3 Book High School Romance Bundle: A Kiss at Midnight & Prom King & Under My Skin

by Zara Rivas

  "Can't be roses and sunshine all the time," he said in a bored tone.

  "Well fix your mood before you come down to dinner, at least. For some reason the rents are in a really foul mood."

  "Good to know," Xavier said, shaking his head ruefully. He took a good look at his sister and raised an eyebrow. She was all dressed up, wearing designer jeans, a blouse and heels, and her auburn hair was set in loose curls, framing her perfectly made-up face. "What's the occasion?"

  "I'm leaving for a date right after dinner." She spun around slightly. "Do I look alright?"

  "You always look good, Em, you know that."

  She pouted. "I know, but you're supposed to feed my ego."

  "Your ego's been fed enough," he said dryly.

  "Oh shut up," she said in an amused tone, leaving.

  Xavier climbed off his bed, sighing. If his parents were in a mood, there was no sense in pissing them off further by being late.

  oOoOo

  "Finn's decided we need to throw a party," I said, leaning against Avery's locker in between classes on Tuesday, disinterestedly examining my fingernails. Finn and I went to some sort of salon and had dark blue streaks put in our hair. I giggled that it made him look like a punk, and he rolled his eyes and said I just looked like a wannabe. One pillow fight and thirty minutes later, Finn conceded that I looked 'decent'. I turned to look at Avery pulling books out of her locker.

  "Holy shit!" Avery, on the verge of jumping up and down and squealing, settled for exclaimed expletives. "When was the last time you threw a Lexington bash?"

  "Last year." Finn held a great love for parties, and threw them all the time when he lived at the Lexington manor. I hadn't the heart to throw one since he'd left.

  "It's going to be great! You should open up the pool and all the rooms and the windows and change the lighting and—"

  "Whoa, Avery, slow down. It won't be for a few months, anyway. Daddy dearest won't be in town until around spring break, probably." Sarcasm didn't so much lace my tone as saturate it. "It'll take a lot of planning though. I'm sure you'll want to help." I cast an entertained eye over her. She practically hummed with excitement.

  "Excuse me?" An unfamiliar voice said, and I turned to look at a guy standing next to us. Junior, from the looks of him.

  I raised an eyebrow in a silent question, and he cleared his throat and said, "Oh, uh, Sloane?"

  "Last time I checked, that was my name," I said.

  "I was wondering if—if you'd be my Valentine," he finished quickly, backing up slightly. Well. This was certainly interesting.

  "Sorry," I said, not sounding particularly apologetic. "I already have a Valentine." I did, really, but not the kind this kid probably expected. My brothers and I all made it a point to go out on Valentine's day together as a tradition.

  "Oh, I guess it's true then," he said, not sounding very disappointed or surprised.

  "What's true?" I asked, my eyes narrowing.

  "That you're in love with the new kid. Whatshisname, Xavier."

  "What the fuck?"

  Chapter Four

  Okay. So the guy coming up to me asking to be his Valentine wasn't entirely surprising, considering I got hit on a lot. A bunch of miscreants looking for popularity tried it all the time, and it didn't phase me much. Rules, remember? And then he went and accused me of being in love with Xavier. What. The. Hell. The kid scampered when he heard the beginnings of an incensed rant, and Avery stood there looking stumped. A few people in the hallway eyed us curiously when they saw our expressions, but a few pointed glares later and people were avoiding our gazes.

  "Huh," Avery said, bemused. "That's a new one. I've never heard anyone accusing you of being in love before."

  I wrinkled my nose in disgust. "And with Sinclair of all people."

  "C'mon, let's get out of here," Avery murmured, watching the people around us sneak glances out of the corners of their eyes. I carefully masked my surprise and irritation, slipping back into the comfortable persona of the cool, confident Lexington girl that I was. The mood change that accompanied this line of thought was far too easy, but then, I had years of practice under my belt. We walked on, and eventually the curious looks disappeared.

  By the end of first period, I realized I wouldn't be able to escape these boys. I'd already nicknamed them the Valentiners, and I knew something extremely fishy was up. Three more guys I barely knew asked me to be their Valentines, and all of them made some sort of mention of Xavier at the end. The proclamations of affection were becoming more and more public with each instance, and they wore on my nerves but I didn't let it show. I started joking with them, playing coy and flirting with them until they mentioned Xavier's name. When they did that, I just gave an enigmatic smile and said nothing, watching them until they became uncomfortable and made some sort of excuse for leaving.

  Torrance, enjoying my efforts immensely, made it a point of getting out of her classes under the pretense of 'having a story to cover for the paper', and had taken up following me around to all my classes. I didn't mind the entertainment at my expense, and sometimes she joined in with the teasing.

  "Torrance, I swear, if you make a newspaper story out of this you'd better do it at an angle that makes Xavier out to be some pompous, narcissistic vagrant with a penchant for targeting innocent girls," I hissed after I'd sent what must've been the thirty-somethingth Valentiner running.

  "Will do," she chirped, scribbling something in her notepad. "Sorry to leave you high and dry, Sloane, but I've got to go to class. It's Journalism, and the teacher won't be happy if they find out I've been skipping class claiming to be writing a story."

  "No problem," I said, turning slightly to see if I could find any more obnoxious Valentiners on my tail. Hallway: clear. "Catch you later."

  "Bye! If anything funny happens, don't forget to fill me in," she teased, half walking, half jogging down the hall.

  I nudged the door of the Art room open with the toe of my shoe and quickly took a seat on my favorite couch. Tyler walked up, grinning at me.

  "You're not going to ask me to be your Valentine, are you?" I asked warily, and he shook his head, laughing.

  "I'm not into torturing my favorite people," he said, plopping down next to me. "Besides, you know I bat for the other team."

  "Thank God," I breathed, and he nudged my shoulder. "About the torture, silly. You know the female population was collectively heartbroken when they found out about your boyfriend."

  "Then we should hold a moment of silence for them," he said solemnly, putting a hand up to his heart. I snorted and his barely contained grin broke across his face.

  Amy distracted us, clearing her throat softly and standing at the front of the room. She held a large file in her hands and I hoped we'd be getting work back. I pulled out a notebook and flipped it open, wondering if she had a new project for us.

  "Hello, class," she started, beginning to pass out the papers. It was the previous week's assignment: to attempt to accurately portray human dimensions. It was an easy assignment for me; I'd just sketched Dominic as he languidly bent over some of his university homework at one of our kitchen barstools, considering he hardly ever moved. It made him the perfect subject.

  "As you might've already guessed, the Carroway Collaborative Art Project is coming up," she said, smiling when some people in the class groaned. "I know, you do this every year, but since you're all seniors this is the last chance you'll have to compete." She reached the couch Tyler and I lounged on and passed back our papers. I was right—A+ for the sketch of Dominic. I slid it into a folder, careful to keep the edges from bending.

  "For those of you who haven't participated in the past, the Collaborative Project is where everyone in the class decides on something artistic they want to accomplish to represent the school. It's a brilliant way of showing the creativity of the class, and the seniors always have the biggest project to undertake, so we expect something fantastic from them every year. Don't forget, there's always a central
piece the theme is built around, and only one or two lucky artists get to work on it." A few more mumblings followed her small speech, and she silenced everyone with a wave of her hand.

  "This is something to be enthusiastic about, so I don't want to hear any complaining," she chided gently. "We won't be starting it right away, and as I said before, everyone in this class is a senior, so I want an idea proposal for what our project should be by the end of the week. Make it detailed—I don't want any last-minute 'let's paint a picture of the school' proposals hastily written on a post-it note before class." The class laughed and she smiled. "Your other assignment for this week is to experiment with space, however you want. You've seen Escher's staircase paintings? Well, let that capture your imagination and bring me the results by Friday at four p.m."

  She left to sit down at her desk, and Tyler and I looked at each other, excited. The CAP was always the best part of the year, and we'd both been students in the art program since we'd entered the school as freshmen.

  "I hope we get to do something really cool," Tyler said, tapping his pencil against the arm of the couch.

  "Of course we will!" I picked my feet up and rested my legs across his lap. "You know they'd never let us do something lame for the Senior CAP. Remember last years? The giant tornado?" The previous senior class's project had been to construct a massive, brilliantly colored tornado out of shards of broken glass. They put it on display in the grandiose entrance hall of the school for a while before donating it to an upscale gallery in the city. It spanned from the floor to the ceiling, and truly was a work of art.

  "How could I forget? Didn't your brother slice himself to ribbons more than once while they put that monster together?"

  "Yeah." Finn was into art like me, only more into sculpture and sketches than painting. He was an architecture major at university, but I kept waiting for him to change it to outright Art. He was only a freshman, after all.

  "Good times, good times," he breathed, smiling slightly at me.

  "True story. Hey, I meant to ask you—can you bartend for me in a couple of weeks?"

  He lit up and whistled. "Uh oh, Lexington's having a party, look out Carroway!"

  "Lexington's having a party," I confirmed. "And you better believe Finn and Blake will be there."

  "A party's not a party without the whole crew," he smiled. "Sure, I'll bartend. Should be a blast of a night."

  "Too right you are."

  "I'm going to just sketch now." His smile turned slightly apologetic, but I waved it away with an unconcerned hand.

  "Same here." I pulled my mp3 player out of my book bag and stuffed the headphones in my ears. Scrolling through my vast music collection, my mind buzzed with ideas for the senior project. It was practically my favorite part of the school year, and I generally had a prominent role in the planning because Amy knew I was good at it, and I could work in pretty much any medium with good results.

  Sick Puppies caught my attention in my playlist, and I clicked on it, satisfied. Turning up the volume to almost intolerable levels, I let the music pull me away and immersed myself in sketching.

  oOoOo

  I managed to go the entire day without seeing Xavier, a stroke of luck for him. I had a few plans about what to do with him for this silly little prank he had going on me, including but not limited to breaking his nose, finding his car and soaking his seats with nail polish remover and setting them on fire, or using my popularity to spread it around that he had some sort of VD. I couldn't help it that I was such a forgiving person. Any injury he sustained would be entirely his fault anyway; I must've had fifty guys come up to me to ask me out. Ridiculous.

  I decided to go to Fours after school, despite not having to work that week due to Jake being in town and working all my shifts. The Ellesons ran a cozy place, and it was easy to feel at home at Fours. You walked in the doors and an old-style diner bar complete with retro stools and chrome spanned the entire length of the establishment. Booths ran along the opposite side of the restaurant, and normally it was my job to wait on those tables. Jake Elleson, my bosses' nephew, stood at one of these tables taking orders when I walked in, and I grinned and sat down at the bar.

  Mr. Elleson saw me and started to come over, but I smiled and pointed at Jake. He nodded, chuckling, and went to go check on something in the kitchen. Jake heard his chuckle and looked around, catching sight of me and waving excitedly. He finished up the order of the table he was at and made his way over, giving me a big hug and ruffling my hair.

  "Well if it isn't Miss Lexington herself," he said, beaming. Jake was one of Dominic's friends from high school, and though they didn't hang out as much as they used to because Jake attended Columbia University, he was still welcome at our house any time of the day or night.

  "Hey to you too, Jake. How's life been going for you?"

  "Oh you know, same old, same old."

  "Yeah right," I scoffed, staring him down. "You go to Columbia, there's no way it's 'same old same old'."

  He gave a noncommittal shrug and I dropped the line of conversation, instead teasing, "Why'd you have to come back and steal all my shifts, hmm? Now I'm destitute!"

  "Steal your shifts? Your shifts?" he barked a laugh. "Honey, this was my job way before you ever set eyes on this place. You stole my shifts."

  "Whatever," I said airily. "You know I've been wronged."

  He made a skeptical sound in his throat which I promptly ignored. I hopped off the stool and gave him another hug.

  "I really just came in to see you and say hey, Jake," I said apologetically, "but you really should drop by the house. Nic would love to see you."

  "It's on my to-do list, lady," he smiled. "It's one of the reasons I'm here. I'm going back to school this weekend."

  "See that you show up," I said imperiously, "or we'll simply have to drag you to our house."

  He mock-saluted, and I left.

  oOoOo

  Avery and Christian were on a date that night, so Torrance came over to my house and we commenced our usual lounging-around routine around six o'clock that night. We ordered pizza, watched reruns of Boy Meets World, did our homework and crunched on chips while we waited for it to show up. Dominic showed up somewhere in there, mentioning something about a date in passing, and I teased him until he told me to stuff it somewhere while tossing me a new CD. Torrance then teased me for being such a sap when I got up to give him a huge hug, and I chucked a pillow at her and all was forgiven.

  "Love must be in the air tonight or something," Torrance remarked as she plucked another DVD from its place in the entertainment wall of the den and read the description on the back. Finn often joked that we had enough movies in the house to completely run a studio, and I agreed.

  "Yeah, first Avery and Christian, now my brother," I mused. "My brother hardly ever goes out." Something lightened in my chest, and I realized I was excited for Dominic. He hardly ever did anything but go to class, study, and take care of me. He needed time to himself. I worried about him when he holed himself up here with me.

  "Where's Adrian?" I asked after a few moments of silence.

  "I dunno, she made some excuse about why she couldn't come," Torrance said, preoccupied. "Doesn't surprise me. Vampire movie? Too sappy usually," she muttered, casting an eye around the rest of the DVDs. "Zombie movie, now there's a thought…."

  "No," I sighed, "I guess not. Adrian's been more standoffish than usual lately."

  "Yeah. Got any ideas about getting back at new kid yet?" Torrance popped the zombie movie into the DVD player and turned to face me. Dawn of the Dead, I noticed. Good choice.

  "A couple hundred," I quipped. "None that are legal, though."

  "The illegal plans are always the most fun. You definitely know that." She rolled her eyes. I'd gone through a rebellious phase the year before, acting out and pulling all sorts of stupid stunts and trying all kinds of, shall we say, illegal things. None of the habits I could have picked up stuck, thankfully, and I stopped pulling all kinds of
bullshit when I realized I nearly gave Dominic a heart attack whenever I went out.

  "Yeah," I said quietly, "I know that." Torrance shot me a look of curious concern, but I didn't respond. An idea slyly worked its way into the forefront of my mind, and a wicked expression overtook my countenance.

  "Oh, Torrance," I said, overcome by this wonderful plan. "I know exactly what to do to him."

  We shared an evil look, and she said, "Dish."

  So I did.

  Two hours later we reviewed the results of our hard work and nodded, satisfied. Dominic curiously looked over our whispering shoulders at what we'd been working on and nearly choked on the coke he drank, asking what the hell we thought we were doing. I instantly filled him in on the entire situation, and he gave us some pointers for our plan to work, then told me he'd ask Finn for the school keys he'd swiped somewhere in his third year at Carroway and bring them home with him the next day. Then he left on his date and I hoped he wouldn't be home until really, really late. Nic deserved a good time.