by Callie Rose
“Thanks.” He paused for a moment, then added, “I thought a lot about what you said that night after the fight. When you asked why I snuck around doing drugs instead of playing guitar—if I was going to be sneaking around anyway.” His hazel eyes grew serious, and I felt his chest expand with a deep breath. “And I think the truth is, I was still trying to make my parents happy, to fit into the life they built for me. Like I really believed them that the thing I loved most in the world wasn’t good enough for me.”
He shook his head, tugging me a little closer to his body.
“I don’t think I realized until I met you just how much my parents had fucked me up. How easy it is for our parents to do that. It took meeting you to make me see that.”
“Yeah.” I snorted a soft laugh. “I am the poster child for kids who’ve been messed up by their parents.”
“Maybe, but you didn’t let it define you. You didn’t let it change who you are.”
I felt his fingers stroke through the tendrils of hair at the base of my neck, making a pleasurable shiver run down my spine.
“You could be angry all the time, Tal,” he continued. “You could have nothing but spite and hate left in you. But you’re one of the best people I know.” His hand slipped down to press against my chest, near where my heart beat steady and strong. “And I don’t just mean nice. I mean good.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just let the music fill the space between us for a little while. It truly was beautiful, and I felt like I could hear Elijah’s heart in every strum of the guitar strings.
“I’m glad you’re playing again,” I murmured softly.
He made a little sound in his throat. “Well, since my parents already decided to give most of my inheritance to Sebastian, I figured why the fuck not? What else can they take away from me?”
My footsteps stuttered as the impact of that hit me again. Elijah hadn’t been completely disowned like I had. But the vast fortune that he would’ve inherited someday would no longer be his.
I ducked my head, guilt rising up for the part I had played in that, but Elijah caught my chin, making me meet his gaze. “I didn’t mean that to sound like a bad thing, Tal. It’s like the fallen angel tattoo on my back. I got it thinking of how no matter what I did, I’d be letting someone down. But I didn’t ever stop to think that maybe that’s okay. That sometimes you have to fall to be free.”
He smiled softly as he spoke, and he dipped his head to kiss me once, his oak and sage scent filling my nostrils as he did. He drew back as the song ended and whispered, “Someday, I’ll play for you, and you can dance for me.”
The sureness in his voice made tears sting the backs of my eyes, and I nodded. Then he spun me around gently, gifting me into Finn’s arms.
The broad-shouldered football player grinned down at me as the song he’d picked began to play.
“So what do you think of your real senior prom, Legs?”
I grinned back, not even trying to tamp down the thrill of joy that rose up inside me. “I think it beats the fuck out of getting chased around a stage by Adena.”
He threw his head back and laughed, and when he looked back at me, his light brown eyes were still dancing with humor. “You know we had like a million contingency plans in place, just in case she pulled some shit and tried to really hurt you, right?”
“Let me guess—did most of them involve you guys bum-rushing the stage and full-body tackling her?”
“Quite a few of them, yeah.” He nodded, chuckling.
“Do you think she’ll be more of a threat now that she lost what she wanted most? That she’ll try to pull some shit on us before school ends?”
He squinted. “Maybe. But I kinda doubt it, honestly. She’d be stupid to, especially when you could probably press charges for what she did to your car. She admitted to some seriously damaging stuff. I think she’ll be too busy dealing with the fallout from that. Did Cole tell you he emailed it to her parents too?”
“Oh, shit!”
A laugh burst out of me before I could stop it. That was mean, but too damn perfect not to enjoy. Poetic justice, I thought it was called.
“So does that mean you guys won’t need to be my bodyguards anymore?”
“Guess not.” His dimples popped out, and I had to resist the urge to kiss them. “But I hope you don’t mind if we keep hanging around. I don’t think I could stand to go cold turkey.”
“Yeah, I think I could live with that.”
I rested my head against his shoulder, burying my face in the crook of his neck and inhaling the warm, clean smell of his skin. His arms banded around my waist, holding me close against him, and when the song ended, he dipped me dramatically while the other three boys whooped into the silent gymnasium.
When Finn brought me back up to stand, I turned to look over my shoulder at Cole. He leaned back in a seat by the table with his legs spread, watching me intently, and when I crooked a finger at him, he rose from the chair like an apex predator.
“Hey, what song do you want?” Elijah called after him, picking up Mason’s phone.
“I don’t give a fuck.”
With those words, he tugged me from Finn’s hold and wrapped his arms around me. Finn tilted my head, stealing a kiss before punching Cole good-naturedly on the arm and moving to rejoin the others at the table.
A song started playing, but I realized I didn’t really give a fuck what it was either. Cole’s embrace held me tight, and he buried his face in my hair, enveloping me in his essence.
We didn’t talk.
We barely even moved.
We just held each other as the music played and the other Princes watched.
And somehow, it meant everything.
Chapter 21
Finn had been right about us not having to worry about Adena anymore.
Not just because she was too distracted to come after me, but because she was expelled.
As scandalous as the information that’d come out about the Princes had been, it hadn’t directly impacted the school the same way Adena’s revelations had. Even the fact that Finn’s dad had donated money to the school in exchange for better grades for his son was more easily brushed aside as a misunderstanding than the fact that an underage student had slept with a teacher.
Preston and Sable were still around, but without their ringleader, they seemed a little lost. And the rest of Adena’s followers at school didn’t seem all that sad that she was gone. There wasn’t a lot of loyalty when popularity was bought by favors and fear, something the Princes had learned the hard way when the blonde queen of the school had set out to take them down.
But karma was a bitch, and so was Adena, and at the end of the day, that had left her with very few friends.
I heard through the rumor mill that her parents had managed to enroll her in a smaller, less elite school about an hour away from Roseland—probably desperate to have her graduate from somewhere, anywhere. I was sure money or promises of favors owed had been used as bargaining chips.
But hey, at least it wasn’t sex, right?
The next week of school was almost surreal. I hadn’t realized what an annoyingly larger-than-life presence Adena had been until she was no longer there. But it was good timing, because as satisfying as our plan against her had been, it’d taken time and focus away from schoolwork, and we were heading into the final stretch of classes. There would be no time to make up for missed work later.
The Princes’ constant vigilance over me loosened somewhat, but even though Adena was gone, the boys didn’t back away entirely. We never talked about it, but their rotation of staying at my dorm didn’t end, and I never asked them to stop.
I didn’t want them to.
I liked having them around.
The five of us pulled several late night study sessions throughout the week, joined in the Prentice Hall common room by Leah, Maggie, and Dan. Leah jokingly informed the Princes that, whether they’d wanted to or not, they had officially joined the
“losers club”.
There was a time when she would’ve meant that as an insult, and a time they would’ve taken it as one—but now, Finn just laughed and Mason rolled his eyes before his gaze landed on me, a flash of warmth sparking in the depths of his green eyes.
We had two more weeks before finals, and Finn pulled me aside one night to tell me he was currently passing all his classes, and that as long as he didn’t blow it in his last exams, he would graduate on time.
He’d barely gotten the words out before his lips were on mine, kissing me with such breathless abandon that my body responded immediately.
“I owe it all to you, Legs. Thank you so fucking much,” he muttered against my skin as he kissed my neck, molding me against him.
When I pressed against his chest a little, he loosened his grip, not letting me go entirely but giving me room to look up at him.
“I didn’t really do much.” My fingertips trailed over his chest as I spoke. “It was all you. But…” I bit my lip, hoping he wouldn’t take my question the wrong way. “Why didn’t you ever look this stuff up on your own, or try to get help before?”
His gaze went unfocused for a second as he considered that. Then he sighed. “I dunno. I was… embarrassed, I guess. My dad always made it seem like there was something wrong with me. That I was stupid or something. Maybe I started to believe it a little.” Then he shook his head and shrugged, grinning down at me as if he was trying to brush past the vulnerability he’d just shown. “I dunno.”
God. The ways our parents fuck us up.
“You’re not stupid, Finn. Maybe one day you can work with a reading specialist, and they can help you more. But no matter what, you’re not stupid.” I stretched up to kiss him one more time. “And I know you’re gonna kick your finals’ asses.”
Philip called on Friday to ask what my plans were for the summer, and to offer up their house if I needed a place to stay.
I told him I’d think about it, and I meant it.
In actual truth, I’d been so distracted with everything else going on that I hadn’t had much time to consider what I’d do after graduation. At the very least, I could stay with my grandparents for a couple of weeks while I found a place and figured out my next steps. I liked the idea of living on my own though. It felt like it was time.
Scott had given me the go-ahead to cut back on my sessions with him until after I graduated, promising me that once I had more free time, he’d find some new and inventive ways to “torture” me. I knew the day would come, probably sooner rather than later, when I’d have to say goodbye to him. And although it would be a good thing when it happened, I would actually miss the man—and I was sure Philip would miss his best golf buddy.
Cutting back on physical therapy freed up more time to focus on schoolwork, and that was what ninety percent of my brain was occupied with. But there was one thing that kept pricking at my mind, a name that just wouldn’t go away.
Adam Pierce.
If my mom had truly never told her parents who the father of her baby was, maybe I would never find out whether my dad was Leo Parker or Adam Pierce or someone else entirely.
But I couldn’t just let it go that easily.
Erin had refused to tell me who’d hired her, honoring the person’s wish to remain anonymous. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that it had been Adam Pierce—and that if I could just find him, I could get answers to so many burning questions about my mother, my life, even myself.
Cole left on Friday to go home for the weekend like usual, and on Saturday, Mason, Elijah, and Finn all had a field trip. Leah was back home too, so I decided to take advantage of the quiet around campus to dig through every document and piece of paper Erin Bennett had given me. She wouldn’t tell me who had hired her, but maybe there would be something in one of them that would give me a clue.
I pulled everything out of my desk drawer and spread it out on the floor in the living room, using the opportunity to stretch my hamstrings while I meticulously combed through the pages. I had copies of court filings she’d made, but there was no mention in any of them who had hired her, just who she was representing.
The question that kept nagging at me was why, if Adam Pierce actually was my father and had hired Erin to free up my trust, he hadn’t wanted me to know he’d done it.
Unless he was trying to honor my mother’s wishes somehow? To keep the truth of my paternity a secret just like she had done?
Why, though?
It made no fucking sense.
Frustration built up inside me as the pile of papers left to comb through dwindled, and the pile I’d already examined grew taller and taller. When I was finally out of documents, I got up and flopped onto the couch, letting out a frustrated groan.
Maybe I could hire a detective or something once I got access to more of my inheritance.
But should I? If whoever did this went to such lengths to stay hidden, maybe they had a reason.
I couldn’t even hold onto that thought for ten seconds before curiosity rose up to drown it out again. Maybe they didn’t want me to find out, but I wouldn’t let that stop me from trying. As I’d learned over and over again since entering this world, there were strings attached to everything—and I had a right to know what hidden corners these particular strings disappeared into.
Rolling over onto my stomach, I grabbed my phone from the table, suppressing a smile as I read a text from Finn bitching about how boring their field trip was.
Then I pulled up my camera app and swiped the screen several times to jump back to previous pictures. As I’d worked with Erin, I had documented a few forms before we sent them in, so I could reference the info later if I needed to. It was mostly stuff I’d filled out myself, so I didn’t have a lot of hope that there would be anything on the documents that might reveal who had hired her.
But my other option for how to spend the rest of the day was studying, and I didn’t mind taking an excuse to avoid that for another few minutes.
I swiped idly through the pictures, flipping over onto my back and hooking my leg over the back of the couch.
Then I stopped.
Swiped back to the previous image.
My head came off the cushion as I squinted at the screen, and then I drew my fingers across it to zoom in on the image.
I’d taken a picture of several forms spread out across the grungy coffee table at Mina’s house. The bottoms of the documents were cut off by the frame of the picture, but at the top edge of the image, most of Erin’s phone had ended up in the shot.
There was a message open on the screen, and at the bottom, an address.
An address in Roseland.
My heart lurched in my chest, and I tilted the screen to try to get a better view. The image was blurry when it was zoomed in like this, so it was hard to make out the street name, but I was sure the listed city was Roseland, California.
I sat up, grabbing a piece of paper and bending over the coffee table, writing out every possibility I could think of for what the address might be. The numbers were easier to read, partly since there were fewer options for those.
Typing quickly, I went down the list, plugging each possible street name and number into my phone and seeing if anything came up. On the third try, I got a match for an actual address in Roseland, and when I Googled that address, my brows scrunched together.
“What the fuck?”
I switched back to the photo one last time, but the more I looked at it, the more certain I was that the address I’d typed in was correct.
Shaking my head in confusion, I pulled up my texts and sent a message to Cole.
ME: Hey, you home right now? I was looking for information about Adam Pierce, and I found something really weird.
I flopped back into a slouch against the cushions, staring at the screen and willing him to respond. Fortunately, it didn’t take him long.
COLE: Yeah. I’m home. What’d you find?
ME: Nothing about Adam Pierce… yet. But I thin
k I figured out who paid that lawyer to help me get access to my trust.
COLE: Who?
ME: Your parents.
There was a beat before he responded again, making me wonder if he’d dropped his phone. It wouldn’t surprise me if he had. It made no fucking sense to me at all. Unless maybe they were just clients of Erin’s in some other capacity? That would be a pretty damn big coincidence.
COLE: What?
ME: Yeah, that’s what I said. Do you know anything about it?
COLE: No.
COLE: Come over. We can go through my dad’s study and see if we can find anything. I’ll text the guys.
ME: Okay.
Fuck. That would mean I’d have to drive, something I hadn’t done in months—hadn’t wanted to do. I was physically capable of it by now though, and I really didn’t want to wait for the other Princes to come back and pick me up.
I believed Cole when he said he didn’t know about his parents’ involvement in hiring Erin, but I still wanted answers. If he was willing to sneak into his dad’s study to help me go through whatever documents were stored there, it was our best chance of finding out what the hell was going on.
ME: On my way.
Grabbing my little purse, I stuffed my key card in my back pocket and headed out the door. My gait was almost even as I walked across campus, and I made a beeline for my car. I didn’t have to struggle to remember where I’d parked it since it’d been parked in the same place for months.
It was bigger and clunkier than my old car, which did make me feel a little safer somehow. Still, my heart slammed hard in my chest as I turned the key in the ignition. I sent a text to Mason letting him know what was going on, and that Cole had probably texted him too, then slowly made my way out of the lot. I tested the brakes a half dozen times as I pulled down the drive toward the street, but they felt solid and strong, the resistance of the pedal reassuring.
I took the direct route to Cole’s place, skipping the scenic drive he’d taken when he’d driven me back to Oak Park after mini-golf that day, and even though I drove like a grandma, I made it in about twenty minutes.
