by Sophie Lark
After twenty minutes of painstaking cleaning, I’m pretty sure I got every last grain of sand. I use my fingernail to screw the case together again, then I check to make sure it’s still working.
The playlist resumes at exactly the same spot, thank god. The one good thing about old electronics is they’re built like tanks. Made to be bashed around without consequence.
I stand up triumphantly, brushing off my hands.
A lot more kids have streamed into the party, and the little beach is packed with people now. Everybody is drunk enough to think they know how to dance, and they hoot and whistle as the music resumes.
Couples are sneaking off into the scrubby stands of trees around the beach, dragging blankets along with them so they can lay down on the sand and remove as much clothing as they like.
Some of these couples aren’t couples at all, but rather two boys paired up with one extremely tipsy girl. It’s a sight I’ve gotten used to seeing at Kingmakers, where the gender balance is so far out of whack.
We’re not supposed to be fucking each other at all. Some of these girls are already locked into marriage contracts with other mafia families. Some of the boys, too. But with no one here to stop them, they’ve obviously decided to take their chances.
The days when you were expected to show up on your wedding day a virgin are far behind us. In my parents’ time, some of the old-school families still expected a medical examination to prove you were “intact.” Now all you have to pass is a pregnancy test. The only thing the families truly care about is that their heirs are actual blood relations.
Even my Uncle Callum had an arranged marriage with Aunt Aida. You’d never guess it now, from how obsessed they are with each other.
I have a lot of examples of marital bliss to draw from. Like Aunt Riona and Uncle Raylan out in Tennessee with their four redheaded sons. They seem like a funny match, Aunt Riona being the quintessential lawyer with her cool logic and sharp tongue, and Uncle Raylan all southern charm. Yet it’s clear she adores him and her boys.
Not to mention my parents, who are more in love than any two people I’ve seen.
Maybe my standards are too high. If I ever get married, I expect nothing less than perfect devotion from my future partner. Who could live up to that?
There’s only one person in my life who’s never let me down . . .
I search the crowded beach for Leo, but he seems to have disappeared.
Leo and I were raised like blood cousins, even though we’re not. Our parents saw us as family. It was assumed we’d see each other the same way.
I’ve known him since birth. We really did grow up next to each other. I should see him as a brother . . .
But I don’t.
That’s becoming clearer to me every day.
These feelings I have . . . these urges . . . they’re not going away.
The harder I fight to crush them down, the stronger they arise, over and over again, like a hydra with a hundred heads. I cut one off, and two more come roaring back.
I think Leo feels it, too. At first I thought he didn’t. But he gave up his scholarship to come to Kingmakers with me, even though his mother hated the idea. And ever since we got here, things have been different between us. I’ve seen him looking at me. I see how jealous he gets when Dean talks to me.
I felt something between us tonight. I know he felt it, too.
I want to finish our conversation. I look around everywhere, wondering where he disappeared to so quickly. I walk down to the water, but nobody is stupid enough to try to swim here, not even when they’re drunk.
I head back up to the cliffs, checking the steep pathway to see if he went back that way for some reason.
I walk all the way around the bonfire, wondering if I could have somehow missed him in the crowd of students. It’s hard to push my way through the crush of people, especially when Chay is trying to pull me into dancing with her, and Matteo is trying to ask me some asinine question about an upcoming history exam.
The only place I haven’t checked is the little stands of trees on either side of the beach.
My boots are filling up with sand. I take them off, pouring them out and slinging them over my shoulder by their strings. I pad across the ground in sock feet, peeking into the scrubby woods to see if Leo came this way.
All I see are couples writhing around on blankets or making out pressed up against trees.
I’m about to turn back when I hear a moan that sends a shiver down my spine.
I’ve never heard him make quite that sound before. But I’d know Leo’s voice anywhere.
I turn and peer through the darkness at a particularly dense stand of trees.
There’s Leo, slumped against the trunk of an almond tree, his head leaned back and his eyes half-focused on the leaves above.
Gemma is on her knees in front of him, hard at work on his cock. I can hear the wet sounds of her mouth, and I see her dark hair swinging as her head bobs up and down.
My stomach clenches so hard that I almost vomit right there on the sand. It takes all my strength to swallow it down. All my strength to choke back the sob that wants to burst out of me.
I feel like someone stabbed a knife in my chest, and now they’re leaning all their weight on the handle, dragging the blade down through my flesh from sternum to navel.
I’ve never felt pain like this.
I’ve never been so disappointed.
I turn around without a sound and walk away.
As I walk home alone down the long, dark route back to the castle, it takes everything I have not to cry.
13
Leo
I’m having the most incredible dream.
I won the final challenge in the Quartum Bellum. The whole school is swarming me, lifting me up on their shoulders, chanting my name.
I look out over the sea of people, and I see Anna standing there, looking up at me. Her blue eyes glimmer like stars. She’s smiling at me, she’s so fucking proud of me.
I push through the crowd to get to her, and I lift her up and spin her around. Her long hair swirls around her just like it does when she’s dancing.
I set her down and she looks up at me, the way she did when we were standing on the dark path on the way to the party. She has the same expression on her face—frightened, but hopeful. I can see that she loves me. I always knew she loved me. But this is something else—not the love of a cousin or a friend. This is the love of a soulmate. Of a woman who wants me as badly as I want her.
I kiss her, just as I imagined doing earlier in the night. I touch those soft, warm lips with mine, and I taste her sweetness.
I slide my hand down the small of her back. I wrap my arms around her.
And then everyone around us disappears, because Anna is pulling me away, she’s leading me by the hand, pulling me into the woods. Her fingertips trail down my chest, down my stomach, lightly touching the button of my jeans. She’s doing what I fantasized that night in my bed. This time, I don’t have to feel shame and guilt, because I’m aware it’s only a dream, even though it feels so real.
She pushes me up against the tree, then drops to her knees in front of me. I feel her soft hands fumbling with the button of my jeans, and she pulls down the zipper to let my cock spring free. She’s closing that warm, wet mouth around my cock . . .
I’m looking up at a lattice of leaves and branches, with pinprick stars beyond. But the stars aren’t stationary, they’re spinning around and around my head, which is making me feel dizzy and sick.
Anna’s mouth feels good on my cock, but the rest of me doesn’t feel good at all. My head is heavy, and my stomach is churning. I don’t seem to have control over my arms and legs. My hands are hanging loose at my sides and my head flops against my shoulder.
I hear a wet, repetitive sound like a dog licking me.
My cock isn’t hard anymore, I feel too sick.
“Is something wrong?” a voice says.
I flop my head forward so I can
look down.
A strange face is peering up at me. Not Anna’s face—this girl has black hair, not blonde, and her eyes are darker than Anna’s. They’re flat and glittering in the near-darkness. She looks spooky, crouched down there looking up at me with her face all wet and her makeup all messy.
“What are you doing . . .” I mumble.
“What do you mean what am I doing?” the girl giggles. “What do you think I’m doing?”
She grabs my limp cock and puts it back in her mouth. She’s sucking and slurping on it, trying to bring it back to life. It feels like I’m being eaten alive.
“Knock it off,” I say, trying to push her away.
My hand is like an empty glove on the end of a noodle. I’ve got no control over it.
And my voice is mushy. “Knock it off” sounds more like “Knog id dov.”
The girl doesn’t seem to hear me. She keeps going. The bobbing of her head is making my body rock, which is making me seasick.
“Stop . . .” I say, even more weakly.
This time she does understand, at least enough to sit back on her heels again.
“What’s your problem?” she says.
Given the chance to move, I heave myself away from the tree. But I underestimated how much I needed the support. I tumble forward on my knees, then drop down on all fours. This is way too much motion for my stomach to handle. I start puking all over the ground.
“How much did you drink?” the girl says, part disgusted, and part concerned.
I don’t know how much I drank. I can’t remember.
The beginning of the night seems to be dissolving away. I don’t know how I got here or what’s happening.
If I focus hard, I can sort of remember that the girl’s name is Gemma and we have that scuba class together. But everything right before this moment is a throbbing dark haze.
“I need to leave,” I tell her.
“I don’t think you’re going to make it very far,” Gemma says.
I open my mouth to reply, but all that comes out is more vomit.
14
Dean
I follow Anna back to Kingmakers.
I keep a long space between us, so she won’t hear me.
Honestly, I don’t think she’d hear a brass band behind her. She’s stumbling along with none of her usual grace.
I don’t like seeing her like that. It pains me to hurt her. But it pains me more to think that she’s upset over that fucking asshole Leo Gallo. He doesn’t deserve her devotion. It took him all of thirty minutes to stumble off in the woods with Gemma Rossi. There’s no drug on earth that could distract me from Anna.
I watch her every moment from the beach to the castle. She’s fleeing across the ground like a white bird, her hair streaming behind her. And I’m chasing after her like a hunter with an arrow at the ready.
When she passes through the gates into Kingmakers, I watch to see which direction she turns.
Just as I expected she veers left, away from her dorm. I know exactly where she’s going.
She passes between the Gatehouse and the greenhouses, then shoots the gap between the dining hall and the brewery. She takes a hard left, passing the library tower, hurrying on toward the cathedral on the far west side of campus.
The cathedral looks skeletal and spooky in the moonlight. The large rose window above the double doors peers at us like a baleful eye.
Anna doesn’t have her speaker, she forgot it at the party. But she came here anyway, because this is her sanctuary.
She’s already inside before I reach the doors. As I slip through, I expect to hear her sobbing echoing around the stone walls.
Instead, there’s nothing but silence.
I walk quietly up the nave, my eyes sweeping the shadowy spaces for any sign of Anna. All the furniture has long since been removed from the cathedral—no pews, no altars, no shrines. Even the doves are quiet, asleep up in the rafters.
At last I see Anna, sitting on the stone floor of the chancel with her knees tucked up against her chest, her arms wrapped around her shins, her silvery hair like a shroud around her.
“Anna,” I say.
My voice echoes in the empty space, even though I spoke quietly.
Her eyes fly up to meet mine, and even then I think she’s looking for Leo. She thought he came after her. There’s a flash of pain across her face when she sees it’s me instead.
She jumps to her feet, tossing her hair back over her shoulder, trying to maintain her composure even now.
I feel wild admiration for this girl who refuses to show a single crack in her armor, even when I know she’s about to break apart.
“What are you doing here?” she demands.
I hear it, though she tries so hard to hide it . . . I hear the quaver in her voice.
I cross the room in three steps, and I wrap my arms around her.
I pull her close against my chest, cradling her head in my hand, pressing her cheek against my heart. She tries to pull away, but I keep her pinned in place, my other arm wrapped tight around her body.
I force her to take comfort from me.
She fights me, but not hard. She’s too beaten down by what happened. The strength has gone out of her.
After a moment, she submits.
She stops struggling, and she lets me hold her.
I inhale the scent of her hair—smoky from the fire, but still fresh and clean underneath.
I hold her tight, making her feel the warmth of my body, the strength of my arms, the tremor of muscle that betrays how long and how intensely I’ve wanted this.
And then some magic happens, something I couldn’t predict: Anna starts to cry.
She cries like her heart is breaking. Her tears soak the front of my shirt and her whole body shakes. When she looks up at me, her eyes are bright and wet, and her lips are trembling.
I see the moment, and I seize it without hesitation.
I kiss those soft and devastated lips.
15
Anna
The next morning I skip breakfast, because I don’t want to see anyone.
It doesn’t work. Leo immediately corners me outside of my dorm tower as if he’s been waiting down there for hours.
He looks awful. His hair is a mess, and he has dark circles under his eyes. He looks slightly frantic, and as soon as he sees me he runs over and practically pins me against the wall with his bulk so I can’t escape.
I try to slip past him, saying, “I can’t talk right now, I have to get to the library.” It’s a transparent ruse. Leo doesn’t buy it for a second.
“Anna please,“ he begs. “I don’t know what happened last night.”
“I do,” I say.
I didn’t want to have this conversation, but now that he’s forcing me into it, the memory of the night before comes flooding back into my brain with all the attendant pain and anguish. I can see him leaned up against that tree, his head tilted back in pleasure, and I can hear—as if it’s right in my ears in this moment—Gemma’s slurping mouth.
Last night all I felt was hurt. But this morning that hurt is turning into bitterness.
I know that Leo and I aren’t dating. I know we didn’t say anything explicitly to each other. But just as clearly, I know there was something between us—an understanding, an intention. It wasn’t all in my head.
Leo didn’t give a fuck about that. The moment he had a chance to go off in the woods with Gemma, he took it. He didn’t think about me at all.
“I saw you,” I tell him, my eyes burning into his. “I saw you letting that little whore suck your cock.”
I don’t actually feel great about calling Gemma a whore. After all, it’s not like she knew the fantasy I had in my head about how my night was supposed to go. It’s not like she had some responsibility toward me—we’re not even friends.
It’s Leo who hurt me, not her. But in my fury, I use the most vicious words that come into my head and I apply them mentally to Leo as well as to her.
Leo is a whore. He loves attention wherever he can get it. He doesn’t understand the first thing about fidelity or love.
Leo is stammering and stumbling, nowhere near his usual smooth self.
“I was really drunk,” he says. “I swear, I didn’t even mean to do it. I don’t even know how it happened.”
I stare at him like I don’t even know him. “That’s a pathetic excuse,” I tell him.
“I know!” he cries. “I know it is! I’ve never lost control like that, I don’t understand it.”
Leo’s attempt to explain himself is just making me angrier.
“I don’t want to hear it,” I seethe at him. “You can fuck whoever you want. Just leave me out of it.”
“Anna . . . I know . . . I wanted . . .”
He’s stammering at me helplessly, unable to say what he wants to say. I already know what he’s trying to tell me. He regrets being so careless—he didn’t realize how much it would hurt me.
But that’s Leo’s problem—he’s fucking thoughtless.
I try to push past him again, and in desperation he cries, “Where did you go last night?”
“I left,” I say.
“You came back here all alone?”
I’m impatient with this line of questioning. I don’t appreciate Leo acting protective after he ripped my heart out.
Also, a small ugly part of me wants to hurt him back.
So I say, “No. I wasn’t alone.”
Leo can hear the menace in my voice. His eyebrows draw together.
“Who was with you?” he says. He doesn’t really want to know the answer.
I look at his handsome face. The face that I’ve loved all my life. The face that I’ve never tried to drag down from happiness to sorrow, not once.
I know that I should take a day or two to cool off. That’s why I didn’t go down to breakfast—I wanted to avoid this exact conversation until I was in a more rational state of mind.