Defiant Princess: A Reverse Harem High School Bully Romance (Boys of Oak Park Prep Book 2)

by Callie Rose

  The video cut out after their kiss broke, reverting back to a freeze-frame from the beginning, but I kept staring at the phone in Finn’s hand, blinking rapidly.

  “You were so beautiful that night, Legs,” he whispered, his voice rough. “Wild and free.”

  Something in his tone pulled my attention toward him, and when I looked up to his face, his eyes were glassy. He shook his head, fierce anger contorting his features. “That’s what the four of us did. We tried to break something beautiful. And we can’t ever unbreak it.”

  His gaze dropped to my mouth, and a look like determination passed over his face. Before I could register what he was about to do, he bent his head and pressed his lips against mine.

  The kiss lasted only a fraction of a second—too short a time for my body to decide whether to recoil from it or lean into it—and then he pulled away, stepping back.

  With his honey-brown eyes still regarding me carefully, he held out his phone, offering it to me.

  My fingers felt numb as I took it from his grasp, staring down at the still image on the screen. As if unable to help myself, I tapped the play button with my thumb, and the soft sound of the ocean came through the small speakers as the beautiful, hopeful girl onscreen stared out over the dark ocean once again.

  I stepped away from Finn, still holding the phone, and moved toward the doorway. Gripping the handle, I pulled it open partway, held the phone at an angle against the door’s frame, and slammed it hard.

  Once.

  Twice.

  Three times.

  The phone cracked and shattered, little pieces of glass tinkling to the floor as the casing bent and the screen flickered and went dark.

  I pulled the door open wider and let the hunk of ruined metal and plastic fall to the floor as I looked back at Finn.

  He nodded, not even glancing down at the destroyed phone—not even seeming pissed off that I’d just wrecked the thing. It was almost like this was what he’d expected me to do with it. Why he’d given it to me in the first place.

  “Everything else was deleted. That was the last copy,” he said quietly. “It’s gone now.”

  I wasn’t sure what I felt about that—couldn’t tell if it was relief or sadness—so I didn’t respond. I just pulled my gaze away from his and walked out.

  Chapter 13

  They’re liars, Talia. They’ll tell you anything to get what they want.

  But what the fuck did the Princes want this time?

  To get rid of me again, probably. Mason, at least, still seemed like he’d be only too happy to see me go. He might’ve called off the bullying, but he hadn’t pulled the about-face Finn had.

  I had meant what I said to the blond football player. In some ways, it was easier to cope with the way Mason was acting. His obvious dislike of me made it easier for my brain to grasp that everything last semester had been a lie.

  Finn’s words?

  The look on his face?

  That brief, almost desperate kiss?

  They made it harder to believe that, made me start to question what I’d been telling myself over and over for months.

  And that was more fucking dangerous than anything.

  The rest of the day was a blur, as I tried to focus on classes and lectures while an array of thoughts spun around my mind.

  That girl in the video, the one I knew logically was me but could hardly relate to anymore, had looked so… happy.

  That night with the Princes had been one of the best of my life. The night it all came crashing down had been one of the worst, but there was no denying the fact that—even if it was all for the sake of the lie—the Princes had found and nurtured something in me I hadn’t even known was there.

  A wildness.

  A freedom.

  A capacity for unbounded joy and happiness.

  Maybe in pushing them away, trying to destroy all thoughts and memories of them, I had pushed that girl away too.

  Maybe there was a way to get her back, even without the Princes. To find that place again, but to find it on my own.

  “Hey, girl. You okay?” Leah leaned around Maggie to look at me as we walked across the quad at the end of the day. The blonde-haired girl was in her now usual place as buffer between me and Leah.

  “Yeah.”

  I blinked, hauling my thoughts back to the present. The last thing I wanted to do was admit I’d been thinking about the Princes. They were what’d come between us last time, and things were only just starting to get better for the two of us.

  “Huh.” She narrowed her eyes at me before sharing a look with Maggie. “That’s a freakin’ lie. It’s the Princes, right?”

  “What? No! I—”

  “Ugh, you’re such a liar.” She scoffed. “I mean, I’m not dumb, Talia. I know that whatever fucking weirdness there was between you and those guys, it’s not over.”

  I opened my mouth to deny it, then snapped it shut again. She was right. I’d said the same thing to myself more than once. I was connected to all four of them in a way I wasn’t sure I’d ever truly be free of, bound up in a mess of anger, vengeance, lust, and obsession.

  “No,” I admitted softly, glancing down at the paved path in front of us. “It’s not over.”

  “Honesty is a good first step,” she said archly. “Just don’t let them fucking brainwash you again, okay?”

  “I won’t.” My voice was fierce, and Leah chuckled.

  “Good. And if you need any help, say, wrecking any of the other Princes’ cars or anything, I’m always game. I’ve got a clean record, so I could afford to get arrested once.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Hey, um, we were gonna go to a party at Julie Summer’s house tonight,” Maggie said, glancing between me and Leah. “You wanna come?”

  My footsteps slowed, and it was on the tip of my tongue to say “no”. I hadn’t really done much at all outside of school since I’d been back, and since one of the few people I’d hung out with earlier in the semester had turned out to be a disgusting bastard, I hadn’t really wanted to.

  But I knew what Maggie’s invitation was. An overture of peace.

  And when Leah added in a causal voice, “Yeah, you should come,” I found myself nodding.

  The happy, wild, and free Talia was still inside me somewhere. It was time to start trying to dig her out.

  We split to head back to our individual dorms, and I get a couple hours of solid studying in before we left in the evening to head to Julie’s place. I hitched a ride with Leah and found myself missing my old car, as ugly as it’d been. Part of the reason I hadn’t been off campus much at all this semester was because I didn’t have an easy way to do so.

  California was built for cars, and not having one made me feel a little stranded sometimes.

  I guess I could buy one.

  There was enough money in my checking account from the trust fund disbursement that I could afford something nice—not that I’d get another fucking Bentley.

  Maggie and Dan were in the back seat, kissing without trying to make it obvious, which of course only made it more obvious. Leah caught my eye and made a gagging face, and I chuckled. The two of them really were disgustingly cute. But I liked it. They reminded me that love could exist without manipulation, lying, and backstabbing, that it could be something that was good for you. That lifted you up and gave you strength when you needed it most.

  Most of my encounters with love hadn’t been like that at all.

  Julie’s house was three stories tall and futuristically modern, with odd angles, glass surfaces, and shiny metal everywhere. Music blared loud, the bass thumping hard in my body before we even stepped through the front door. Once inside, we worked our way quickly toward the kitchen for drinks. Maggie and Dan grabbed beers from a keg, and Leah mixed up something with cherry vodka, but I just filled a red Solo cup with soda.

  When Leah noticed and raised a brow at me, I shrugged.

  “Trying to mak
e better life choices.”

  She grinned and stuck her tongue out. “Atta girl! Oh! And that means you can drive me home, so guess who’s got two thumbs and is gonna get shit-faced?”

  She tried to point both thumbs at herself without spilling her drink and almost dropped the entire cup. She scrambled to catch it before it fell, and little blobs of liquid sloshed over the sides.

  I made a face at her. “Pregame a little too hard, did we?”

  “Dick,” she shot back with a laugh, and the four of us pushed our way through the thick press of bodies toward the main part of the house.

  As we entered the massive, high-ceilinged living room, I caught sight of Adena near the entrance. She was dressed in a short red dress that hugged her curves, with her blonde hair styled in perfect waves. She’d never been subtle in the way she dressed off campus, but it looked like she’d put a bit of extra effort in tonight. Before I could wonder why, the answer sidled up behind her and wrapped his arms around her, hitching her obscenely close to his body and grinding against her in time to the music. She tipped her head back, letting Preston West run his lips up the side of her neck.

  I couldn’t help the grimace that contorted my face. “Are Adena and Preston… together?”

  Leah spared them a quick glance, puffing out her cheeks like she was going to barf. “Yeah, maybe. I’ve seen them hanging out together a lot recently, although they haven’t been quite that, uh, obvious.”

  My face was probably still set in a mask of disgust when Adena glanced over at me, and maybe that was the reason her eyes narrowed in fury.

  Then again, maybe not.

  Adena had already invented a million reasons to hate me—she didn’t need any help on that front.

  And she had definitely been lying about being back together with Mason.

  “I’m not surprised,” Maggie put in. “Preston’s kind of a dick. Of course he’d go for the biggest bitch in school.”

  “Yeah, he is,” I agreed fervently. He was the asshole who’d talked shit about Penny, and I didn’t feel bad about hating him for that. It had nothing to do with Cole and everything to do with the fact that Preston had made fun of an eight-year-old girl.

  I pulled my focus away from Adena, who was still dancing with the blond boy like she was trying to get pregnant, and glanced around the rest of the massive space. The Princes were there too, because of course they were, but I ignored them, following my little group to a corner of the living room that wasn’t as crowded.

  After a few minutes, Maggie and Dan were making out again, and Leah had gotten into a very heated debate with two juniors about which Halloween movie was the best, so that left me with not much to do but people watch and sip my Coke.

  The four Princes were on the other side of the room near a large grand piano, lounging on a couch that was so angular and modern it looked horribly uncomfortable. When I’d seen them at parties during my first semester at Oak Park, they’d usually been surrounded by girls—covered in them, really—but they weren’t tonight. They sat on the couch watching the party just like I was, but even though they were surrounded by people, they didn’t blend with the crowd.

  They never had. Not at their parties at Clarendon Hall, not here. Not anywhere.

  The children of gods.

  That’s what they’d looked like to me the first day I saw them, and I could still see it. That raw power. That otherness.

  But even gods could fall.

  They weren’t impervious. Not like I’d once thought them to be. I had information that could damage both Cole and Elijah, and Finn had looked unnervingly human when he’d spoken to me in the dance studio. There were cracks in the armor they all wore.

  Half an hour later, I noticed Finn stand up and head down a hallway that led deeper into the house.

  “Hey, I’ll be right back,” I muttered to Leah.

  The Halloween debate was still raging, and she nodded to me absently as she explained to the boys in a patient tone why they were so very, very wrong.

  My heartbeat picked up a little, and I couldn’t tell if any of the other Princes noticed me slip down the same hallway Finn had vanished into, but I didn’t glance over at them. Fuck it. Let them think whatever they wanted.

  The hallway was dark and branched off into other wings of the house. I wasn’t quite sure where Finn had gone, and I was rounding a corner when I almost bumped into him, heading back the way he’d come. His hands reached out to steady me before he registered my face, and when he saw who it was, he froze.

  “Talia?”

  “Did you mean it?”

  His grip on my arms tightened for a second and then loosened, but he didn’t let go. “Mean what?”

  I swallowed, my gaze caught by his earnest brown eyes. Finn had always been the easiest to read—or at least, that’s what I’d thought. After what happened at the end of the year, I’d convinced myself that he was just the best actor out of all the Princes, the best at projecting emotions he didn’t feel.

  “Do you really want to unbreak what you broke?”

  He blinked at me, like he couldn’t believe what I’d just asked. Well, that makes two of us.

  My heart thudded hard against my ribs as I waited to hear his answer. He stepped toward me, his hands sliding down my arms just a fraction. But that small movement was like a flint striking, sending little sparks dancing across my skin. We were less than a foot apart, our bodies closer than they’d been in the dance studio, and I could feel the whisper of his breath against my face as he spoke.

  “Yes. More than anything, Tal.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything before now then?”

  He shook his head, still staring down at me in the dim light like he was afraid I’d disappear if he blinked. “Because I was an idiot and an asshole. And then I didn’t think you’d give me the chance. I thought you hated us.”

  “I do.”

  The words left my lips, and we both knew they were true. But that didn’t stop my body from wanting to mold against his, didn’t stop the sparks from stoking a fire that burned all the way from my chest down to my core.

  I shook my head, determined not to be blinded this time. To look at him and see what he really was.

  My palms drifted up to rest on his chest, and I felt his heart slamming against them, harder than my own thudding pulse.

  “If you really want to unbreak what you broke, then you have to prove to me you’ve changed, Finn. I’m not sure it’ll ever be enough.” My hands fisted his shirt, like they were trying to draw the truth out of him, to find the person I’d thought he was under all the layers of mistrust and bullshit. “You guys were so fucking good at the lie. You went out of your way for me. You protected me. And in the end, it was all so you could hurt me. So I don’t know how to believe anything you say, and I’m not sure I ever will. But if you really want to try to unbreak this, that’s all you can do. Show me. Over and over and over again. And maybe one day, I’ll believe you.”

  My heart hurt saying the words. I wasn’t kidding about keeping my guard up, but even allowing for the possibility that I might one day forgive him felt dangerous. Because in saying it, I was admitting that part of me still cared about him.

  His hands moved down to my waist, his touch almost hesitant. He didn’t answer, just stared down at me with that same disbelieving look, his gaze tracking over my face like he was trying to memorize my features.

  We stayed like that for way too long, in a strange sort of embrace, our bodies brushing together, our breaths evening out into a single rhythm, gazes locked. Finally, I pushed against his chest, and he released me immediately.

  He bit his lip and nodded as I stepped back, but before I turned away, I hesitated.

  “You didn’t break me, Finn. I’m still here, aren’t I? But you broke my trust. And I’ve only given that to a few people in my entire life.”

  “I know.” His voice was deep, rougher and so much more serious than the boy I’d known last year.

  It occurr
ed to me as I walked back down the hall toward the party that maybe I wasn’t the only one who’d been irrevocably changed by what the Princes had done.

  By the time Monday rolled around, I knew something had shifted.

  It wasn’t just the fact that Finn was back in the studio with me during gym, new phone in hand, watching me with hopeful eyes. It wasn’t just the fact that he sat next to me in American Literature, scooting his desk a little closer to mine.

  It was the fact that a rift seemed to have opened up between the Princes.

  They still sat together at lunch, still walked across campus together in a straight row, still gathered together in the halls. But where so often before, the four of them had seemed like a singular being, some kind of beautiful, multi-headed monster, now they were… divided.

  Distinctly separate.

  Tense.

  Chapter 14

  As the rest of the week passed, the tension between the Princes didn’t lessen. If anything, it became more obvious, more overt. I’d noticed it right away because I was—for better or for worse—deeply attuned to each one of the Princes.

  But other students noticed it too, particularly Adena, who used the division between them to push back even harder against their control of the school. Preston was becoming a regular fixture at her side, and the two of them started bullying other students, particularly the freshmen and sophomores, probably trying to get the littlest fish in line before they went after the big ones.

  I wasn’t particularly inclined to stop her, except that her rebellion against the Princes also included being more of a bitch to me. She was sneaky about it though—she wasn’t dumb—only going after me when none of the four guys was around to see.

  Philip called me on Thursday to ask if I’d meet with him again. I agreed, with the same terms as the previous time—I got to decide where we went, and I got to decide what we talked about. This time though, I didn’t press for more details about my mom or Jacqueline or any of the fucked up mess that was my family life. Instead, we talked about stupid stuff, like what kinds of movies we liked, what our favorite foods were, and what places we’d been—Philip—or wanted to go—me.