“It’s okay, I’ve got you,” I said, reaching into my pocket for my wallet. I still had a copy of her card in there from when I stole it ages ago.
As I unlocked the door, she murmured another ‘thank you’ to me, chin down and eyes on the floor.
“Don’t thank me. I only have this card because I was an asshole and I wanted to break in to fuck with you,” I said, grimacing as a cold shard of guilt stabbed through my guts.
“I meant thank you for getting me off the island and bringing me home.”
“Oh. It’s fine. I’m just glad I was there to help,” I said, giving her a tight smile.
She gingerly rubbed at the scratch on her arm and looked up at me for a few seconds. “Seeing as you’re here now, do you think you could do me another favor?”
The expression on her face suggested that I was the absolute last person she wanted to ask for help, but it was almost two in the morning, so I was the only option.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I want to stop my bathroom window from opening ever again. Just in case. Could you take a look at it and see if there’s some way that can be done?”
“Sure.”
She led me over to the bathroom. It didn’t take me long to figure out a way to jam up the window for her.
“Easy,” I said, stepping out a moment later. “I stuck a few of those bobby pins of yours through the latches. Now no one can open it from the outside.”
“Bobby pins will save us all one day,” she murmured, giving me a faint smile.
It was then that I noticed how dilated her pupils were. “Holy fuck,” I said, eyes narrowing. “Are you high?”
No wonder she hadn’t attacked me yet. Given how she thought I was responsible for the assembly bullshit, I’d half-expected her to pummel the shit out of me with her little fists when she saw me on the island shore. Or push me out of the boat into the freezing water so I would succumb to hypothermia while she paddled back to the campus on her own.
“Sort of,” she mumbled, averting her eyes.
I strode over to her and lifted her chin with one hand, forcing her to look at me. “What did you take?”
“I don’t know,” she replied. “It wasn’t exactly my choice.”
I stiffened. “Someone spiked your drink?”
“Yes.”
“Who was it? I’ll fucking kill him,” I growled, hands curling into fists at my sides.
“It wasn’t a guy, Hunter. It’s not what you think.”
I clenched my jaw and took a deep breath. “I’m taking you to the hospital. Grab a coat.”
“No, it’s okay,” she said, lifting a palm in protest. “I’ll be fine. I’ll just go to bed and sleep it off.”
“You’ve been drugged, Laney. It’s not fucking fine.”
“No, really. I’m okay,” she said. “I felt weird earlier. All hot and spacey and happy. I was even seeing things that weren’t there. But I started feeling better not long after I ran away from the party. I think the shock of the cold knocked it out of me, if you know what I mean. I still feel a bit weird, but it’s coming and going in waves now.”
“So it’s wearing off pretty fast.”
She nodded. “Whatever it was, it was a small dose. It wasn’t meant to hurt me,” she said. “At least not physically,” she added in a mumble.
I pressed my lips into a thin line. “Fine. We don’t have to go to the hospital if you really don’t want to. But if you think I’m gonna leave you here alone after hearing this shit, you’re delusional. I need to keep an eye on you. Make sure you don’t have a bad delayed reaction, or whatever.”
“You can go,” she said stubbornly, folding her arms. “I’m fine.”
“Bullshit. The fact that you haven’t started screaming at me and slapping the shit out of me over the assembly thing tells me that you’re very obviously not completely fine,” I said.
Her brows wrinkled. “You want me to hit you to prove I’m okay?”
“No, I’m just saying, you’re clearly not your usual self. You’re still feeling some sort of effects from the drug. Otherwise you’d be treating me a lot differently right now. So I’m gonna stay right fucking here and keep an eye on you until I know you’re fully okay again.” I parked myself in a comfy armchair across from her bed and held up my palms. “Don’t try to stop me. I’m staying whether you like it or not.”
“Are you serious?” she said.
“Yup.”
She sighed. “Fine. Whatever. I’m going to take a shower.”
“Good idea. It’ll make you feel better.”
She went into the bathroom, muttering under her breath about how she’d probably feel a lot better if I wasn’t in her dorm. I grinned, not caring about her attitude toward me. I was just glad to be here, making sure she was all right.
Half an hour later, she came out of the bathroom with damp hair, no makeup, and a pale pink terrycloth robe wrapped around her. “I thought you might’ve gone by now,” she said, perching on the end of her bed and flashing me a baleful look.
“Nope. I told you, I’m staying,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. “You’re lucky I didn’t bust that bathroom door down, though. I was starting to worry that you’d drowned in there.”
She rolled her eyes upward, sighed heavily, and fell onto her back. “Is it weird that I’m not tired at all?” she asked, staring up at the ceiling.
“Not if you were drugged with some sort of upper.”
“Even if I only had a few hours sleep over the last few days?”
“Yup. Pills will do that to you. I know all about it, thanks to my mom.”
She sat up, forehead creasing. “Do you know when she’ll be done with rehab?”
“No idea. Doubt she wants to come back here anyway. Dad’s been fucking some twenty-year-old while she’s been gone.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Caught them together a few weeks ago. I actually went to school with the girl. She was a senior when I was a sophomore.”
Laney grimaced. “Yikes. How awkward.”
“Yeah, it wasn’t fun seeing my dad balls-deep in her, that’s for sure.”
Laney fell silent for a few minutes, picking at her nails and looking at the rug on the floor. “What did you mean earlier?” she finally said, glancing up at me.
I lifted a brow. “You’re gonna need to be more specific.”
“You said someone is trying to hurt me.”
“I meant exactly that,” I said, leaning forward. “Someone is trying to hurt you, and I want to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Even if you never believe a word I say, that isn’t gonna stop me from helping you.”
She bit her bottom lip and looked away. “So you’re still trying to claim it wasn’t you who pulled that shit at the assembly on Tuesday.”
“It’s not a claim. It’s the truth.”
“But—”
Before she could reply, I lifted a palm and cut her off. “I know how fucking bad it looks for me, okay? And I want you to know I take full responsibility for it.”
Her eyes narrowed. “So now you’re admitting it?”
“No. I didn’t do it. But it’s still my fault it happened. I put you on that blacklist in the first place, and by doing that, I made someone else hate you so much that they wanted to hurt you. Or maybe they wanted to impress me. I don’t know. All I know is that it’s my fault.”
“Is that what you wanted to tell me in person?” she asked, tipping her head slightly to the side. “Trina told me you sent a text about it.”
“No. That wasn’t it.”
“What was it, then?”
I hesitated, lowering my eyes to the floor. I wanted to tell her how I felt about her. How I was so fucking in love with her that I could barely see straight when she was around. How I couldn’t think of anyone or anything else. How I didn’t care if I had to sit in my car outside her dorm all night, every night, just to make sure nothing happened to her.
I couldn’t do it now,
though. Not when she was still partially under the influence of whatever the hell that asshole at the island costume party slipped into her drink. I needed her to hear it when she was perfectly sober, so I could see and hear her real response. Not some scattered, half tripped-out response that she might regret when she was finally sober.
“I can’t tell you now. Not while you’re high,” I said, looking back up at her.
“I’m not high.”
I steeled my jaw. “Your pupils are still the size of my fucking car, so yeah, you’re high. Even if you feel totally normal, your brain isn’t working the way it usually would.”
“Whatever.” She blew out a loud breath through her nostrils and lay back on the bed again. “Why should I believe you, Hunter?”
“About what? The drugs or the other stuff I was saying?”
“The other stuff.” She paused to clear her throat. “You keep saying it wasn’t you behind the assembly shit, but it had to be. Only three people at this school knew about that video. Adam, Trina, and you.”
“I know. And obviously they wouldn’t hurt you, so it falls to me, and I look guilty as fuck.”
She sat up again. Her eyes were slightly red and glistening with tears now. “I told you about it on Sunday,” she said, voice cracking slightly. She scrubbed a hand across her face and went on. “Then just two days later—no, not even that. It was a day and a half later, really—that video shows up on a giant screen in front of everyone. What the fuck was I supposed to think?”
I got up and strode over to the bed. “I get it,” I said, taking a seat beside her. “I know how bad it looked, and I don’t blame you for thinking it was me. Not one bit. If I were you, I’d think the same thing.”
She didn’t respond. She stared straight ahead at the wall, eyes glassy.
“Laney,” I said softly, touching her arm to get her attention again. “If I actually wanted to hurt you, I could do much worse than that assembly shit. Can’t you see that?”
“What do you mean?” she asked. “What’s worse than publicly releasing a video of my assault and calling it a fucking sex tape?”
I took a deep breath. What I had to say next had a high chance of going down like a lead balloon.
“If I really wanted to hurt you, I could’ve called the cops, told them what you and your mom did, and had you both sent to prison. Right? But I didn’t. I would never, ever fucking do that.”
“How do I know you aren’t going to do that next?” she said. “The assembly thing could’ve just been the first part of your plan to wreck my life.”
“Give me one good reason why I’d want to wreck your life,” I replied. “After what I did to you these last few weeks, I would’ve thought you’d be the one trying to wreck my life.”
She swallowed hard. “I was talking about it to Adam and Trina, and they thought that maybe….” She trailed off, voice cracking again. “Maybe you didn’t believe me. About Lindsay.”
My brows shot up. “Oh, fuck… that’s really what you thought?”
She nodded silently.
“Laney, you can’t be serious. Of course I believed you! I know you didn’t hurt Lindsay.” I put one hand on her cheek and spun her around to look at me. “Please,” I said, lowering my voice to a soft murmur. “Trust me the way I trust you. Believe me.”
“I… I don’t know if I can,” she said, refusing to meet my gaze. “Every time I start to trust you, it blows up in my face.”
“I know. That’s my fault,” I said with a sigh, rubbing slow circles on her back with my free hand. “But I’m gonna do everything I can to find out who really did that shit to you on Tuesday.”
She wiped under her eyes and sniffed. “If it wasn’t you, who was it?” she asked. “I know there’s no way it was Adam or Trina. So who?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I’ve been thinking about it a lot. It could’ve been anyone at RFA.”
“How?” she asked. “Did you tell someone else about the video? Because Adam and Trina sure as hell didn’t!”
“There are other ways they could’ve found out about it.”
“What ways?”
“Like what I was saying earlier, for instance. Maybe when you were still on the blacklist, someone wanted to impress me by doing something really fucked up to you. So they decided to do a deep-dive on your background. You know most of the kids at this school could do that, right? Not by themselves, but they could hire someone who is capable.”
“Like the investigator you use for stuff?” she asked, raising a brow.
“Yeah. Like him.” I let out a short sigh. “Almost anyone at this school could contact someone like that and use them to dig into your life. They can afford it, right?”
“I guess.”
“They could’ve found out about the court case you went through and discovered that there was a video used as evidence against the guy. Then they could’ve decided to set it up at school to humiliate you.”
She nodded slowly. “Yeah. You’re right,” she murmured, looking at the floor. “I didn’t even think of it like that.”
“Still my fault, though, right?” I said, mentally kicking the shit out of myself. “If I didn’t put you on that blacklist, it wouldn’t have happened.”
Her forehead crinkled. “Wait… no. This doesn’t make sense.”
“What doesn’t make sense?”
“If someone was trying to impress you by using that video against me, why the hell would they do it on Tuesday? The day after you told everyone I was off the blacklist.”
I rubbed my jaw. “Maybe they set it up on Monday, before I made the announcement, and they couldn’t sneak back in to stop it from happening the next morning. That would explain why they never took credit for it.”
“Maybe. But that doesn’t explain the emails.”
“What emails?”
She went and grabbed her cell phone. “Someone is still acting as if I’m definitely on the blacklist,” she said. “I’ve been getting abusive emails and texts ever since Tuesday. I even got some earlier tonight. So whoever it is, they know for sure that I’m not meant to be on the list, but they’re harassing me anyway. It’s not some sort of accident where they set it up before you made the announcement and couldn’t stop it. They’re going out of their way to send me this shit, day after day.”
She clicked a few buttons on the phone screen and handed it to me.
“Holy fuck. These are serious threats,” I muttered, pulse speeding up as I scrolled through the messages.
Laney sighed. “Yup.”
“And you’ve been getting these since Tuesday? After the video played at the assembly?”
“Uh-huh.”
I gritted my teeth. “I wish you’d told me.”
“I thought it was you, or at least someone doing your dirty work. So I couldn’t tell you,” she said. “That’s the main reason I was going to join the Medusa Society. They were going to protect me. Maybe even help me get some sort of revenge.”
“Right. Well, it wasn’t me, and it wasn’t anyone I know, either. I’ve made it very fucking clear to everyone at this school that I’m coming for them if they touch a hair on your head.”
“That means it’s someone who isn’t afraid of you,” she said. “Someone who honestly doesn’t give a shit if you threaten them.”
“Everyone on this campus is scared of crossing me,” I said, frowning. “I know that sounds egotistical as fuck, but you know what I mean.”
Laney fell silent for a moment. Her eyes were glazed over, like she was miles away. “Not everyone,” she finally said.
“Huh?”
“I think I might’ve been looking at this the wrong way,” she went on, twisting her hands in her lap. “Whoever released that tape and sent all those emails… they weren’t trying to hurt me. Not in the way I initially thought.”
“What do you mean?”
She looked me right in the eye, jaw set firmly. “I mean I know who it is.”
7
Laney
It was obvious now. So obvious I wanted to slap myself for failing to see it sooner.
I’d wasted so much time and energy focusing my anguish on Hunter that I’d missed the signs right in front of me.
“Who is it?” Hunter asked, brows knitting as he studied my face.
My head began to spin, and I leaned forward and held it in my hands, blowing out a series of short breaths.
“Are you okay?” he asked, moving even closer.
I raised my chin. “Sorry. Another head spin,” I muttered. “It’s those fucking drugs.”
Hunter rose to his feet. “I’ll get you some water,” he said. He went over to my desk, grabbed a mug and went into the bathroom to fill it. When he returned, he laid a hand across my forehead. “Hm. You don’t feel hot, so that’s a good sign. Do you feel sick at all?”
I gulped down the water. “No. I’ll be okay.”
“If you do start to feel bad, I’m taking you to the hospital. No arguments.”
I smiled faintly. “I know. Thanks.”
I couldn’t meet his eyes as I spoke. I felt so fucking stupid and ashamed. I’d demonized him so much over the last few days; refused to even give him a five minute chance to speak to me.
Despite that, he’d shown up for me again and again. I had no idea what would’ve happened to me tonight if he hadn’t followed me to Harker Island, and the mere thought made me shudder.
All this time, I thought he was the bad guy. But I was the bad one. I didn’t deserve for him to be so kind and understanding after the awful way I’d treated him.
He seemed to know what I was thinking, because he lifted my chin with a finger and smiled at me. “Are we cool?” he asked, cocking an eyebrow.
I swallowed hard. “I don’t know. Aren’t you mad at me for being so shitty to you for the last few days?”
“No way. I told you before; I get it. I would’ve jumped to the exact same conclusion if I was you,” he replied.
“I know, but I still feel horrible. You should be mad.”
“I’m only gonna be mad if you keep me in suspense for a second longer,” he said with a grin. “What were you saying before you got that head-spin?”
Shattered Kingdom: A Dark High School Bully Romance (Royal Falls Elite Book 2) Page 7
