by Eden O'Neill
“Living room,” she said, walking away, and I eyed her as she made her way down the hall and to the kitchen. Yep, I had no idea what that was about, but then, I made my way to the living room and quickly found out.
Royal Prinze stood in a tux, patent leather shoes on his feet and a green orchid on his lapel. The tiny flower was made completely out of paper and just as lovely as he was, the boy clean-shaven and his hair perfect and pushed back.
I stepped into the room, his tux hitting him at all magnificent angles. He made me feel ordinary in our school uniforms, but here and like this now, I was very much a peasant before an actual prince. My lips parted. “What are you doing here?”
The captain of the lacrosse team was in my living room, rocking his homecoming best, and not at homecoming, so yes, this required some explanation. For whatever reason, him being here didn’t surprise him, the boy coming forward. He had his hands behind his back, his shoulders big and strong.
“Wanted to see why you aren’t going to homecoming,” he said simply, frowning. He lifted a shoulder. “And maybe offer you an alternative.”
Too many things were going on in this room, too many words when before he had none either for me or to me. I decided to leave the latter part of what he said, focusing on the first.
“How did you know I wasn’t going?” Only Birdie and my friends knew.
“Besides the fact that you’re not in any of Birdie’s photos she’s posted,” he started, closing more distance. “I hadn’t heard anyone ask you.”
No one had asked me, not him either…
At least until now.
He eased a hand into his pocket, and when it came out, he showed me the most dazzling orchid. It was green like his eyes and matched his vest and tie. It was also paper, and after fluffing the thing up, he held the tiny flower in his large hand.
“I said a lot of things I didn’t mean the night of the fire,” he said, all of that moving so harshly on his face. “Things I regret. I won’t lie to you. Yes, it did start that way. You’re my best friend’s sister, so yeah, that’s how it was.”
It made sense, I guess. I was his best friend’s sibling so he had my back, but I never asked him to do that.
“What changed?” I asked, my breath leaving as he took my wrist and slid that pretty orchid over my wrist. I idly wondered if he made it himself, made it for me, but with his smile, I forgot all that. As stated before, he didn’t do it a lot, but each and every time, it’d been in my presence. It’d been around me.
His long fingers moved under the ribbon tied to the orchid, his eyes on me. “Knowing you,” he said simply. “And really that’s it.”
That was it, wasn’t it? And I’d be lying myself if I also hadn’t gone in with certain thoughts about him. Those changed too. I changed my mind too about him.
He laced our fingers together, stalling my breath again, and when that grin of his widened, he made my tummy jump even more.
“I guess I have to admit something else since I’m putting it all out on the floor now,” he said, bringing me close. “I might have had something to do with why you weren’t asked to homecoming. Actually, I totally am.”
My jaw dropped. “Did you threaten people?”
“Knight may have,” he said, those bright eyes dancing a little. “Then Jax and LJ…”
“What the fuck, Royal—”
He grabbed me, pulling me into a hard chest, and I melted.
Especially when he touched our foreheads together.
His breath was so warm, his fingers brushing my chin. “You’re not going with someone else because I was stupid. Because I couldn’t fucking talk to you and say sorry, which I am.”
I’d been stupid too, but I wouldn’t be now, and when he tipped my chin up, I let him move his lips into mine. I let him taste my tongue, and I let him fold me into his big arms. This boy was so, so dangerous for me. He was as harsh and raw as he was addictive and sometimes even cruel, but for whatever reason, I kept coming back. I kept stepping into the danger.
I kept folding into the heat.
“I don’t have a dress,” I said, pulling away a little, and we both stepped back at the sudden presence of another. Rosanna had apparently been watching us. Maybe not the whole time because, when she came into the room, she had something in her arms.
The dress was white, long, and covered in shimmering rhinestones and pearls. It was so fancy and something completely different from what I normally wore.
She smiled a little. “I snuck this into the back of your sister’s closest, hoping one day she’d wear it,” she said, bringing it over and lining it up with my body. “So how about you warm it up until she comes back?”
Twenty-Two
I wore the dress with my nose ring, and even if it was against the school’s dress code, I didn’t care tonight. That was the one little piece of me, and I was going to lean into it. It went friggin’ awesome with the dress as well as Royal’s orchid perfectly. I came downstairs completely me, my new self and my old self combined, and Royal was there to receive me at the foot of the stairs. He’d been waiting in the foyer, and looking all hot and stuff, I truly did feel like a princess. Especially with the look he gave me as I came down. He waited like Prince Charming, his large chest rising and falling like he was trying to catch his breath. Dare I say, Royal Prinze was at a loss for words.
“I love it,” he said, mentioning my nose when he tapped his. Something about that put me more on a high than I already was. He took my hand next, kissing it, and Rosanna got about a thousand pictures for my dad, who wasn’t off work yet. He normally would be, but I told him I wasn’t going to the dance, and he figured I might want the night to myself to watch TV and do girly things. He’d actually said that, my dad.
I laughed a little at the thought, posing for one last picture for Rosanna before she sent us off. She closed the door, and after, Royal took my hand.
“I have to admit just one more thing,” he said, taking me down the stairs. “I’m not technically asking you to the dance tonight… at least not alone.”
“It’s about damn time.”
The boys came out of a limo parked by the curb one by one, LJ, Jax, and Knight all in tuxes with varying fits, heights, and colors. All wore orchids matching their vests, but none wore green. That was only Royal and me.
Jax, the one who spoke, sprinted up to us, throwing an arm around Royal, which looked pretty fucking funny considering their height difference. Royal had about half a foot on him, elbowing him to let him go, and after mocking hurt on his face, Jax held an arm out to me.
“Mademoiselle,” he said, bowing. He grinned. “And might I say, you look lovely tonight. You’re totally rocking that nose jewelry.”
He said it with a wink, and I laughed. I eyed the arm he gave but, in the end, took it. “What’s going on?”
“We’re your dates,” Jax crooned, wagging his eyebrows. He placed a hand on mine. “Which I have to say is a pretty fucking big deal. We don’t take girls to dances. We dance with them, but we don’t take them. Keeps our options open, ya know?”
I chuckled, taking LJ’s arm too when he put it out. “So why the exception for me, then?”
“Because you’re not just a girl,” LJ said, smiling when the limo door opened for me. It’d been Knight to do it, his own smile light. LJ leaned in. “You’re family.”
My lips parted at that, a hand resting on my back. I didn’t have to turn to know it was Royal. He guided me inside, and his lot surrounded behind us in the back. Before we took off, Jax opened the limo top and stood out of it.
“Get us going, good sir,” Jax said to the driver, tapping the top. “We got a dance to attend.”
Showing up with not one but four dates to the Windsor Prep Academy dance would have been something, but the fact that my dates were Royal and three other boys in the Court… let’s just say we got a few eyes. A few of which were Mira and her friends. They’d been by the punch bowl with their own dates, non-Court guys surprisingly.
Maybe that had been Royal’s doing, maybe not, but for whatever reason, she wasn’t being escorted by Windsor Prep royalty tonight, I was.
“Hey, Mira,” I said, passing her on Knight’s arm at the time. She made me out to be a ho to pretty much everyone in this room, but at the moment, I didn’t care. I was sitting pretty, and she got her just desserts the second I was escorted into the room with four of Windsor Prep’s finest. I looked for Birdie while pulled onto the dance floor by Knight, but didn’t see her quite yet. I texted her on the way to the dance that I’d be coming, but I’d gotten a different reaction than what I thought I’d get after explaining who I’d be coming with.
Just be careful, her text had said, and maybe after all that went on since coming here, that made sense. These Court boys, Royal in particular, had a reputation around this place. She wanted me to watch my back, and I got that. Tonight, the boys seemed to have mine, all of them, even Knight, who hadn’t seemed to really care for me in the past. He kept silent during our dances while the other guys mingled on the floor around us, but there was something different about our previous interactions. He was there with me tonight instead of against me, and I got that from all the boys. LJ was really fun, albeit a little stiff. Dancing obviously wasn’t his forte, but Jax let loose like I’d expect only him to. All five of us did the group dance thing for the most part, the fast dances easy to do that with. We may have gone together, but we were all just here as friends, laughing and having a good time, and it was that way with all the dances with the guys.
At least all but one, of course.
Dances with Royal were different, his hands on my waist and his attention on me different. He was the one I wasn’t sure I was here with as friends, but I didn’t ask. I just enjoyed the moment, and he did too. He’d been asked to dance by several girls tonight, and even if he wasn’t in a dance with me, he turned them down. He waited for me.
“You know Paige and the rest of us always went to dances like this,” he said, pulling me close. “All of us hanging out, just being cool. It was easy.”
I held him close too, enjoying the way his hard body hit and warmed mine. He, my sister, and the others may have gone to dances together, but I was sure they weren’t quite like this. They didn’t feel like this, heaven. I think I was started to fall for this boy, hard, and that kind of scared me a little.
“You missed school,” I mentioned in passing, and he nodded, holding my hand. “You okay?”
“Just needed some time,” he said. “But that’s all over now. I’m here.”
I didn’t know what was over now, but in any sense, I saw Birdie. She came through the gym doors, she and the other basketball girls laughing, and I had a feeling they might have taken a little smoke break. I caught their attention while with Royal, raising my hand, and though Kiki, Shakira, and the others on the team waved back, I just got a tight smile from Birdie. She really wasn’t on the same page as me tonight, but that was okay. I did get it.
“Jax said I was the first girl ever in Windsor House,” I said, transferring my attention back to Royal. “Paige never went…”
“Paige never wanted to,” he explained his eyes flickering away. “When it came to the Court, that was my thing, never hers.”
“So why did you let me in?”
“Maybe I shouldn’t have,” he said, pulling strong arms around me. “But I guess I don’t fucking care anymore.”
He was going to pull me in really good this boy and almost kissed me had I not noticed Birdie and our friends again. They stood off the dance floor with their phones, their hands over their mouths, and whatever they were looking at caused a stir amongst them. They looked up at me almost immediately, all of them, and had I not been distracted by Knight pushing onto the dance floor to Royal and me, I would have gone over.
“You need to see this,” Knight said, his phone in his hand. LJ and Jax were behind him, and whatever needed to be seen, they showed Royal first and not me.
Royal took the phone, and it was like the world whispered around me. I noticed everyone had their phones out, everyone on the dance floor looking at something, but I was the only one not in on whatever was going on.
“What is it?” I asked. “What’s going on?”
Royal wouldn’t let me see at first, and it was LJ to take Knight’s phone and give it to me. There was a news story on the screen, an announcer talking about a local girl who was found downstate. She’d been dragged there… found under a train.
A picture flashed of the girl, only one, but it was enough to make my world around me spin on its axis. I collapsed in arms, boys rushing around me. They spoke words to me, so many words, but I heard none of it.
I needed to throw up.
I ran, ran away from everyone, and I barely made it outside the school before I was on my knees in dirt. I ruined my sister’s pretty dress, heaving my guts out as I attempted to forget what I just saw on a phone screen. My sister, Paige, would never get to wear this dress.
My sister was dead.
Thank you so much for coming along on this journey with Royal and December! As you can see from that final chapter, their story is just beginning and you can get the next book in the Court High saga, ILLUSIONS THAT MAY, on Amazon. Want exclusives as well as chapter one to the next book in the Court High series? You can get all that and more by subscribing to my newsletter! There, you’ll get new release news from me and a link to the newsletter exclusive Court High website, which has access to chapter one of the next Court High book as well as so many other fun bonus exclusives. What are you waiting for? =^)
