by Callie Rose
I’m late for Calculus, so I rush to class. Lauren and Andrea share their notes with me, and I do my best to focus on the second half of the lecture. I make it through History too, and as soon as eighth period ends, I’m the first one out the door. I know what class Savannah has last, so I hustle up to the second floor and catch her just as she’s emerging from the room.
She’s on her own, without the backup of Trent or her usual posse, who are probably all waiting for her downstairs. Before she can step into the stairwell, I walk up behind her, grab her elbow in a firm grip, and drag her into the girls’ bathroom midway down the hall.
“Hey! What the hell?” she sputters as the door slams behind us.
The only reason I got her in here that easily in the first place is because I took her by surprise. As soon as she realizes who’s got a hold on her, she struggles out of my grasp. She moves toward the door, but I put my body in the way, physically blocking her.
Two little freshman girls bolt out of the bathroom, smart enough already to spot an impending fight.
There are no cameras in here, and if I keep this relatively quiet, hopefully no admins will know I started shit on school grounds.
Savannah sneers at me and tries to step around me again, but I intercept her, shoving at her shoulders with both hands. She stumbles backward with a rough yelp.
“What the fuck?” I hiss. “This isn’t a damn joke, you bitch. You could get me kicked out of school! Why can’t you just leave me the hell alone?”
“Oh, like your mom left Iris alone?” Her blue-green eyes flash with malice, and she shoves me too.
My backpack falls to the floor with a thud, and I throw myself at her, grappling with her as she tries to push me off.
“My mom never did shit to her!”
We careen around the room in an undignified tangle of limbs and fists, and when we slam into the wall near the hand dryers, I manage to pin her against it with the weight of my body. She’s facing away from me, her backpack between us, but I press her head against the wall, breathing heavily as she struggles in my hold.
“My mom did not kill Iris. Fuck, maybe it was you and Trent. Maybe she was pregnant with his baby and you just couldn’t stand the thought of that. Couldn’t stand the thought of them having a kid together.”
Her struggles grow wilder, and we’re both gasping and panting. Her red hair tumbles loose down her back, and a large lock of it is stuck to her face, making her look even more crazy and disheveled.
“You’re fucking insane!” she shrieks. “Why would we—? It wasn’t even Trent’s baby!”
“Right. I’m sure that’s what he told you.”
The guys and I already pretty much ruled Trent out as the killer, but I’m so pissed right now, I don’t even care.
“No, you bitch! She told me. It was some older guy. She wouldn’t ever tell me his name.”
Older guy?
“Older? How much older? Like, out of high school?”
“What do you think?”
As she speaks the last word, she shoves herself away from the wall, fighting against my grip on her. I’m so distracted I release her entirely, stepping back before she can launch herself at me.
“Did she say anything else about him? What he looked like? Where they met?”
Her eyes narrow, and for a second, I think she might spit on me or come after my eyes with her fucking talons. But then she huffs a breath, pushing her hair back. “She hardly said anything. God! They met through someone else she knew. She never told me who that was either.”
An older man knocked her up.
She met him through someone else she knew.
“What else do you know about him?” I demand, and the intensity of my voice makes her blink.
Then she glares at me, her lips curling. “Why? You gonna try to steal him from her even after she’s dead? I don’t know anything, I told you. She never even said his name. Just called him her ‘gray fox’.”
The world seems to blur for a second before returning to focus even sharper than it was before.
Her gray fox?
Oh, fuck. That paternity test I found in Mr. Black’s drawer.
From the first moment I laid eyes on it, I automatically assumed it was to test Lincoln’s paternity, for Samuel to determine whether Linc was truly his son.
Given all the weird vibes in that house and the way he and Audrey act toward each other, it just made sense that he might be worried she’d slept around outside their marriage—particularly since he’d done the exact same thing himself.
But what if the paternity test wasn’t about Linc at all? What if it was about a baby who hadn't even been born yet?
What if Mr. Black was the one who knocked Iris up?
11
I stare at Savannah with unblinking eyes as my body goes numb.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” She glares at me, snapping her fingers in front of my face. “What’s your problem, Pool Girl?”
“Nothing,” I mutter as I stoop to pick up my backpack with shaking hands. “I gotta go.”
I’m halfway to the door before I remember why I came in here in the first place, and I toss a warning over my shoulder before I step into the hall.
“Stop fucking with my tests. I mean it.”
She just huffs a cruel laugh, but I hardly even care. I can’t focus on tests or sabotaged grades when a new thought is crawling around inside my brain like a giant centipede on the loose.
Mr. Black.
And Iris.
Fucking hell. They could’ve met through Lincoln, when he hooked up with her a few times last year. If she came to his house, there’s a decent chance she saw Mr. Black there. And I already know from Linc that his dad isn’t exactly faithful to his mom, and that the older man’s tastes tend to skew young.
I’m shaking so hard my legs feel like they might give out from under me as a combination of excitement, disgust, and anger wells up inside me.
For the first time since my mom’s arrest, I feel like I’m closer to the truth than I’ve ever been. Closer to digging up the facts that will set her free.
But if I’m right? If this is the truth?
Then everything is so fucked.
I walk down the stairs like an eighty-year old, clinging to the railing for dear life. It’s almost twenty minutes after three o’clock by now, and I’m sure Lincoln’s already waiting for me by the front doors of the school. Probably wondering where I am.
That thought draws me up short, and I sink down onto the steps at the mid-floor landing, tugging my phone out of my bag.
I need to talk to someone. To tell someone what I’m thinking. But it can’t be Lincoln. Not yet.
ME: Hey. I need to talk to you. Can you tell Linc to go ahead without me? And can you stay?
RIVER: Are you okay?
Jesus. That has to be the most worthless word in the English language. What does it even mean?
Am I alive? Yes.
Am I in immediate danger? No.
Am I okay?
How the hell should I know? It’s all fucking relative.
ME: Yeah.
Maybe River can read between the lines of that single-word answer, because his next response comes quickly.
RIVER: Yeah okay. I’ll tell him. What about Dax and Chase?
ME: Just you. Please.
RIVER: Okay. Give me five minutes. Where are you?
ME: Stairwell. West wing.
RIVER: omw
I slip my phone back into my bag and wait. Savannah and I were in the bathroom long enough that the school has mostly emptied out. Unless people have to stick around for clubs or extracurriculars, they usually bolt for the doors at the end of the day. There’s always a logjam getting out of the parking lot.
I almost expect River to show up with the other three following him anyway, refusing to be left out. But the trust they showed Linc the night my mom was arrested runs both ways, and when the boy with the broad features and ash-brown hair opens the
door at the bottom of the stairs, he’s alone.
His gaze lands on me immediately, and he climbs up to sit on the landing next to me, angling his body so he’s facing me more fully.
“Low? What’s up?”
I mirror his movement, turning toward him so that our knees almost brush. His brows are knitted together, the blue-gray of his eyes looking paler than usual in the light streaming through the windows in the stairwell.
Jesus. Where do I start?
There’s no good way to say it, no way to massage the words to make them less awful.
“Samuel Black,” I murmur, gazing helplessly into River’s eyes.
“Linc’s dad? What about him?”
“What if he did it?”
It takes him a couple seconds to fully process my words, and I watch the small changes in his expression as he goes from confusion to understanding to shock to something like disbelief.
“Are you serious?”
River’s always had a careful way of talking, as if he’s considered every word before it comes out of his mouth, and that’s more true than ever now. He’s staring at me like he can’t quite decide if I’m crazy or brilliant.
I nod, my voice dropping to a whisper. “Savannah said the father of Iris’s baby was an older man. Not someone from school, an older guy.”
“Sure, but that could be—”
“And I found a paternity test in Mr. Black’s desk drawer a couple months ago.”
River’s mouth snaps shut, and for the first time since I blurted out my suspicion, I see him processing it analytically, sorting through the puzzle pieces to see which ones fit.
And a lot of them do.
Too many of them do.
“He had access to my mom’s car. He could’ve planted evidence. And he knew she was out that night—the night Iris died. If she’d been home, she would’ve had an alibi, but he knew she wouldn’t. And he had access to her apartment. Hell, he could’ve planted evidence there too if he wanted to.”
I hope I’m not speaking too fast for River to pick up the movement of my lips, but I can’t slow down. My entire body is revving like an engine, poised for action even though I have no idea what to do.
“Fuck.” He leans back slightly, and I lose his storm cloud eyes for a second as he gazes down the steps ahead of us, chewing on his lip. “Jesus fuck.”
When he looks back up at me, I suck in a breath.
“Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it’s nothing. But I had to tell someone.”
“No, yeah.” He shakes his head and then nods, and I can’t quite tell what he’s agreeing to or disagreeing with—or if he’s talking to himself.
Then something hardens in his gray eyes, and he moves to stand. “We need to tell Linc.”
“No!” I grab his hand, pulling him back down beside me. “We can’t. Not yet.” His expression darkens, and I shake my head. “I don’t like it either; I fucking hate it. We said there would be no more secrets between us. But we can’t tell him yet.”
River wraps my hand in both of his, running his fingers over the contours of my knuckles, and I let that touch soothe me a little, just like I think he means for it to.
“We’re still in essentially the same boat we’ve been in,” I say quietly, keeping my head tilted toward him. “We don’t have enough evidence to make a convincing case to Dunagan if we tell him about this. And if we move too soon, and Mr. Black figures out what we know, it only gives him time to destroy evidence and cover his tracks even more.”
“If it’s really him,” River murmurs.
“Right. If it’s him. We don’t know that yet. But even if we’re wrong, if we tell Lincoln about this now, you know he’s gonna flip out. He’s got enough weirdness with his dad as it is.”
“I don’t like lying to Linc.”
“It wouldn’t be lying,” I plead, although I know I’m skirting a gray area here. “Just hold off on telling him for a little while. Just give me a little more time.”
River blinks slowly.
I’ve played poker with him, and he can keep his face completely impassive when he wants to, but right now, I feel like I can read every thought in his head. I can see him judging the pros and cons of each course of action, weighing them against each other.
I’m glad I told him. I’m glad he and the others are on my side. I’m glad I don’t have to make these fucking choices alone.
My fingers are still locked with his, and I rest our joined hands on my knees as I watch him, giving him time to think.
Finally, he dips his chin once. “Okay. Just for a little while though. Just for a few days. Then, whether we know more or not, we tell him.”
“Okay.” I nod vigorously.
That buys me a little time. Hopefully it’ll be enough time to dig deeper and see if this insane hunch actually means anything, or if I’m just grasping at straws, desperate for some kind of resolution.
What I know, you’ll know.
Those words filter through my head, and a twinge of guilt burns through my stomach. I was so fucking pissed at Lincoln when I thought he and the other kings had betrayed me, had hung me out to dry, alone and desperate.
But he had a reason. A good one.
And I do too.
Hopefully, he’ll forgive me like I did him.
No more secrets.
Except one.
12
River and I stay in the stairwell talking for a while longer after he agrees not to tell Linc or the other two boys about my suspicions regarding Mr. Black.
He doesn’t have a car on campus, so we use a ride share app to get a lift back to the Black family mansion. Lincoln is waiting for us, on edge and a little suspicious after I turned down my usual ride home with him. But I’m sure he has no idea what River and I talked about, the true reason I’d asked River to stay.
The three of us end up downstairs in one of the rec rooms, and Linc pulls me onto his lap on the big, plush couch set against one wall. His hands settle possessively on my waist, and I see his gaze dart between me and River a couple times.
Does he think something happened between us?
If he does, he doesn’t seem mad about it. He isn’t glaring at his friend or looking at me with anger or suspicion. His touch is definitely proprietary though, as if he wants to remind both me and River that, no matter what might’ve gone on between us, Lincoln hasn’t relinquished his claim on me.
That he might share, but he’ll never let go entirely.
Nothing did happen between me and River—well, nothing more intimate than sitting close together, heads bent and fingers interlaced—but I find myself almost regretting that fact. He kissed me once, the night I was attacked outside the poker game at the warehouse, and it was a good fucking kiss.
He looked at Lincoln right before he did it, some silent communication passing between them, and it occurs to me that maybe he was staking a claim on me too in that moment.
God, why am I thinking about this so much?
It’s crazy. My life is complicated enough as it is right now without trying to juggle more than one domineering alpha male.
Then again, these boys are in my life for good now, whether I ever wanted them to be or not. The bond between us, the secret that ties us all together, is strong enough to override everything else.
Now it’s just a question of how they’ll be in my life, what we’ll all be to each other.
And that question has a much more complicated answer.
“So, what the fuck is going on, Low?”
Lincoln’s voice is a gruff murmur near my ear, and River’s gaze lands on me too as I turn to face the boy beneath me.
Fortunately—or unfortunately, I guess—I have a piece of news big enough to justify my freakout without bringing my theories about Linc’s father into it.
“Savannah fucked with one of my tests again. In the same class as last time, Business and Economics.”
“What?” Linc’s amber eyes narrow.
“Yeah. But she used an
old answer key. So not only was it completely obvious the answers were rigged, but I only got a fucking C minus on the exam.”
I’m still not sure whether I’ll have to keep that grade or not, since both the principal and Mr. Arndt know the results were doctored. But I’m a little scared to push about it. I barely walked out of that office as a Linwood Academy student, and I’m a little worried that if I bitch too much about my grade, Mr. Osterhaut will retract his offer of a final chance and just expel me right now.
“What the hell?” Linc mutters, his hands at my waist stiffening as a murderous expression crosses his face. “I told her to stop fucking with you.”
I can feel the tension building in his body, and I shoot a glance at River, suddenly glad beyond words that we haven’t told the dark-haired boy about his dad’s possible involvement yet. If this is how he reacts when Savannah is a shit to me, I can’t even imagine what he’d do if he thought his dad killed Iris and framed my mom. Maybe even tried to come after me too.
“She mostly has,” I say, wriggling on his lap to get more comfortable… and yeah, maybe to distract him a little.
It works though, because something under my left ass cheek begins to harden, and he lets out a low growling noise, his breath stirring my hair.
“I think this is one of the last things she thinks she can get away with,” I add, shaking my head. “Overt bullying will get her caught and maybe expelled, but fucking with my tests makes me look like the delinquent, not her. I talked Mr. Osterhaut in to giving me one more chance, and I’m supposed to work something out with Mr. Arndt to take my tests in a private room or something so he knows I can’t cheat. But I’m not sure if that’ll work, since I don’t know how Savannah is accessing the exams in the first place.”
“So we need to stop her,” he grunts.
“Uh, yeah.”
I shoot a pleading glance at River, since the tone of Linc’s voice and the look on his face make me think he’s considering doing something that will definitely get him expelled. The quiet boy nods almost imperceptibly, which I hope means he’ll do something to talk Linc out of any insane plans he might cook up to get back at Savannah.
