by Huss, JA
“I can’t imagine a version of myself where I could ruin one girl to save two others. That’s just… not how right and wrong work.”
“No,” he agreed. “You never were as ruthless as people made you out to be. I… on the other hand.” He shook his head. “I was mean. It came naturally. Being mean is easy. It requires very little effort. But compassion, Cooper. Compassion is the definition of strength. I want to pay for my sins. I want people to know that I am sorry. But most of all I want to send a message to the others. I’m not the last evil man on earth. The monsters are still out there and I want them to know that they are not safe.”
I didn’t want to ask what that meant. I didn’t want to know who he was talking about.
“Did you find the money, Cooper?”
I sucked in a deep breath and nodded. “I did.”
“Did you spend it?”
“No. I’m giving it away. It’s gonna take a long time—it’s a lot of money—but I’m sure I’m up for the challenge.
I looked at him. Trying to read his mind. Waiting for him to ask me the next logical question.
But he asked me a different question instead. “Can I give you one more piece of advice before I leave and never see you again, Cooper?”
“If you’re going back, I’ll see you in court, Dad. I’m the prosecution’s star witness, remember?”
He just smiled at me. “Do you want to hear my advice or not?”
I nodded.
“You have never been an inconsiderate little prick who thinks that this good life I provided for you was a right instead of a privilege. You are not greedy. You are not lazy. You are not stupid. And there wasn’t a chance in hell you would never amount to anything. You are going to leave your mark on this world and that mark will be deep. It will last long after all the Valcourts are dead and gone. But while you’re doing all that, don’t forget to live. Do ordinary things, Cooper. Eat good food. Go pretty places. Love a nice girl. Work hard, be grateful, and don’t take any of it for granted.”
I got a little emotional. But I told him I would.
Then the driver opened my door and we said goodbye with a handshake.
I did see him in the courtroom a year later for the first day of his trial.
But I never did get to testify.
And I left before they could lead him out in chains.
CHAPTER FORTY - CADEE
A week later, two days before classes start, I decide I will burn that box of evidence and never think of it again. So I hunt down the secrets hidden inside my house. Isabella had gotten tired of looking at it when we first arrived and had stuck it somewhere. I didn’t know where, and I didn’t ask. But it wasn’t hard to find, once I went looking.
This house is small, but it has a proper third-floor attic with an actual staircase and not the kind of stairs that you pull down from the ceiling.
But when I walk up and flick on the light, I don’t find a box.
I find… a story.
The walls are filled with photographs and newspaper clippings. There are brightly colored strings connected people, and places, and events together. They crisscross each other, forming a web of evil and lies.
One wall is nothing but original paper documents preserved inside plastic covers.
The timeline starts here in 1795 with the marriage announcement of William Valcourt and Mary Monroe. That whole wall is mostly aging articles that piece together a family tree. But three quarters of the way through, the school is built. The next wall includes some pictures. Illustrations at first, then real photographs. And it’s weird to see the lake as it was. When the mansions were young and small, like the children.
There is mention of Fang and Feather too. A society dedicated to ‘enlightenment’.
What a joke. Because there is enough documented depraved behavior on these walls to condemn every lake-mansion family to eternal Hell, if it exists.
And clearly, they think it does. Because they pray to the ultimate Bully King.
Aside from Valcourt and Monroe, every other name I know is here.
Bettington, Legosi, Blanchard, Gottsworth, Warning, Cruz, Huntington—they are all here.
Even… Hunter.
I glance at the other walls. It is a mess of sickness. Rituals, and statues, and blood. People in robes holding babies and piles of bones at their feet.
The wall detailing the next hundred years is nothing but high society pages. The birth of the Ruling Class.
Marriage announcements. Parties and fundraisers. Men, rising and falling. Money, gained and lost.
The next fifty years is chaos and death. Wars and violence. Hate and rage.
And our families—even Hunter—playing their parts.
I take it all down, pack it all back up, and even though I know this is history and I have no right to erase it, I erase it anyway.
I take it outside, put it in an old rusty barrel used for burning leaves, and I set it on fire.
I don’t want to know that story.
I decide that from this moment on, I do not want to take the path of least resistance.
EPILOGUE - COOPER
Almost five years after the raid on the Monrovian Estates tomb I am in my final year of grad school.
I finished the masters but stayed on for the Ph.D. because… well, why not?
I’m in my office, packing up my shit before winter break, when I hear a soft knock on my door.
Cadee Hunter is standing in my doorway wearing… I smile at her. Then laugh. “What the hell are you wearing?”
“Oh, this?” She pans her hand down her outfit. She’s wearing tan leggings, knee-high brown leather boots, a puffy white shirt that makes her look like a pirate, and a cropped and studded brown leather jacket that is absolutely worthless in this dreary winter weather. “This is my quest uniform.”
She says this like it hasn’t been five years since we’ve talked.
She says this like we’ve spent every second of the time between then and now casually showing up in each other’s lives wearing ridiculous ‘quest costumes’.
She says this like we are a forgone conclusion and not on the verge of something.
“What are you wearing?”
I look down at my clothes. Jeans. Blue button-down shirt. Boots. Then I look back up at her. “My grad student uniform.”
“Hmm.” She walks inside my office and kicks the door closed with her foot. “How’s that working out for you, Coop?”
I practically beam with happiness. “Well, I have to be honest, Cades. It’s pretty fucking boring. How’s your… quest working out for you?”
She walks over to me. Smiles and bats her eyelashes. “Well.” She leans into my neck when she says this and her breath is soft, and warm, and it kinda tickles. “I was just getting ready to leave when I thought of you. I thought about that crown you used to wear.”
“Did I ever really wear a crown?”
“No. You didn’t. I was just propping you up with that statement. But do you know why, Cooper? Do you know why you never wore the crown?”
“Please, tell me.”
“Because you had never been on a quest. You cannot be a king without a quest.”
“Are you inviting me along on your quest?”
“I am, Cooper. Because I remembered that I never did slay any dragons.” She grabs my shirt with both hands and tilts her chin up so she’s looking me in the eyes. “I owe you a dragon. And I don’t want to scare you off, but I’m afraid there might be more than one out there. There might be a lot of dragons out there, Cooper.”
“Does that worry you, Cades?”
She nods. Then inhales deeply and nods again. “Yes. Because dragons are big, and strong, and evil, and they breathe fire. So yeah, I’m afraid of the dragons.”
“Then why go on the quest to take them out?”
“Because for once in my life I would like to rise to a challenge set by me.”
I look down at her pretty face and think about all the ways in whic
h I’ve known Cadee Hunter.
The girl the woods.
The friend.
The lover.
The stranger.
And now she is my prince.
She has come to save me from a life less lived.
She has come to remind me that living involves risk.
She has come to inform me that I can still wear that crown, but I have to earn it first.
And sitting here in a grad school office teaching two classes a semester while I finish my dissertation will never help me slay a dragon.
Anonymously handing out billions of dollars that aren’t mine won’t slay a dragon, either.
She leans up on her tip toes and places her hands flat on my cheeks. “Is this the best you can do, Cooper?”
I am suddenly transported back in time. To that night during summer rush when Cadee and I were sitting in my boat. Later, she would get high with Mona and I would make a series of very bad choices that would eventually lead me right here, to this moment.
But in the boat I insisted that if I had known what my father’s plan was, I would do something about it.
I told her that I had done my best.
Of course, it was a lie. It was just the path of least resistance.
“No, Cadee. This isn’t the best I can do.”
She smiles and her lips press against mine.
I live in that kiss for thousands of years before she pulls away.
Then I grab my coat, lock my office, and when we walk out that door and start our quest… for the first time in my life, I decide to become… the hero.
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END OF BOOK SHIT
Welcome to the End of Book Shit – this is the part of the book where I get to write anything I want about the book and you can read it or not. But be aware that it’s never edited or censored.
Well, I actually have a lot to say about Ruling Class. This duet, as a whole, really. Because before writing Bully King I had never read a “bully book” before. (I still have never read another “bully book”.)
So if you are a regular bully-book reader and feel that my story is unusual, that’s probably why.
Just to be clear – I don’t like bullies.
But I do like to write “unlikeable” characters – i.e. – anti-heroes. And I like to try and make them, if not lovable, at the very least redeemable, by the end of the story.
Almost every book of mine has an anti-hero in it. And in romance this can fall under quite a few tropes such as “Enemies to Lovers” or “Alpha-Asshole” or “Anti-hero” or “Bully”. There are probably more, but you get the idea.
But a bully book is rather specific. Because our “hero” is a jerk. This goes beyond alpha-asshole because our hero is generally very young, so they act their age. i.e. – they act immature. And this differs from an Alpha-Asshole (in my opinion), because by the time they reach they alpha-asshole stage, they should at least be capable of acting “mature”. They should at least be able to control their urges and focus their “mean-ness” in a specific direction for a specific reason – even if that reason is unreasonable.
Bullies don’t know what the fuck they’re doing or why they’re doing it. It’s nothing more than a childish lashing out.
It’s a COMING OF AGE story.
Now this – I like. A lot.
I LOVE coming-of-age stories. And I could write a whole lot more about that but I already wrote an entire book about coming of age called “Eighteen” that pretty much spells out how I feel about being a “new adult” and what that age meant to me, personally. (Because the book, 18, is ABOUT me.)
So Cooper is a complete dumbass all the way into Ruling Class.
He has almost no redeeming qualities in chapter one of Bully King and by the time that book ends – well, he’s not much better. He didn’t make any amends by the end of book one BUT he did come to a new conclusion about himself.
He grew some balls, for one.
He had a good end scene standing up to his father.
But listen, he was an asshole. What he did to Cadee when she was fifteen is almost inexcusable.
But, as I wrote in the Bully King EOBS, forgiveness is a thing. And it’s got nothing to do with Cooper, as I explained, it’s all about Cadee. But when Cooper realizes that SHE forgave him – this opens him up to the idea that HE can learn to forgive himself.
So Ruling Class is about four things:
(1) Cooper is learning how to forgive himself and become a better, more focused, more intent-ful person.
(2) Cadee is caught up something she doesn’t understand and is losing control.
(3) They BOTH need to find a way to separate who they ARE with who they WANT TO BE.
(4) Bringing down the darkness that permeates the school and the families that live around the lake.
I would’ve liked to add one more thing to this list. I would’ve liked to add:
(4) Understanding WHY all this stuff was happening.
But explaining it felt like an “out” to me because there is no way to explain evil.
It’s just evil.
And this story is NOT about a satanic cult (or whatever the proper term is for what these people are – “satanic” feels like an “out” as well but I have no interest in digging deeper into that world.)
This story is about Cadee and Cooper figuring out where they belong in this world, how to come to terms with the “position” they were put in at birth, and how to relate to each other.
It’s fucking romance. Not a thriller.
And so if you’re disappointed that I didn’t go into more detail about the cult, I’m sorry. I decided to keep it vague for the reason above and because there’s enough darkness in this world. Right?
Cadee felt it in the end. She had all the answers she ever wanted – but did she REALLY need those answers?
Were those answers going to make her a better person?
I think those answers DID make her a better person by the time she built up the courage to seek them out in the attic, but would it have helped her to know right away when she got to North Dakota?
I don’t think so.
I think knowing certain answers can hold you down if you’re not ready to put them in their proper context.
And thinking back on this – like… if I had to do it again… I would probably find another way to tell this story. The cult thing is interesting and cool. And I could’ve written a lot more about it. I’m not sick of the “conspiracy stories” by any means. I’ve written a lot of them. In fact it’s pretty much my MO at this point, right?
But while I was doing research for the Creeping Beautiful and Bossy Brothers series’ I stumbled in to some weird shit that I
had never seen before (as far as conspiracy theories go, anyway).
I mean, I’ve done a lot of research on this stuff – I’ve been writing these books for over 8 years now. I thought I knew every conspiracy theory out there but nope. Turns out there’s some dark shit that I had never seen before. And even though I had already set up this cult stuff in Bully King I decided when I started to write Ruling Class that I wasn’t going there.
Obviously I HAD to go there – it’s part of the story. But I didn’t have to go deep.
And I didn’t.
I give you just enough of the cult stuff in this book to understand what they are up against. But I wasn’t in the mood to go into details. I’m sure you can use your imagination.
If this wasn’t a romance I might’ve gone darker.
But do we really need to get that dark right now?
I don’t.
So if you’re disappointed that I didn’t give more details on the cult I apologize for that. I just didn’t want to contribute any more darkness to this world than I needed to in order for Cadee and Cooper to find their HEA.
And it’s not that I don’t like a good dark story, because I do. I’m writing a really dark story in this next book (not Bossy or Creeping related, something new). And I’m gonna go pretty dark with that. But there are no fucking blood sacrifices going on. lol Because that’s what was happening here in Ruling Class (if you didn’t figure it out, there it is.)
Also, I’m not going to write another bully book and the reason this is only a duet and not a trilogy is because this was just an experiment for me. I was honestly just fucking around with this bully book. Ruling Class is super long coming in at nearly 110K words. I didn’t plan it that way, but this ended up being a HUGE story.
Like way bigger than I actually intended.
And I’m not saying that these characters won’t be back.