The Prince and the Pawn

by Reid, B. B.

  The first thing I noticed was my eerily silent best friend calmly sitting in one of the leather sofa chairs positioned in front of the massive oak desk. Ever’s forearms were resting on the wide arms of the chair, and his feet were planted, legs spread wide as he remained facing forward. All I could see was the back of his head, but I knew his mask was in place. No one else could perfect a blank expression quite like Ever could when he was feeling too many emotions at once and holding them all back. Four sat on the edge of the matching chair next to him, and I could tell she was eager to offer him comfort.

  Evelyn McNamara currently stood behind the desk where her husband was seated, and when the door shut firmly behind us, she huffed. “This is highly inappropriate,” she scolded despite the tears glistening in her gold eyes. I wasn’t sure if the reprimand was directed at her husband or us.

  “They’ve already heard too much,” he retorted with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Ever,” he said, sounding somber when he addressed his son. “This is not how I wanted to tell you, but what Jamie says is true. Your father and I were lovers.”

  After finally admitting the truth, Thomas’s shoulders slumped as if a weight had been lifted. I could tell he was still holding his breath, waiting for a reaction from his son.

  Unfortunately, he got nothing in return.

  “Shortly after you were born, Sean left,” Mrs. McNamara informed her silent son. “He was involved with some really bad people, so he decided you’d be better off without him. Safer.”

  For the first time since Four entered the room, Ever finally spoke. “You said he died before I was born.”

  “I…well…that wasn’t exactly true.”

  “Just say the words, Mother. They’re simple to understand. You lied. You fucking lied.”

  Thomas’s face looked like a bruised tomato as he glared at his son. “I know you’re upset, son, but you will not disrespect your mother in my home!”

  I guess my best friend decided he’d rather leave than submit to either of his parents. Without a word of explanation, Ever rose from his seat and made a beeline for the exit.

  Shooting to his feet as well, Mr. McNamara desperately shouted four words in hopes of stopping Ever from leaving. “You have a brother!”

  It fucking worked like a charm.

  My eyes squeezed shut as Ever paused in front of the doors. This was getting a little too hard to watch. And to think it had been my genius idea to drag Tyra here to hang out rather than to the beach house to make out as I should have done. The worst part was knowing that I could never fully be there for Ever. Hell, for any of my friends. Not unless I wanted to put them all in danger.

  When I opened my eyes, my gaze landed on Lou, and I found it interesting that the usually smug pickpocket was suddenly shaking in her boots. In fact, she looked ready to bolt as her gaze met Four’s, and something passed between them. Obviously, the people in this room knew more than they were letting on, which begged only one question. How much did Tyra know?

  She slipped her hand inside mine, and when I turned away from the train wreck ahead, I found her looking just as baffled as I felt.

  “What did you say?” Ever’s hoarse demand was a telling sign that the tumultuous emotions he was trying to keep at bay were fighting to break free and winning.

  “You have an older brother, and he knows about you. He’s here in Blackwood Keep. He’s been here and he—”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t do this right now. I think Ever’s had enough.”

  The only people in the room who seemed surprised by Lou’s interruption was Tyra and me. It was obvious she was protecting more than just Ever, but who? The only people in this town she gave a shit about were standing in this room. Everyone except—

  Somehow, our gazes connected across the room, and the guilty shift of Lou’s feet confirmed what I’d already pieced together.

  Wren.

  She was protecting Wren.

  Holy shit.

  “Who is he?” Ever demanded, ignoring Lou’s protest. No one in the room spoke, and for the very first time, I witnessed my best friend lose control. Shoving his fist into the wall—told ya—he shouted at his parents. “Tell me!”

  “It’s Wren! Wren is your brother,” Four blurted. Ignoring the dirty look Lou gave her, Four rushed across the room. She reached out for him, but the look Ever gave her stopped her in her tracks. It was one of blind hurt and utter betrayal as he took a step back, rejecting the comfort she offered.

  “You knew?”

  Those two words hit me like a punch to the gut. I could only imagine how Four was feeling.

  “Only for a little while,” Four swore. “I-I didn’t know if I should tell you.”

  “How long is a little while?” he pressed through gritted teeth.

  Four’s gaze darted to the side, and I filled my lungs with as much air as I could. Whatever the answer, Ever wasn’t going to like it, and knowing my best friend, two seconds was too long. Four never stood a chance at doing the right thing. The situation was too delicate. Too murky.

  “Lou and I figured it out after Thanksgiving dinner,” she mumbled. “I showed her the picture on the mantle of Thomas, Sean, and Douglas. Lou recognized Sean and told me he was Wren’s father.” Inching closer and closer toward him, Four continued. “The day you showed me that picture after telling me he was your namesake, I—” Four inhaled deeply before letting the air free with a frustrated whimper. “I suspected that he might have been your real father. I just wasn’t sure until Jamie confirmed it a few weeks ago.”

  “She wanted to tell you then,” Jamie said, breaking his vow of silence. “I made her promise not to. I wanted to give them,” he added while nodding to Ever’s parents, “the choice to tell you themselves.”

  “You didn’t give me a choice,” Mr. McNamara spat. “You gave me an ultimatum.”

  Jamie shot his uncle a cruel smile. “It worked, didn’t it?”

  Slamming his fist on the desk, Thomas’s face turned purple as he pinned his nephew with his glare. “Get out of my office before I throw you out of my home!”

  Jamie looked ready to bait his uncle some more, but then remembering Bee, who was also at his mercy thanks to her reptile of a father, wisely decided against it. Taking his girlfriend’s hand, Jamie strolled from the room as casually as he’d arrived. As far as Jameson Buchanan was concerned, his job was done. And what destruction he’d left in his wake.

  At least Ever knows the truth now.

  Even if it had been a horrible shit show.

  “Is there anything else I should know?” Ever inquired. And then with a heavy dose of sarcasm… “Perhaps you want to tell me next that Four is really my sister,” he said, making everyone in the room cringe. With pursed lips, Four took his hand, and surprisingly, Ever didn’t pull away. He did stare down at her long and hard, though, with a look that promised he’d make her pay dearly for keeping secrets. I knew I would.

  “Yes,” Thomas admitted sheepishly, making everyone in the room groan without thinking. How the hell could there possibly be more? “Your father is here in Blackwood Keep. He wants to meet you.”

  “Holy shit!” Tyra exclaimed the moment we were alone inside my ride. After Thomas sternly ordered everyone but Ever to leave his office, Tyra and I practically raced for my car. Lou had refused to leave when Four offered her a ride home and instead frantically attempted to get ahold of Wren and warn him. “That was not how I was expecting the afternoon to go. Did you know about any of this?” she asked me with a hint of accusation.

  “Not a fucking clue,” I mumbled as I started the car and got the hell out of there. As I drove toward the outskirts of town where Tyra resided alone with her father, I wondered about the mystery man who caused such an uproar. And all without even being present.

  If you asked me, he fucking sounded like trouble.

  IMMEDIATELY AFTER GRADUATING, I’D BEGGED Terry for as many full-time shifts as I could get this summer, which meant I hadn’t made many plans for anyth
ing else. I spent the entire first day after I was suspended, twiddling my thumbs. By the end of day two, cabin fever had already set in. Vaughn was too focused on conditioning his body into shape for college ball to shower me with the attention I required. Four was still somewhere holed up with Ever, probably begging and working overtime for his forgiveness. Knowing how much Ever adored Four, I was willing to bet he’d forgiven her the second he found out. He was simply milking the situation to his advantage as any boy would do—the one time they weren’t in the wrong.

  Being in love never made anyone a saint. It just made us better, happier versions of ourselves.

  The faint sound of my phone ringing pulled me out of my thoughts and recognizing the tone, I abandoned my food on the stove and rushed up the stairs to answer the call.

  “Hey,” I greeted, smiling at the image of a sweaty, shirtless Vaughn with a white towel wrapped around his neck. It was obvious he’d just finished what was probably another grueling workout. He’d barely stopped to catch his breath or wipe the sweat away before calling me. My crazy heart did cartwheels in my chest. That is until Vaughn’s gaze narrowed, seeing me out of breath as well. “What the hell were you doing?”

  “I ran up the stairs so I wouldn’t miss your call.” Next time, I’ll just let it go to voicemail, asshole.

  His lids lowered, and I rolled my eyes. Vaughn was definitely pleased and turned on by my eagerness. I watched him bite his lower lip as he seemed to contemplate something. “Is your father home?” His tone was suddenly sultry.

  “No.”

  The warmth traveling up my neck couldn’t be contained. My father had accepted a summer job coaching a youth football camp down in North Carolina and had left this morning. For some reason, though, I’d been a little hesitant to tell Vaughn that I’d be without parental supervision for the next four weeks. Sure, I was eighteen, but to my father, I would always be his little girl. At least now that we’d graduated, Vaughn was no longer one of his players. My father would have never condoned our relationship, as complicated as it were, otherwise. I’d had a hard enough time convincing him to let his quarterback take me to prom. Vaughn had told my father that he simply wanted to repay me for all the “tutoring sessions.”

  “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

  “Make it ten, or I won’t bother answering the door,” I challenged before hanging up. I didn’t want to make it too easy for him, after all. I rushed downstairs and turned off the dinner-for-one I’d been preparing before heading back up and straight for the bathroom. I knew exactly what was running through Vaughn’s mind.

  Goose bumps appeared on my skin as I filled our garden tub with hot water, Epsom salts, and my favorite lavender bubble bath. The tub was only half full when the doorbell rang minutes later. Checking my phone, I smirked when I saw that it had only taken him eight to reach me.

  When I opened the front door, Vaughn swept me up in his big arms, pressed me against his naked chest, and kissed the hell out of me. Anyone else and I might have been grossed out by the sweat now soaking the front of my T-shirt, but with Vaughn, I couldn’t get enough of the testosterone seeping from his pores.

  He was just so damn male.

  “Miss me, pip-squeak?”

  Even though it had only been two days, I’d been anxious to see him again, and even though summer had only just begun, it was already starting to feel like the end. “What I don’t miss is your new pet name. Can we please discuss you going back to Ty-ty?”

  Grinning, he gripped my ass before wrapping my legs around his waist, and it was then that I remembered I only wore panties. He’d seen me in much less, but I couldn’t help the blush that warmed my cheeks as he kicked the door closed and carried me up the stairs.

  He went straight for the bathroom without having to be told.

  Like all the other times, he quietly removed his clothes after setting me on my feet. All he wore were navy-blue basketball shorts and matching trainers, so he was naked in no time, and I was in danger of swallowing my tongue. Everything about Vaughn Rees set my body on fucking fire. Even, ridiculously, the hair on his legs. I loved feeling the roughness of them against my own whenever we became tangled underneath the sheets.

  “Are you sore?” I asked when he grimaced while lowering himself into the hot water and lavender-scented suds.

  Eyes closed and head tilted back, Vaughn replied as casually as if we were discussing the weather. “Not as sore as you’re going to be when I fuck you.”

  My legs were suddenly too weak to hold me up, so I sank onto the wide ledge surrounding the bathtub, brought my knees to my chest, and hugged them for dear life. I believed him. “When will that be?”

  It was a dangerous question, indeed, but the silence had become too thick with tension. I needed to break it somehow. It wasn’t as if I was saving myself for marriage, but it turns out, I wasn’t as open or eager for casual sex as I thought. I wanted—no, I needed more, and ironically, it was Vaughn who made me see that.

  In the beginning, he’d set out to make me just another notch on his belt and nothing more. But in a twist of fate that neither of us could see coming, during the weeks he spent chasing me, his dick had grown a conscience. And then Vaughn gave me what he hadn’t given the others. Honesty.

  He admitted to me that even by some snowball’s chance in hell he’d want more, he couldn’t and wouldn’t give it to me. I never learned why. I’d been too afraid of driving him away to ask.

  The most obvious reason was that he wanted to keep his options open for when he inevitably went pro. We were young. We still haven’t met the people we’d become. There was an entire world out there waiting, and for Vaughn, it would be even bigger. What were the odds that the girl he was meant to give his heart to had been right here in Blackwood Keep all along?

  The skeptical pessimist in me would say slim to none.

  “When you can accept the fact that you deserve better, Tyra.” His tone was grim, and the frown he wore was troubled. I’d say a little too much for a boy who was simply trying to keep his options open.

  “Is there a reason why you think you’re aren’t what I deserve?”

  “There are many.”

  I pondered that for a moment before deciding that I wouldn’t back down. This was a battle worth fighting, and my gut told me the victory would be sweet. I just didn’t know how forbidden the fruit. Not yet, anyway. “Then start with the biggest one.”

  His eyes opened slowly. I wasn’t prepared for the pain I saw within them and his apology before the answer even left his lips. “My father.”

  I didn’t need to see the stillness of his finger resting on the porcelain lip of the tub to know that Vaughn was telling the truth. The breathtaking green of his eyes had been darkened by shadows too thick to penetrate.

  And then came the questions.

  Why would his father not want us together? How could a man who’d never met me hate me enough to bar his son from true love? And most importantly, why did Vaughn obey?

  Rather than a light bulb glowing over my head, helping me see the answer, I felt like I’d been shot through the eye with an arrow.

  “Is it because—” Bile rose in my throat as my heart raced. “Is it because I’m…black?” I’d always been proud to be who I was, but I almost choked on the word that now seemed tarnished, tainted by the hatred of a stranger.

  Vaughn didn’t answer right away, but then something akin to regret flickered in his eyes before he responded. “Yes.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I caught the subtle tap of his index finger before he gripped the edge of the tub as if he were trying to strangle it.

  I was too stunned to call him out on it.

  Vaughn hadn’t lied when he said his father was the reason we couldn’t be together, but why would he lie about his father being racist if he wasn’t? What could be worse?

  I considered the rumors floating around that his father made his money illegally, but I never truly gave them credence. There had never been a
ny evidence to support them. To the naked eye, Franklin Rees had only ever been a shrewd businessman with a few friends in high places. Maybe he was corrupt, very few people with power aren’t, but that hardly made him dangerous.

  Before I could find the words to confront him, the doorbell rang. Vaughn’s eyes were already closed once again, telling me he’d assumed the conversation was over. Not even close. Reluctantly, I stood with a frown that only deepened. Whoever was at that door was keeping me from getting the answers I needed once again, and they weren’t going to feel very welcome.

  Snatching open the front door—because let’s face it, my mood had turned to shit—I wasn’t prepared to see a stranger standing on the other side. And an insanely beautiful one no less. She was short like me, although taller by two inches or so, with full Kerry Washington lips that matched the heart shape of her face. She had blemish-free brown skin and hair, so lush that I almost slammed the door in her face out of envy. I could tell right away that she was older. Maybe by two or three years. Her almond-shaped, light-brown eyes, which eerily resembled my own, gave her away.

  Clearly startled, she blinked a few times before greeting me. “Hi!” And of course, her voice was like silk. I almost rolled my eyes. “Did I catch you at a bad time?”

  “That depends on who the hell you are and what you want.” I immediately winced when I realized I sounded like Vaughn. He could be so damn rude sometimes. Apparently, it was starting to rub off.

  “Oh, sorry! I’m so rude.” The sound of her giggle, light and musical, grated on my goddamn patience. “My name is Selena Taylor. I was hoping to speak with Cedric Bradley. Is he home?”

  “No, sorry. He’s out of town for the next few weeks, but I can take a message.” The entire time I spoke, forcing a pleasant tone, I wondered what the hell she had to talk to my father about. Glancing at her exposed midsection over the tight shorts she wore, I was relieved to see that she wasn’t pregnant. Not visibly anyway.

  Shaking off the ridiculous thoughts, because my father would never touch a girl so young, I met her gaze or at least tried to. She was busy gaping at something behind me. Looking over my shoulder, I saw Vaughn approaching, suds and water still dripping from his massive chest and only a towel wrapped around his waist.