by Elle East
“Well, I just wanted to know if you want to study together?” he asked innocently.
“Study?” I said, surprised and skeptical. “You don’t care about school.”
He held his hands up like he was surrendering. “All right, you caught me. I don’t want to study, but I want to hang out. Let’s draw together like we used to.”
The mention of how we used to sneak away and draw for hours brought a painful stab of nostalgia. Those had been some of my fondest memories of my childhood.
“Right now?” I asked.
“Yeah? When else?”
“Will the other guys be there?” I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be around Brett or not.
“Not for a couple hours. They have football practice so it’ll be just the two of us.” He raised his brows suggestively, and I shot him a withering look. “Drawing. Helllllo, what did you think I meant?”
I rolled my eyes but couldn’t help but smile.
“I’m all alone and bored, come on. You know you want to,” he said.
The truth was that I did want to. I was also relieved that I hadn’t completely blown my chance at finding out their secret.
“Ok,” I said reluctantly.
“Great! Come to my place now and I’ll meet you there.”
“Why wouldn’t we just go over together?”
I could see him get noticeably uncomfortable. He didn’t want the other students seeing us together but he didn’t want to say it.
“Fine,” I said in resignation. “I’ll meet you there.”
I started walking out of the school, alone.
I was drawing an intricate design of ocean waves with abstract human figures hidden in them. Grayson looked up from his drawing and whistled at mine.
“You’re going to make an amazing tattoo artist one day,” he said, clearly impressed.
I was flattered and a little embarrassed. I didn’t like showing my work to many people; I was kind of shy about it, but I would have to get over that shyness if I wanted to tattoo people for a living. I had told Grayson about my aspirations and he seemed to think it was really cool. How positively he reacted made me feel comfortable showing him my art.
He admired it for a moment longer and I tried to close the sketchbook. I had had to start a new one after my old one had been burned. There was a lot of art that was sentimental to me in that old book and its destruction was hard to accept, but it gave me a chance to start over.
He grabbed my wrist to stop me from closing it. Electricity sparked from where his skin touched mine. He looked at me sincerely and I felt like I was falling into his eyes.
“Maybe one day you can do me,” he whispered.
My breathing started picking up. He licked his lips and my gaze immediately went to them. I licked mine in unconscious response and his eyes dipped down. He knew exactly what he was implying.
With the hand that wasn’t gripping my wrist, he opened the book back up. He ran his finger around the edge of the page. I watched it and my brain flooded with the image of those fingers running over the planes of my body. Heat rushed up from my stomach.
“My tattoos will be very expensive, you probably won’t be able to afford it,” I said to break the tension but instead it came out as a throaty whisper.
Grayson laughed loudly at that, letting go of my wrist, and the moment was broken. I let out a relieved breath—but couldn’t help feeling slightly disappointed. Grayson had an amazingly contagious laugh and I couldn’t help but join in. We dissolved into a giggling mess on to the table we were sitting at.
That was when I heard the elevator open and I sprang upright again. I looked over and on the far side of the room I saw Archer and Brett enter the apartment.
“Hey, guys!” Grayson called over to them.
They both acknowledged him, but their eyes immediately fell on me. It was too hard to sustain those intense gazes and I looked away. I wasn’t sure how the two of them would feel about me being there. I wasn’t sure if Archer knew about Brett and me and I didn’t know how positive his reaction would be if he did.
“We’re drawing,” Grayson continued. “How was using your bodies as battering rams and trying to catch a weirdly shaped ball?”
They both made noncommittal grunts. Brett walked away off somewhere into the vast apartment to what I assumed was his room. Archer came over slowly.
“You guys have just been… drawing together?” he asked suspiciously.
“What else would we be doing, Archer?” Grayson asked in an exaggeratedly innocent way.
Archer stared at us for a long moment before saying, “I’m going to take a shower. What did you guys want to do for dinner? Can’t very well head to the dining hall all together.”
A vision of a wet, naked and soapy Archer flashed into my mind.
What was wrong with me??
“I was going to get the chef to make Thai, sound good?” Grayson asked.
“Yeah, that sounds good,” Archer said wearily before turning around and walking to where I assumed his room was.
I had been hanging out with the Kings for a little while by that point but I still hadn’t seen inside any of their rooms.
“You like Thai food, right?” Grayson asked me.
“Yeah,” I said distractedly. “Did Brett tell you anything?”
“About what? He tells me lots of things.”
I rolled my eyes, Grayson always had to be difficult.
“About me.”
“What would he tell me about you?”
“Nothing.”
“What is it? Do you have a secret or something?”
“No, no secret or anything. I just wanted to know if you guys gossip with each other.”
“Gossip?” Grayson said in disgust. “What are we? The Queens? We don’t gossip.”
“Ok, I was just curious.”
I was relieved. It didn’t seem like Brett had said anything about our make-out session to Grayson—and I was surprised by that. I thought for sure Brett wouldn’t be able to wait to tell the guys about how we’d kissed—though Brett was definitely on the quiet side so maybe I shouldn’t be that surprised that he wasn’t one to kiss and tell. I was happy about that.
I knew one thing though, dinner would be awkward.
Chapter 28
I was right. It was awkward.
Brett was being quieter than normal and I couldn’t tell if Archer knew about us or not. Grayson was chatting away like his normal mouthy self. Rock music was playing quietly in the huge space, coming from dozens of speakers that were strategically camouflaged throughout the room.
One thing though, the food was amazing. I hadn’t eaten much Thai before because it was too expensive. At home we mostly stuck to cheap pastas for our meals. The chef that the guys had was a wizard, and I felt like my mouth was exploding with flavor. Even though I was uncomfortable, it didn’t stop me from reaching for seconds and thirds.
After dinner I told them I needed to get back to my room to study and went home. The night had left me feeling unsettled.
We started hanging out again after that. Grayson took it upon himself to help me with the art project I was working on for an end-of-term competition. I had decided to make a larger version of the drawing that he had seen, the one with the waves and the human figures. I started going over to the Kings’ place every day after school so that we could work on it for a couple hours. The other guys would come after a bit and we’d all hang out before I headed home for the night.
Brett and I didn’t have any other encounters like the one in my room. There were no late night knocks on the door and I was a bit sad about it. We all fell back into the natural group chemistry that we had.
I was spending hours on my art piece and I was really hoping that it would win. Grace was also in my art class and would be entering the competition too. She was widely regarded as one of the best, if not the best, artist at Crestmoore so everyone thought she would win. I told Grayson that I didn’t think her art was very good beca
use even though it was perfect technically, to create truly beautiful pieces that moved people you needed to have a soul. Grayson had almost fell off his chair laughing at that one. I couldn’t help but catch his contagious laughter and we dissolved into a giggling fit.
I was still texting Dean, but I found that when I was hanging out with the Kings’ I seemed to text him less. I didn’t want to examine that too much. Dean was someone who I really liked, but we had barely gotten to know each other before I left and we hadn’t spoken in months, only texted. But I still really hoped that he liked me just as much as I liked him. We would be in the same city in a couple short weeks and I couldn’t wait to see him again.
I hadn’t felt about anyone else the way I felt about him. His texts were sweet and flirty and usually the highlight of my day. From what I knew about him I felt like maybe he could be a good match for me—if we were together in person that is.
I felt a bit guilty about kissing all the Kings’ at one point, but at the same time even though Dean and I liked each other we weren’t anywhere close to being in a relationship—we hadn’t even gone on a date yet—so I didn’t think I should feel bad. But I did. I promised myself that I would tell him when I went back to New York, it was the kind of thing I felt you should tell someone in person.
All the time I was spending with Brett, Archer and Grayson, I was learning more about them, but not what I actually needed to know. I had learned that Grayson’s parents passed away in the intervening years since I’d known him as a kid. His grandparents were his guardians, but they were so busy with their own lives, vacationing all over the world, that they usually left Grayson by himself with the house staff when he was home from school. I felt so bad that I hadn’t been there for him when his parents passed away. I could tell that being an orphan and being basically abandoned by his grandparents really affected him, but he brushed it off with a deflecting laugh and changed the subject.
I learned that Brett wanted to get into the NFL after he graduated from high school. He wanted to then become a coach after he retired as a player. I also learned that he couldn’t see his two younger siblings anymore, whom he loved and was desperately protective of, from an offhanded comment one of the Kings’ made. He didn’t want to talk about it and brushed it off when I tried to pry further.
I also learned by accident that Archer’s father was an abusive asshole. I had been hanging out with the guys late into the night and accidentally fell asleep on the couch. I woke up to the sound of Archer talking to someone in hushed tones on the phone. It took me a second to realize where I was, but then I pretended to keep sleeping so that he wouldn’t know I was listening.
I could mostly just hear Archer’s side of the conversation, which was just a lot of, “Yes, sir”, and “No, sir”, and one, “Dad”, so I knew who he was talking to. On the other end of the line, even though he wasn’t on speaker, the person was yelling so loudly that I could hear their muffled screams. The guy sounded like he was really giving it to Archer about something and I wondered what it was. I could just make out him saying something about “teach Archer a lesson when he next saw him” or something like that.
“Yes, sir. I’ll take care of it. It won’t happen again… no, sir…. yes, sir. I understand,” Archer said in a voice that sounded slightly scared and it made my blood run cold.
I had never heard Archer scared before in my life. Whatever his relationship was with his dad, he was clearly scared of him. I couldn’t imagine it because Archer was this powerful, intelligent, athletic guy who was always put together and in control of himself and his surroundings. He never seemed to lose his cool, but there he was with his father screaming at him and he was promising his dad that he’d do better.
When the conversation ended, I kept my eyes tightly closed. Archer walked by me and I heard his footsteps stop. I got really nervous. Did he know I had heard him? I was pretty sure it was a conversation he wouldn’t have wanted anyone else to hear. I kept my eyes shut and kept my breathing steady. He eventually started walking away, and I internally breathed out a sigh of relief. Against my will, my heart ached for Archer. My stepdad was bad, but he was nowhere close to that. I couldn’t imagine having to deal with a father like that.
What did surprise me about hanging out with the Kings’ was how few girls came around. Based on all the girls hanging off of them every time I saw them around the campus, I would have figured there’d be a never-ending rotation of them coming in and out of their bedrooms, but that wasn’t the case. It confused me, but I felt too weird to ask about it.
It was getting close to the end of the term and despite getting closer to the Kings I hadn’t found out anything that I could use. I was starting to get desperate when I asked them one day when we were studying together in their apartment about Jenny, the girl that had killed herself the year before. I thought maybe that would be a way to get them talking—and like I said, I was getting desperate.
“Everyone is saying Victoria killed her,” I said.
Grayson scoffed. He was on his phone and not looking at his books which lay unopened and unused on the table in front of him.
“Victoria wouldn’t get her hands dirty like that,” he said.
“Did she get someone else to do it?” I pried. “Did she tell someone to do it?”
I could tell that the Kings didn’t want to talk to me about it. I could see all their masks coming down to guard themselves from me. Royalty protected their own, and that mindset ran deep. I already knew that they weren’t very fond of Victoria, they’d said some comments which led me to believe that they weren’t fans, but they wouldn’t tell on her. I didn’t want to drop it though. Even if it made me uncomfortable, I was going to push it. I wanted something from them, I needed it, maybe finding out that someone killed Jenny would be enough to help my mom.
“The officials said that she took her own life,” Archer finally responded.
“Yeah, but is that really what happened?”
“That’s what the officials said.” From the tone of his voice I could tell that he was leaving no room for follow-up questions. That was the end of the discussion.
I sighed in frustration. I was getting nowhere, and slowly.
I had noticed that the guys all took a lot of secret phone calls. These calls would come in constantly and whoever got it would leave the room briefly for a few minutes then come back in. Grayson and I were working on my art project one evening when he got one of the calls and left the room quickly. When he came back, I asked what that was.
“Oh, no big deal. I get them all the time.” He waved away the question.
“I know you all do, but what are they about?”
“Nothing,” he said flatly, indicating that the conversation was over.
I sighed.
“Listen, it’s late, maybe you better head home and we’ll finish this tomorrow. I have a lot of homework to do,” he said.
“You never do homework!”
“Well, I thought I needed to start!”
I was fine with calling it a night. I was pretty sure that those phone calls had to do with what I was at Crestmoore for, but the guys were being secretive. I was getting frustrated that I was getting nowhere.
Chapter 29
It was the last week before Christmas break. Crestmoore was decorated top-to-bottom in Christmas decorations. They had brought in hundreds of real trees and decorated them in reds and whites. There were garlands everywhere and mistletoe that the students were giggling about whenever anyone walked under. There were thousands of lights strung. It was breathtaking, but it also served as a reminder that I was running out of time.
I had been at the school almost four months and didn’t have enough information to help the detective’s case against the Kings. I was worried that the police would think I wasn’t taking the mission seriously and wouldn’t let me come back after the break. If they didn’t let me come back, then my academic year was ruined but more importantly so was the chance to help my mom.
That afternoon after class I headed over to the Kings’ dorm. Grayson and I took our usual place at the table and started working. I quickly looked over whenever he pulled out his phone, but he angled it so I couldn’t see what he was typing. It seemed like a move that was second nature to him, like he was always a bit guarded about it.
I got lucky one time and distracted him while he was typing in the unlock code—I used the dirty trick that he had used on me the first day against him. I managed to see it. My heart started racing. I would be able to do this. I’d be able to see what all those phone calls and secretive texts were about.
“You ok?” Grayson suddenly asked.
“Yeah! Why?” I yelped, a bit startled.
“I don’t know. You just seem distracted or something… not sure what it is.”
“I’m fine!” I said a bit too quickly. “Just concentrating on this part of the piece.”
He gave me a searching look, and I did my best to seem normal—whatever normal looked like. Eventually he seemed satisfied and went back to what he was doing. I internally breathed out a sigh of relief. I was so close now that I was practically humming and my adrenaline was rushing.
After what felt like an appropriate length of time, I asked him if we could have a beer.
“Now you’re talking!” He jumped up and went over to the kitchen.
Luckily for me, the open kitchen did have one wall that the fridge rested against and the table we were sitting at was behind it. I knew I only had a couple seconds. Grayson never left his phone alone and if I waited for him to go to the washroom it would be pointless because he’d definitely take it.
I watched him out of the corner of my eye and the second he rounded the corner I leaped for the phone. I quickly punched in the code and it opened. His background was his favorite painting by Monet.
