’re shot.”

  “I know.” He grimaces when he turns his arm to look at the wound. “Dick got me when we were getting in the car.” He pulls his shirt over his head and wraps it around the entry point. “I think he just grazed me.”

  I watch him patch himself up, and my mind goes blank. It looks like he’s done this far too many times. This whole way of life is fucked up. “Why did he do that?” My voice signifying the barest grip I have on sanity right now. “I won the fight. I fucking won. No one had to die.”

  “You’ll have to ask K.”

  “If he’s even fucking alive.”

  The barest of happy thoughts flits through my brain. If he’s dead, I can leave. I can put all this shit behind me. It would be a perfect ending to this mess. I can take Brawler and Oscar. We could get the hell out of the Heights. I have money saved up, and I’m sure my aunt and uncle would help us. They just love doing charity work. I’m their greatest charity of all. What are two more guys with horrific childhoods?

  “Did you see what happened to any of the others?”

  Magnum’s lips purse. He sits on the coffee table, his fingers still wrapped around his gun like a lifeline. “I watched you the whole time. You were my assignment.”

  “So, they knew this was going to happen? They knew things were going to end up like this anyway.”

  Magnum’s quiet. His gaze keeps tracking to the door. It’s like I’m not even here until he turns hazel green eyes on me. “You should leave,” he says. “I’ll tell them you got shot. They’ll never know. If you leave now, disappear, you can actually have a life, Kyla.”

  Why does everyone want to save me? “I can’t leave.”

  “Because of Johnny?” he asks, disappointment, confusion, and outright shock coloring his features. When I don’t say anything right away, he says, “Fuck that. Leave. I’ll wipe the footage of us coming in. I’ll tell them you got hit in the car in case that gets out, and then I’ll tell them I had to ditch the car, so it won’t come back on us. You can get the fuck out of here and have a new life.”

  “I have a life,” I tell him. I have a whole other life no one even knows about, but I don’t want that fucking life. I never did. I wanted the one God sent me to Earth with. The one where I had parents.

  Now, though, I know in my heart I have people here who will help me make a life. I can’t leave.

  My heart rips down the center. Being here changed me. Even now, if I close my eyes, I can feel the memory of Brawler’s arms around me. I’m not going to just up and leave him. He’s had enough of that in life. And Oscar? He needs someone here who believes in him. Who tells him that he can play football if he wants. He’s not stuck. And hell, maybe one day, they both need someone to help them escape this shit.

  In the back of my mind, my head keeps repeating a terrible thought. A single word my life has been filled with. A word I hate to even think might have happened to Brawler, Oscar, or even Johnny. None of them deserve this life, they’re just caught up in the tangles, like a spiderweb. Eventually, the spider’s going to get us. We just don’t know when.

  My leg jumps up and down, and I look Magnum square in the eye. “I’m not going.”

  Magnum reaches out, his fingertips trailing over my cheek. He frowns, then his lips pull down when his gaze tracks lower. “You’re bleeding.”

  I stare down, noticing blood has seeped through my shirt. I lean back and lift it. There’s a nasty scrape on my stomach. Dirt and pebbles stick to my skin. “You dragged me through the parking lot.”

  He swallows, his tender touch hovering over my skin before he gets to his feet, leaves the room, and then returns with a First Aid kit. He kneels between my knees and opens the kit on the couch next to me. He pulls out an antiseptic pad and rips the pouch open. “This will sting.”

  His touch is soft, reassuring. It’s like I’m seeing a whole different side to the aloof, mysterious guard who’s always around. “You’re worried about my wounds? You’re the one who was shot.”

  “You’re more important than I am.”

  “No one’s more important than anyone else.”

  His gaze moves up to meet mine. “Not true,” he says. I see the truth in his eyes. I am wrong. Because if I had the chance to pick and choose who dies in that shootout, I wouldn’t have picked Brawler or Oscar or even Johnny. I would’ve chosen Big Daddy K. I would’ve thrown others into the bullet’s paths, people I don’t even know, but the sacrifice would be worth it. Because then, I would know the people I care about most would be walking through that door.

  It’s not up to me to play God, but I would. I would if it meant keeping the ones I care about alive.

  Tears prick my eyes. Magnum reaches up, flicking the first away, but then they come so freely there’s no way he can keep up. “I’m sure they’re alive,” he says.

  They? My stomach twists. He can see right through me, can’t he?

  “Kyla, I—” He pauses and swallows, like what he’s about to say is some monumental declaration.

  My heart skips. His words hang in the air between us. I want to take the end of the rope and keep pulling until I free every single one of the words he wants to say from his mouth.

  But I never get the chance.

  The suite door swings open.

  In one swift movement, Magnum gets to his feet, gun raised.

  I turn, lowering myself into the leather, but peeking around the couch to see who walks in.

  My stomach sinks as in walks the reason for me even being here. He was so close to the foray that I imagined he would die, but he’s not dead at all. In fact, he’s in better shape than us. He’s not nursing a gun wound or bleeding from his stomach. He certainly wasn’t knocked around in a fight and then dragged through a parking lot to avoid being shot at.

  “Magnum.”

  Bodies usher in behind him. I get to my feet, my heart hammering in my ears and at the pulse in my wrists. I blink several times, trying to take in the faces as they come in. Some are wounded. Some are being carried by others, but my eyes refuse to focus.

  Where are they? Where are they? They have to be here.

  Flashes of the gun fight flick through my head. For the first time, I allow myself to think that people don’t just survive shit like this. There are probably more dead than alive. It wasn’t a game to any of them out there. They were shooting to kill. They didn’t care who.

  Their family had been wronged, and they were out for blood.

  “Kyla?”

  The world stops. I search for the owner of the voice in a sea of distraught faces until I find him.

  Him.

  And then I fall to my knees, watching the open door for others, but no one comes.

  Pre-Order Arm Candy Warrior

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  A Sky So Dark: Safe Haven Academy Series, Book 1

  Safe Haven Academy Series Blurb

  Macie Davenport’s life is over.

  The girl who has everything is reduced to an empty black hole of nothing they call Safe Haven Academy. It’s where bad souls go for reform, but end up getting worse until they’re shipped out to another “sheltered place” with an equally uninspired name. It doesn’t matter what they dress it up as, Macie knows places like this are for people like her—people everyone wants to forget.

  The screwed up part? Macie’s not bad. Torn with grief and living in a fantasy world? Yes. A psychopath? Not likely.

  Worse yet, she can’t forget. Not even a little. Not even trying with all her might, she’ll never forget the consequences of the night the sky turned dark.

  Then, they force themselves into her life. A shining light in the bleakness around her, three boys irrevocably change her fate. Can she allow the sun to shine through? Or will Macie give up before giving them a chance?

  About the Author

  E. M. Moore is a USA Today Bestselling author of Contemporary and Paranormal Romance. She's drawn to write within the teen and college-aged years where her characters get knocked on their asses, torn inside out, and put back together again by their first loves. Whether it's in a fantastical setting where human guards protect the creatures of the night or a realistic high school backdrop where social cliques rule the halls, the emotions are the same. Dark. Twisty. Angsty. Raw.

  When Erin's not writing, you can find her dreaming up vacations for her family, watching murder mystery shows, or dancing in her kitchen while she pretends to cook.