by Elle East
The guy wasn’t getting up.
The coaches from the other team ran out onto the field and over to their injured player. Archer took off his helmet and started walking away. His black hair shone under the bright, artificial stadium lights. He was breathing hard, and even from this far back I could see sweat running down his face.
The game had to be paused so they could take the injured player off on a stretcher. It was a sobering reminder of just how dangerous and brutal this game could be—and how dangerous and brutal Archer could be.
While they were carrying the guy off, I asked Dean, “Do you like any other sports?”
“Yeah, I’m a fan of soccer and rugby. Those are more the sports I grew up with.”
“Really?” I asked in surprise, but then remembered something I’d been meaning to ask him for a while. “Hey, so I noticed every once in a while you say some words with a very slight accent. What’s up with that? Or is it just in my head?”
It was true. It happened maybe once a week where I’d notice some of his words were slightly off. It was barely noticeable, and so I hadn’t remembered to ask him about it until just now. I thought at first it was just his New York accent slipping in, but the more I heard it, the less New York it sounded—and if anyone knew New York accents, it was me.
He looked at me with a confused expression on his rugged face, then it cleared away and he laughed.
“My mom is British. I lived in England for a few years when I was younger. Some of the accent must have stuck, I guess. That was also why I grew up with footb—well, what you call soccer, and rugby.”
“Oh!” I said in surprise. “That’s actually really interesting. How come we haven’t talked about this before?”
He shrugged. “Guess it just never came up. It was only for a few years, a long time ago, and I’ve been a New Yorker ever since.”
I nodded as I processed it. It felt weird he hadn’t told me about this before, but then I guess we hadn’t talked a lot about my childhood either—except for the part that was connected to the Kings.
“Where’s your mom now?” I asked.
“She’s back in England. When my parents first separated, she went back home and took me with her. After a couple of years, I moved in with my dad, and that’s where I’ve been ever since. I barely see her now.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
Hearing him talk about his mom made me think of mine. I missed her.
He shrugged, and I could tell he was trying not to show how much it bothered him.
“It’s fine. All of that happened a long time ago.”
“I’m still sorry.”
“Don’t be. Not your fault.” He gave me a smile, and I returned it, but I couldn’t shake the nagging feeling in the back of my mind that something wasn’t right. It felt like there was more he wasn’t telling me.
We turned back to the game. The injured player was off the field, and they were starting a new play. It seemed callous to just continue the game right after someone got hurt, but I guess that was just the way the game was played at Crestmoore.
Chapter 20
I rounded the corner one day and stumbled upon a sight I never thought I’d see.
Dean and Claudia were together in the hallway. Dean was leaning against the lockers casually while Claudia stood close to him. They were talking and laughing. She was clearly flirting with him, and he was being receptive.
She played with her skirt and tucked her black hair behind her ears coyly. She batted her bright green eyes at him, and he was giving her his charming smile back. They were closer than two people having a casual conversation should be.
She reached out and took his tie in her hand playfully—and that was when Dean finally spotted me. His eyes went wide, like he’d been caught. She looked over at me in surprise as I spun on my heel and hurried away.
I rushed down the hall, my mind spinning. Had he been playing me this whole time too? Did he even like me at all? What the hell was that kiss? Or that amazing thing he did on my birthday? Why had he put his arm around me at the football game?
How close was he with the Queens? Had he secretly been talking to them this whole time? Was he actually working for the Kings???
Flashbacks of last year rushed back to me. How the Kings had pulled me in, just like Dean, and then ripped my heart apart. I felt my world crumbling and spinning out of control again. I felt like I was going to be sick.
I reached out and put my hand on the wall to steady myself, and that was when Dean caught up with me.
He ran up and reached out to touch my arm. “Maddy, listen—”
I jerked away and spun around to confront him.
“What the hell was that!?” I asked.
I could tell he was shocked by how angry I was, and he took a step back.
“Listen, that was nothing. I know it looks bad, but I was just trying to get information.”
I scoffed.
“Information? She didn’t look like she was trying to give you information. She looked like she was trying to give you something else. You two were clearly flirting.”
He shook his head and looked down.
“I was just trying to do what we came here to do. That’s all. I wasn’t trying to get with Claudia. I was seeing if I could get close to her and maybe get information on the Kings.”
I scoffed again. “Seriously? I tried that tactic, remember? I tried that exact tactic and remember how it completely blew up in my face? They were all on to me the entire time—and they are probably on to you too.”
He threw his hands up in the air in exasperation.
“Well, I had to try something. We’ve been here two months now and have nothing to show for it. We’ve made zero progress, and I’m at a complete loss of what to do next.”
“You can’t trust anything she says, anyway. Any information you get would be worthless.”
“Do you have any better ideas?” he asked pointedly.
“Why? So after I do them and they fail, you can try them again in a couple of months?” I asked sarcastically.
We stared at each other. I was still fuming, and I could tell Dean was pissed off too. Eventually, his eyes softened, and he took a deep breath.
“I’m sorry. I’m just so fucking frustrated,” he finally said. “I’m getting desperate and willing to try anything. She’s talked to me a couple of times in the hall before. Today, when she started flirting, I saw it as a good opportunity so I didn’t stop it. I’m sorry, it didn’t mean anything.”
I had started to calm down but was still hurt. I hated seeing him talk to her like that. She was supposed to be one of our enemies, not just mine. Also, I didn’t know where Dean and I stood romantically. Seeing another girl get the attention I wanted from him, hurt. I was frustrated he wasn’t looking at me like he looked at her.
“I won’t stop you from trying,” I said with resignation. “But don’t forget that you can’t trust her. Keep your guard up at all times.”
“Look, let’s try to come up with another plan together. Maybe…” He thought for a moment. “Maybe we can sneak into the Kings’ dorm and look for evidence.”
“Good luck getting up the elevator. It’s the only way in and you need a pass. Also, I tried that before too, remember?”
“Oh, of course you’ve been there. How could I forget?” His amber eyes went dark as he glared at me. “You’re getting mad at me for flirting with Claudia, meanwhile you’ve gotten with the entire male-half of the Royalty.”
I was taken by surprise at his words.
“I was just doing what I needed to do to get my mom out of jail,” I said.
He scoffed. “Sure. What a perfect excuse.”
He always seemed like he was holding himself back in some way, like he was always a bit guarded, but as he stared angrily at me, I felt like he was a hundred percent there with me. I felt like I was seeing the real Dean—the one I experienced that one time we kissed. The one who was so wild and raw.
&nbs
p; “Why are you even doing this?” I shot back at him.
“To help my dad,” he answered.
“So you should understand better than anyone why I’m doing this for my mom.”
His mouth stretched in a hard line.
“Is this all for your dad? Do you want to be a cop when you get older or something?” I asked the question I’d been curious about for a while.
He shrugged angrily. “Maybe. But I don’t seem to be very good at it, do I?”
Chapter 21
After our confrontation in the hall, Dean and I apologized to each other, but things were still tense between us. It felt like so many things were left hanging in the air, unsaid.
A couple of days after our fight, I’d had to take the ferry across to the mainland to get the cast finally taken off my leg. I wasn’t sure if he would, but Dean ended up coming with me, and despite the tension, I was grateful I didn’t have to go alone.
We were still spending a lot of time with each other, walking to class and eating lunch, but we weren’t studying together as often, and it made me sad. I didn’t want to go back to the way things were before our fight, because I felt like that argument was necessary. I felt like we had both been pushing things down for so long they were bound to boil over at one point. I was just sorry neither of us knew how to get passed it.
Despite both of us apologizing and agreeing to be more open with each other, I still felt like there was a wall between us. I still felt like he was holding himself back from me for some reason, and I ached to see that guy I saw in the hall. The one that was raw and honest—the real Dean.
I sighed. I was walking back from yet another exhausting tutoring session with Grayson. That guy pushed my buttons like no one else. The evening had been full of weird energy and sexual tension.
He couldn’t keep his big mouth shut, and I always left our sessions feeling annoyed and exhausted—and flushed. He always left me feeling a burning ache in my core that I hated and didn’t want to examine too closely.
I no longer had my cast on, but I was still dragging my feet from fatigue. I was close to the Bell Tower and couldn’t wait to collapse onto my bed. My mind was lost in thought, going over the irritating interactions I’d had with Grayson that evening. The straps of my backpack were digging into my shoulders after a long day. I pulled them up and held them in my hands to give my shoulders a break.
I was distracted when I rounded a corner and didn’t notice the dark figures who slipped out of the shadows to follow me. A second later, I heard their quick footsteps and tried to spin around, but it was too late.
Pain bloomed in the back of my head. I reached up to grab it and realized someone had hit me.
They didn’t give me time to react, and blows started raining down immediately. I swung my fist out blindly and smiled in satisfaction when I heard a girly voice yell, “Ow!”
I tried to swing again, but I was being hit from all sides. It felt like there were twenty people punching me at the same time. I held my arms up to protect my face from the blows.
I kicked with my good leg and felt solid contact with someone’s shin. They went down—but so did I. Someone kicked out my other leg, and I fell to the hard marble floor.
The wind was knocked out of me, and I had trouble catching my breath. Since I was on the ground, they started using their feet instead of their hands. The blows became even harder as they kicked me over and over in the ribs. I was pretty sure they were going to break at any minute—if they hadn’t already.
I managed to grab someone’s ankle as they kicked my shoulder. I yanked hard, and she fell to the ground with a startled cry.
I wasn’t a big fighter, but there was no way you could get through a year at East Heights High, my old high school, without a little blood on your hands. The kids there were tough, and you had to be tough to survive them. I’d been in a couple of fights before, but never this many against one. This wasn’t a fair fight at all.
From the brief flashes I could see, before I had to go back to protecting my face, there were about seven of them. They were all wearing long, black robes with hoods so their faces were covered, but I could tell by their size and the sounds they made that they were all girls. I couldn’t see who they were, but I had a pretty good idea.
I kicked my legs out and got one of them in the calf.
“Owwww!” she whined and hopped away dramatically. “She fucking got me!”
One of the others hissed back, “So what? Get back in there and make her pay for it.”
The voice seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place it because she was trying to change the sound by talking low and through her teeth. She didn’t want to be recognized.
I reached out again and grabbed someone else’s ankle, but another person took that opportunity to kick me right in my unprotected face. Stars exploded behind my eyes. I let go of the person and quickly covered my face back up. My ears were ringing, and the blow had dazed me.
I curled up in a ball to try to protect myself as best I could. They had the advantage, and there was no way I was going to be able to beat all of them. The best thing I could do was to protect my head and hope they got bored soon.
The next blow landed right in my ribs, and I heard a crack. They’d definitely broken something.
It was getting hard to breathe, and my head was cloudy. I started to feel almost disconnected from my body, like they were hitting someone else and I was just aware of it, but it wasn’t me.
Everything started going black as the blows continued to rain down. On the brink of passing out, I heard a muffled voice in the distance. It was a male voice, and he sounded angry. As soon as he started shouting, I felt the kicks and punches stop.
I couldn’t open my eyes, but I heard a lot of footsteps all at once. The girls ran off down the hall, and the guy ran towards me from the opposite direction.
“Holy fuck, Maddy. Are you ok?” Even though the voice was quiet because of the ringing in my ears, I recognized that it belonged to Grayson.
I felt him place his hands gently on my body. I opened my eyes and tried to move.
All the pain rushed back to me at once, and I groaned.
“What the hell happened?” he asked anxiously.
“Those girls,” I groaned as I rolled onto my back. “They jumped me and just started attacking. I don’t know why.”
It hurt to breathe. With every breath, a sharp pain shot out of my ribs and ricocheted throughout my body. I looked up into his angular, handsome face. Dark strands of hair were hanging over his forehead, instead of being swept to the side. His usual smirk and the mischievous look in his eyes was gone, replaced with a serious look of concern.
I didn’t like him looking at me like that. I hated feeling weak in front of him.
I moved to sit up, and it felt like a knife stabbed me in the side of my body. My face scrunched up in pain, and I grabbed my ribs.
“No, don’t move,” he said and gently put his hands on my shoulder to stop me. “You might have broken something.”
I was almost positive I had broken something. I knew what a broken rib felt like because I’d had one before.
When I was in third grade, Archer and I had argued about if we could climb the hardest tree in our schoolyard without the teacher seeing. It was against the rules to climb any of the trees, but kids would still do it behind the teachers’ backs to see if they could get away with it. It was a silly little game. But no one ever climbed that tree. It was the tallest one, and had the least number of branches low to the ground, so it was the hardest to climb.
Archer finally dared me to do it. I couldn’t back down from a dare, and so I’d marched right over to that tree. Brett said he didn’t think it was a good idea—but Brett was always overly protective of me. It was only when Grayson said he also didn’t think it was a good idea, that I started to get scared.
Archer had called me a chicken when I hesitated, and that did it. No one called me a chicken. I remember climbing, and I was doing
pretty well for a while. I got higher than anyone else ever had, but about halfway up I happened to look down.
The three of them seemed so far beneath me, and all of their faces looked scared. I remember that had freaked me out, and I lost my nerve. I tried to go back down, but that was when the teacher spotted me and yelled my name. The distraction caused me to lose my footing, and I fell.
When I woke up, I was lying on the couch in the teacher’s lounge. I remember it hurt so much to breathe. They’d taken me to the hospital and an x-ray confirmed I’d broken my rib.
When I went back to school a couple of days later, Archer sheepishly apologized, but I found out that Brett and Grayson weren’t speaking to him anymore. They were so mad he’d caused me to get hurt.
I remember they gave him the silent treatment for a long time, but it was probably only a couple of weeks—which is an eternity when you’re a kid. He kept apologizing to me, and I could tell he felt awful. I told them all it wasn’t Archer’s fault I got hurt. I’d taken the dare, and I was the one who got distracted and fell. Eventually, Archer was let back into the group, and we had been whole again.
So I knew what a broken rib felt like—and I also knew there was nothing you could do for one. You just had to let it heal on its own. There weren’t any treatments or casts that could speed up the process. There was no point in going all the way to the mainland to get it x-rayed. If it was broken or if it wasn’t, the treatment was the same either way.
“I’m fine,” I lied to Grayson. “I’m just a bit bruised, that’s all. I’m ok.”
I sat all the way up and tried my best to hide how much it hurt to do that. I was pretty sure the only major damage was to my ribs, but the rest of my body would be sore and bruised for a while. It would all heal.
“Could you help me up?” I asked when I realized it was going to be almost impossible for me to stand up on my own.
I grabbed onto his warm hands, and he pulled me up with his strong arms. My body was screaming in pain, but I tried to keep that pain off my face.
