“Why? I didn’t do anything to you,” I bit out, tears stinging my eyes.
“She’s pathetic, isn’t she?” Talia said in a simpering tone, reaching out to stroke Hunter’s arm. “I still can’t believe she actually thought we’d give her any money! It’s so funny!”
He ignored her, shaking off her hand as he reached into his jacket pocket. He pulled out a checkbook and a pen. “I think I actually should offer you that fifteen grand, Trash,” he said, staring right at me. “You must hate me by now, so it’ll kill you to accept it… but money is money, and you need it, don’t you?”
He leaned over the small table nearby and neatly wrote out a check. Then he dangled it in the air. “Come and get it,” he said. “It’s real, I promise. Fifteen thousand is nothing to me, so I won’t miss it. But you will if you don’t take it.”
“She probably doesn’t even have a bank account to deposit it in,” Talia said. Next to her, Letitia and Grace snickered behind their hands.
Before I could even think about taking the money, Trina and Adam reached the stage. Trina lunged forward and snatched the check from Hunter’s hand. Then she tore it into pieces and scattered them all over the floor. “You’re disgusting,” she hissed. “All of you. I can’t believe you’d do this to her.”
Talia sneered. “Shut the fuck up, Trina. You’ve made it clear where your allegiance lies, so no one cares what you have to say anymore. You too, Adam.”
“Oh, fuck off, you pathetic little snake,” Adam shot back, crossing his arms. “Do you really think this is going to make Hunter want you again?”
Her smile wavered for a second. “I… it’s not about that.”
He snorted. “You’re so fucking transparent.”
As they verbally sparred, Hunter calmly wrote out another check and took a step closer to me, shielding it from Trina’s grasp with one arm. “Come on, Laney,” he said, voice dangerously low. “I know how much you want this. Just take it.”
I swallowed the painful lump in my throat. He was right. I did want it, even if it was from him. Even if taking it was the most demeaning, mortifying thing I could imagine right now.
I just couldn’t stop picturing everything that money could do to make my mom’s life easier, and I couldn’t stop picturing the crestfallen look that would appear on her face if she ever heard about this and realized I turned down such a life-changing amount of money out of some absurd sense of pride.
Besides, these assholes had already humiliated me beyond belief. What was one more humiliation on top of that?
I reached for the check.
I half-expected Hunter to yank it back, way out of my reach, but he let me take it, lips curving into a sneer.
“That’s the difference between you and Trina, Laney,” he said softly. “You’ll always take the money, because you can’t resist it. You know what a difference it could make to your pathetic little life. You don’t get to think in terms of morals and ethics. You just see an out. A way to pay all those late bills. A way to fuel your rustbucket car. A way to put food on your mom’s table.”
Tears streamed down my face. He was right about me. I would always take the money, because it actually meant something real to me. It was the difference between getting a full night’s rest and sleepless nights of tossing and turning, stressing about mom being able to pay the rent on time. Worrying if we’d even have somewhere to live next month if she couldn’t scrape it together.
None of these privileged kids would ever understand that struggle. None of them would ever know what it was like to claw and scratch and kick their way out of the jaws of poverty. Everything was handed to them their whole lives… and it wasn’t just money. It was opportunity, safety, freedom.
That was what I really wanted in the end. Freedom from fear.
Trina ripped the check out of my hand and tore it up again. “If you’re really that desperate for money, I’ll give it to you,” she whispered, putting an arm around my shoulder. “Don’t give in to these assholes. Don’t let them win.”
Adam moved closer to us, hands clenched into fists by his side. “You’ve taken this way too far, Hunter,” he said, voice laced with cold fury. “Imagine if Lindsay was still here. Imagine what she’d think, seeing you do this to an innocent girl.”
Hunter’s eyes narrowed, and for a second it looked like he might actually lunge at his brother. Instead he drew in a deep breath and squared his jaw.
“Keep hanging out with her and you’ll regret it,” he said. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“Is that a threat?” Adam asked.
Hunter turned to look at me again. “She’s the one you should be worried about. Not me.”
Talia stepped closer, eyes glittering and face flushed with excitement. “You know, Laney, everyone’s been calling you a trashy slut, but I actually disagree. I mean, you are trashy, but calling you a slut implies that anyone would ever want to fuck you. And clearly, they don’t. What kind of guy would want any of this?” She waved one hand up and down, gesturing to my body. “I bet you’re still a sad little virgin.”
A chant rose from the attentive crowd. “Virgin! Virgin! Virgin!”
I guess that was my new nickname. ‘Carrie’ and ‘Trash’ were out.
“Come on, Laney.” Trina tugged on my arm. “Let’s get out of here.”
My legs felt like jelly, and I could barely bring myself to move. Trina and Adam helped me off the stage and through the ballroom, past the jeering throngs of RFA students and into the spacious atrium outside.
By now, tears were splashing down my face and my chest felt like someone had put a giant rubber band around it.
“I can’t go back to school,” I choked out. My trembling hands furiously wiped at my cheeks, only to be flooded with more tears.
“Breathe, Laney,” Trina instructed, wrapping me in a tight hug. “Just breathe.”
“I can’t do this. I…. I don’t….” My voice broke, and I stopped midsentence.
“I’m so sorry,” Adam murmured, soothingly rubbing my back. “This is our fault. You thought this was a setup from the very start, but we convinced you it was fine.”
Trina pulled away from the hug, eyes shimmering with tears. “He’s right,” she said. “We basically let this happen.”
I shook my head. “It’s not your fault,” I said. “You just fell for their lies. Same as me.”
“But we should’ve known,” Adam said. “We know these people better than you. We grew up with them. You’ve only been here a week.”
I shrugged listlessly. “It’s really not your fault. It’s mine. I should’ve trusted my gut and said no.”
“We should leave,” Trina said, whipping her head around to look behind us. “They might try to follow us out.”
“Let’s go to Café Seven,” Adam suggested.
I shook my head. “I just want to go home.”
“Trust me, Laney. Café Seven will make you feel better. They do the best comfort food and hot chocolate in the whole world, and it’s an old hole in the wall, so no one from RFA would ever dream of setting foot in it.”
“Please let us take you,” Trina added. “We can’t just let you go home and wallow.”
I sniffed and wiped my face again. “All right,” I said meekly. “But only for half an hour, okay?”
Our limousine was still parked outside, but Adam sent the driver home with a large tip and ordered an Uber instead. It was better for us to not attract attention right now, he said, and I agreed. After such a mortifying prank had been pulled on me, right in front of everyone, the last thing I wanted to do was cruise around Royal Falls in an ostentatious white party limo.
The Uber dropped us off in a dim alley that extended from the middle of the town’s main avenue. Halfway down the alley was a wrought iron lamppost, casting a soft orange glow over a chalkboard café sign. Café Seven.
The interior was just as Adam described. A quiet, wood-paneled hole in the wall. No one our age to be seen.
&
nbsp; Comfortable-looking booths lined the edges of the café, the seats made of dark red diamond-patterned fabric with buttons at each point of the pattern. The vintage lamps throughout the place threw a rosy glow over the space, making everything feel warm and dreamlike.
“See?” Trina said. “It’s nice, isn’t it?”
I nodded and slid into the closest booth. Trina followed me while Adam went to order for us up at the counter. I sat in silence until he returned with a tray holding three steaming mugs of hot chocolate.
“I still can’t believe that happened,” I finally whispered a moment later, wrapping my hands around my mug.
“Neither can I,” Adam said. “I really didn’t think they’d do something this awful. And off-campus, too. They normally keep it all at RFA.”
“Yeah. But hey, at least the elephants will get all that money,” Trina said drily.
I looked at her, brows furrowed. “What do you mean?”
“The charity galas Talia and her friends throw every year are real, so the animal sanctuary will actually receive the three hundred thousand they raised tonight,” she explained. “Only the lottery thing was a lie.”
“Well, that’s kind of comforting, I guess,” I mumbled. I rubbed my eyes and let out a heavy sigh. “I just feel so stupid for falling for it.”
“Me too,” Adam said. “Hunter ditched Talia pretty brutally, so when she said she hated him, I believed her. But I guess she thought she could get back into his good books—and his bed—if she set this up.”
“Yup, that’s gotta be it. What a pathetic, malicious little snake,” Trina said. Her eyes narrowed. “All of those assholes who were laughing at you are the same. Evil little reptiles.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose and let out a heavy sigh. “They’re just so stereotypical,” I said. “You know those eighties movies you see with the stuck-up rich kids mocking the poor kids? It’s exactly like that.”
“I know. It’s horrible. And it doesn’t even make sense,” Adam said, shaking his head. “Like, sure, you weren’t lucky enough to be born into a rich family… but so what? It doesn’t make you gross or trashy. In fact, they’re the trashy ones for even saying that shit.”
“Yeah, I know. The stuff they say is just ridiculous,” I said, lifting my chin as heat crept up my neck. I was past the shocked stage now, and anger was setting in. “Like the whole virgin chant. It’s so childish. Even if I was actually a virgin, who the hell cares? It’s no one’s business.”
Trina’s brows shot up. “You’re not?” she asked, leaning forward.
“Not what?” I said. I was so mad at the asshole RFA students that I was already losing track of our conversation.
“A virgin.”
My shoulders slumped. “No,” I muttered, wishing I hadn’t said anything.
“Why do you look so surprised to hear that?” Adam said, jostling her shoulder. “She’s eighteen. Most people lose it when they’re sixteen or seventeen, don’t they?”
“I know, but…” Trina trailed off and shook her head, eyes still focused on me. “When we first met and I was showing you around the library, I asked if you had a boyfriend. You said no, and that you’d never had one before. Unless I’m remembering wrong.”
“People can have sex outside of relationships, you know,” Adam said, poking her with his teaspoon.
“Right,” Trina said, cheeks turning slightly pink. “Sorry, Laney. I shouldn’t have assumed. And like you said before, who cares if you’re a virgin or not?”
“Exactly. Doesn’t matter,” Adam added.
A slow smile spread across Trina’s face. “But now that we know… I totally wanna hear all the details about the guy, whoever he was. Or guys.”
I looked down at my mug, wishing I hadn’t opened my mouth and blurted out that I wasn’t a virgin. Why the hell did I do that?
“Sorry, I don’t really want to talk about it,” I said.
She grinned. “Wow, he must’ve been terrible,” she said, leaning forward on her elbows. “C’mon, spill. Only lasted ten seconds? Tiny dick?”
I blinked rapidly, shoulders going tight as cold crept down my spine.
“Oh, fuck,” Trina said, finally registering my haunted expression. “I just put my foot in my mouth bigtime, didn’t I?”
I shook my head. “No, it’s not your fault,” I said. “I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”
“I don’t get it. What happened?” Adam asked, like a typical oblivious guy. Trina elbowed him, and comprehension dawned on his face. His eyes widened. “Wait. You were… oh, shit.”
“We don’t have to talk about it,” Trina said hurriedly, moving around to my side of the booth. She put one arm around me and squeezed me tight. “I’m really sorry, Laney. That it happened, and also that I kept harassing you to give me details. I had no idea.”
I sighed. “I shouldn’t have brought it up at all. It just… slipped out,” I said. I paused to take a long sip of my hot chocolate. It was delicious, and it warmed me to my core. “But now that it’s out there, I guess we can talk about it.”
“You really don’t have to say anything about it.”
“It’s okay,” I said softly. “After it happened, I had to see a counselor for a while, and she told me that it could be good to talk about it with my friends. Get it all out and let them support me. But I didn’t really have any friends at the time, so I never did.”
“That’s awful,” Trina murmured, rubbing my shoulder in slow, soothing circles. “I’m so sorry you had no one to share it with. I can’t think of anything worse.”
“You really don’t have to tell us anything about it if you don’t want to,” Adam said, eyes filled with concern.
I took a deep breath. Infused my spine with steel. “No, I think the counselor was right. I might feel better if I talk about it. Just a little bit.”
I thought back to how it all started; the series of random events that led up to that one awful moment.
My dad was still alive at the time, working at someone’s house on the other side of town. He had his own handyman business, so people called him at all hours to go and patch things up or help out in some other way. Mom was working as a cleaner at the local hospital four days a week, and on the other three, she worked as a maid at Charles and Tinsley Connery’s mansion over in Royal Falls.
I was fourteen and old enough to take care of myself while my parents worked. I walked to school with my friends every day, and afterwards we’d hang out in each other’s backyards, gossiping and giggling. Just like most other young teens.
On one of those days, Mom’s car broke down when she tried to leave the Connery estate, and Charles Connery was kind enough to arrange a tow to the nearest garage and drive her home to Silvercreek while the car was getting fixed.
By that stage, it was getting late and my friends had gone home. I was playing in the yard with our little dog as the sun dipped low in the sky, and my dad had just arrived home. When he saw Charles dropping off Mom, he invited him in for a drink to show his appreciation.
Charles accepted, and the two of them went out the back with some beer. Apparently they got to talking about some sort of renovations Charles was organizing at the mansion, and Dad gave him some advice about one of the contractors he’d hired. The guy had a reputation for being shady and ripping people off.
Charles was so grateful for the honest advice that he offered to pay my father for helping him out. Dad waved him off, saying it was just a small favor, but Charles insisted on doing something to repay it. He called me over from the yard and introduced himself. Then he asked me if I had any hobbies that I needed things for, or if there was anything that I’d always wanted to do but hadn’t yet had the opportunity.
I told him I’d always wanted to learn a musical instrument, but all we had at school were recorders, and that didn’t count as far as I was concerned.
Charles thought about it for a moment, and then he asked if I was interested in the piano. He knew a guy who used to teach his
daughter in another small town about fifteen minutes away from Silvercreek, and he said he was happy to pay for me to get some lessons if my parents were okay with it.
They were, and that was how I wound up at my first piano lesson the following Tuesday. I had four more of them over the next month, and they were fine.
Until they weren’t.
“He was my piano teacher,” I finally said to Trina and Adam, lifting my chin. “I was fourteen. I wasn’t the first girl he did it to, but I was the first one to come forward.”
My chest grew hot as I spoke. The white-hot terror of knowing I was powerless to stop it… I felt it every time I thought of the incident. Every time I thought of pianos, and his slim fingers over mine, guiding my hands over the keys. Every time I thought of his touch, the little black serpent tattoo coiled around his right ring finger, and the spicy scent of his cologne.
All the torturous ‘if onlys’ were never too far from my mind, either. If only Mom’s car didn’t break down that day. If only Charles didn’t drive her home. If only he didn’t chat to Dad and unwittingly recommend a piano teacher who turned out to be a sex offender. If only I said no to the lessons and asked to learn a different instrument from a different teacher instead.
If only everything went differently.
“Oh my god.” Trina looked stricken. “You were so young.”
“Did he go to prison?” Adam asked, features arranged into an expression of cold fury.
I nodded. “Yes. He was dumb enough to film the whole thing. He… he had a collection of videos like that, apparently. They found them when they raided his house.” I swallowed hard. “He’ll never get out.”
“Jesus,” he muttered shaking his head. “What a piece of shit. I hope someone stabs him while he’s in there. Right in the dick.”
“Me too,” Trina said softly. “And Laney... just so you know, you are still a virgin. What happened to you… it wasn’t sex. It wasn’t a choice you made.”
Adam nodded. “I honestly think virginity is a bullshit concept, but if it means anything to you, Trina’s right. You didn’t choose for that to happen, and when it comes to having sex, it should always be a choice. Some slimy, disgusting asshole shouldn’t get to take that away from you.”
Savage Prince: A Dark High School Bully Romance (Royal Falls Elite Book 1) Page 10