“I ordered your cap and gown too,” Laney said, turning to the side to gesture toward a large cardboard box. “I’m pretty sure I got the right color and size.”
“I’m sure you did.”
I wouldn’t be walking across the stage at the same time as her on graduation day, because we were in different courses, but I knew she’d be watching me and cheering, just like I was going to do for her.
I’d chosen to study a double degree—criminal psychology and computer science. It was a shit-ton of work, but I had big plans.
I wanted to help people who’d lost their loved ones to violent crime, particularly in cases where the trails had gone cold and the police had stopped looking for answers.
I knew from my search for the truth in my sister’s case that one of the most important parts of any investigation was communication with as many people as possible. I’d also learned in my studies that many cases were hindered by lack of communication between law enforcement agencies and issues relating to jurisdiction. There were also issues with people simply not being listened to or taken seriously by investigators.
To help with that, my friend Kairo and I had worked together to build a sort of support forum with a companion app for people who’d lost their loves ones and never received closure. It wasn’t just for emotional support—it was also a means for them to crowdsource information on the case and make new connections, even when law enforcement had ruled it unsolvable or deemed it an accident or suicide.
Just like Lindsay’s case.
It was a bit like a web-sleuth forum, with one major difference. It also had a built-in AI that was capable of scraping and pulling any possibly-related information from various sources across the internet and ‘deciding’ to place it in relevant files a hundred thousand times faster than a human could manage. For example, earlier this year, we’d assisted with a case where a woman had lost her thirty-year-old daughter in a car crash in 2017. At the time, the case was ruled an accident, even though weather and road conditions were perfect, and the woman was sober and known to be very competent at driving.
It wasn’t a surprise when it was ruled an accident, as it genuinely seemed to be one, and there was no evidence of foul play. It really seemed as if the young woman had skidded off the road into a ravine in a tragic driving mishap.
Her mother never believed that, though, and I knew exactly how she felt. Hardly anyone believed me when I thought Lindsay was murdered, including my parents and the police, and I wound up feeling as if I was losing my mind. In the end, my gut instincts turned out to be right, and because of that experience, I knew this woman’s instincts could be right too.
And they were.
The AI that Kairo and I built had scanned thousands of media articles and publicly-available records when she uploaded her daughter’s case details to our site, and it found a possible link between the car crash and a group of teenage boys from a little town several states away. Those boys were in prison awaiting trial on a separate road incident case at this stage, as they’d been caught by local law enforcement playing a ‘game’—one they’d apparently been playing for a few years.
Their game entailed them getting into two or three cars, finding a random driver on a desolate road and purposefully distracting them by flashing their lights, tailgating them in a threatening manner, and then weaving all over the road in front of them until the victim swerved and crashed. The sociopathic little pricks thought it was hilarious, but the state prosecutor rightfully thought it was murder.
Even though they’d been caught in their home state of Kentucky, it turned out that the boys had all been on a spring break trip to Florida in 2017—the same year the thirty-year-old woman died in the ravine… in Florida. There were publicly available social media records showing that. Also, traffic light cameras and other street surveillance devices had captured the boys and the woman in the same town at the exact same time. When the AI made those connections, we looked closer and found that the boys had even driven out of town in the same direction as the woman at the same time.
That was suspicious.
We shared our information with law enforcement in Kentucky, and they agreed to interview the boys about it. One of them eventually cracked and admitted that they’d played their ‘game’ in Florida during that spring break trip, and he described the car and the woman perfectly.
Her mother was right after all—she was murdered.
Without our AI creation making those connections for us, the case might’ve been considered a tragic accident forever, and no one would’ve ever known the truth. So that was the whole point of it. We wanted to help people when every other avenue of help seemed to have closed off on them and they didn’t know where else to turn, because no one in their lives believed them and figured they were just losing their shit due to the grief.
We knew better.
It wasn’t that we didn’t trust law enforcement at all. It was just that we knew they weren’t perfect, and cases could be hindered by all of the aforementioned issues, so we wanted to provide a resource to complement their work and help people when they felt utterly hopeless.
Laney had always been supportive of my ambition. She knew better than anyone how important communication could be in supposed cold cases. There was always someone who knew something, or some little unknown piece of data that could illuminate everything, and sometimes there were people who didn’t even know that they knew something useful.
Just like her and her mother with Lindsay’s necklace all those years ago.
“Do you want to try your stuff on?” she asked, looking over at the cap and gown box again.
I pulled her into another hug and slid my hand inside her gown, squeezing her chest. “Later,” I said. “I’ve got other plans right now.”
She arched a brow. “Like what?”
“Like this.” I grabbed the edges of the black gown and tore the thing right off her.
Some of the fabric ripped, and she gasped. “Hunter!”
“I’ll get you another one,” I murmured before grabbing her hips roughly and leaning down to kiss her.
The minute my mouth slammed down on hers, she moaned and melted against my chest. The sweet taste of her lips and the vanilla scent of her hair invaded every inch of my pores, making me rock-hard within seconds. I opened her mouth with my tongue and devoured her like she was my last meal, swallowing her needy, breathy moans as my hands dug into her perky ass cheeks, pulling her against my raging hard-on.
She rubbed herself on me shamelessly, hands roaming inside my T-shirt. Every cell in my body ached and sizzled, demanding more, and I picked her up and threw her on the bed. She gasped as she fell back on the soft mattress.
“Fuck me,” she said breathlessly, slipping out of her clothes at record speed. Her chest was heaving, and her cheeks were tinted with a bright red hue. “Now.”
I slipped my shirt over my head and unzipped my pants. Then I pounced on her. I loved it when she demanded pleasure from me. Turned me on more than anything else.
Her arms looped around my neck and her smooth legs wrapped around my waist. My lips crashed down on hers in another savage kiss, and I groaned into her mouth as her hands reached for my cock. I’d been craving this all fucking day. Starving for her.
One hand went beneath her ass to lift her up a few inches, and then I rammed into her, finding her soaking-wet already.
“Oh, fuck,” she moaned. Her legs gripped my waist like a vise, and she bit her lip and then cried out, already begging me to go deeper and faster. Harder, more brutal.
She loved it like that, and I loved giving it to her. Loved claiming her and possessing her, knowing I was the only one who ever could.
My muscles tightened with effort at each ruthless thrust inside her tight pussy, and she gasped and whimpered beneath me, biting down on my neck and earlobes every few seconds to soften what I could only presume was a series of loud-as-fuck screams.
After all this time together, I knew every
inch of her body, and I knew exactly what she wanted and when she wanted it. Within minutes she was shuddering with an orgasm, walls clamping around my cock and squeezing it until I felt like I’d explode, and seconds later she fell apart again, not even trying to silence her cries anymore as her fingernails dug into my back.
I kept going until I knew she was spent, and then I came deep inside her with a groan and collapsed onto the bed beside her. Our foreheads were coated with perspiration, and our bodies radiated so much heat that the bedroom felt like a fucking furnace.
“Get dressed,” I said, playfully smacking Laney on the ass. “We’re going out.”
She let out an exhausted groan. “After that? I need a twenty-year rest.”
I chuckled. “Too bad. I’ve got something to show you.”
“Since when?” she asked, sitting up and mopping her forehead with the back of her hand. “I thought you had stuff to work on this afternoon.”
“Changed my mind.” I cocked a brow at her and grinned.
She made a short huffing sound, but she did as I said and put on some fresh clothes. I did the same, mind humming with anticipation.
“Where are we going?” Laney asked as we headed out the front door and turned left.
“You’ll see.” I directed her down the path that led toward Alton’s nicest feature—the sunken garden.
It was an enormous gray stone sunken amphitheater on the edge of the campus with gardens, ponds, and terraced lawns. It was surrounded by thick trees, so a lot of people didn’t know it was there—even students who’d been at the university for years. Those who were aware of its existence knew its value, though. It was a safe haven for students and staff; a quiet, idyllic piece of heaven to relax in when the rest of the world seemed too fast-paced and crazy.
It was Laney’s favorite spot at Alton. She loved the peacefulness of the place, the meandering paths throughout the gardens, the snowball-sized bursts of flowers, and the stepping stones hidden in the grass near the biggest pond. She also loved the small animals, bugs, and insects that made the garden their home; even the big creepy spiders spinning their webs between plants. She said it all reminded her of a book she loved as a child—The Secret Garden.
“What are we doing here?” she asked, peering around the place as we trudged down the terraces. There’d been a short downpour of rain earlier this morning, and the blades of grass and leaves in the gardens were glimmering with little droplets.
“It’s your favorite place,” I said.
“I know, but you said you had something to show me,” she replied. “Did they add something new?”
She turned and peered over at the nearest pond. By the time she turned back around to look at me again, I was down on one knee. Right between my thumb and fingers was a big sparkling ring.
One hand flew to Laney’s mouth, and her eyes went wide as saucers. “Yes!” she managed to choke out behind her fingers.
I grinned. “You didn’t even let me ask anything.”
She dropped her hand, cheeks flushing bright red. “Sorry,” she squeaked.
I laughed. “Will you marry me, Laney?”
I was originally planning on proposing after our graduation ceremony in a few weeks. Then I realized there were two problems with that.
Firstly, Laney didn’t like huge public displays, and secondly, I realized a proposal might detract from all the excitement of graduation. She’d worked fucking hard to get to Alton and earn her degree, so I didn’t want to steal that thunder from her by getting her and everyone else excited about a surprise engagement instead.
This was much better. A quiet moment in her favorite place, with just the two of us.
“Yes!” She couldn’t stop nodding as her eyes glistened with tears.
I stood and slipped the ring onto her finger. “I love you,” I murmured, pushing a stray strand of hair behind her ear before stroking my fingertips down her beautiful face.
“I love you too,” she said, beaming brightly. “I can’t wait to marry you.”
I couldn’t wait either.
My family had been decimated in recent years, but together, Laney and I were going to build a new one. Our very own family filled with love, affection, and security. Not like the shit we both grew up with, courtesy of our fathers.
I wasn’t sure if we’d ever return to life in Royal Falls and let our future children grow up there. It would depend on the job Laney got after she finished law school in a few years. Where we ended up didn’t matter to me, though. Laney was my real home, so wherever she wanted to go, I’d happily follow.
I wouldn’t mind going back to Royal Falls for a few weeks just to show her off as my wife, though. No one from that town ever expected to see us together. Even after all the shit that went down there four years ago, a lot of our peers assumed we’d split at some point. They thought the money and class difference would eventually rear its ugly head and get between us, despite everything we’d gone through together.
I knew that would never happen. Not a fucking chance.
Maybe Laney didn’t come from so-called American royalty, like everyone else in Royal Falls, but that didn’t mean anything to me.
She’d always be my queen.
THE END
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Shattered Kingdom: A Dark High School Bully Romance (Royal Falls Elite Book 2) Page 24