“Since I’m apparently twelve, I guess I’ll go first.” Ignoring her comment, I step up to the table and spin.
The bottle vibrates on the old wood tabletop, spinning round and around as one of the girls giggles and Ed hoots. The seconds seem to tick by in slow motion, and I can feel Nora’s eyes on the back of my neck. Feel the electricity humming between us. Smell her fear and anticipation.
So slowly that it feels as if we’re moving through molasses, the vodka bottle stops, pointing across the room.
Directly at Nora.
“There it is then, poppet. Pucker up, shall we?” I wear the smile of a panther about to trap its prey.
Her posture stiffens, those slim arms giving a subtle shake as the quiver of arousal, if I’m not mistaken, travels down her spine.
And then, for the second time in a week, Nora Randolph turns on her heel and bolts away from me. My friends break out into a rash of laughter, making kissing noises, and even Drake pats me on the arse.
I let her go, knowing it’s the last time I’ll allow her to save herself.
Chapter Six
Nora
One of the questions the press often asks of me, or shouts at me at a distance, is if I miss my home. I typically brush it aside with some general cliché, or no answer at all … but what I should say is that you’d have to feel a part of something to actually miss it.
The truth is, there wasn’t much of a life for me to leave behind when Bennett asked my mom and I to follow him halfway across the world. Because of my gift, I was a relative outsider, even to the people in the town I’d called home my whole life. Weird, strange, off, ill … these labels were slapped on me as if I was a reject toy coming off of the assembly line.
Our house in Pennsylvania was a home because it had Mom and I, but in reality, I didn’t have any friends. There wasn’t anyone else I turned to, not even a supportive teacher or guidance counselor or old shoe store clerk who would give me sage wisdom. I was as much a nobody there as I am here … only now I’m surrounded by cryptic talking rich people with sophisticated British accents.
The sweat that has collected on my brow at facing another class, worrying if I’ll see any of the six faces from that library on Saturday night, trickles onto my eyelash. So far, I’ve only seen the girl that Asher called Katherine, and I think she was too drunk to remember my face. Thank goodness. I’d begun to think I’d dreamed the upstairs portion of Saturday night.
“Blimey, this day just keeps getting better.”
My determination to stare straight down at my notebook is zapped as my head snaps up to look at the person sliding into the desk on my right. The fair-haired boy from Saturday night, the one with blazing blue eyes and a set of charming dimples etched into his cheeks, is looking right at me with a smarmy smile on his perfectly symmetrical face.
“I don’t believe we were properly introduced. I’m Drake Coddington.” He extends his hand as if I’m supposed to shake it with gratitude.
Wait a second. “Coddington as in Prime Minister Albert Coddington?”
I didn’t mean to say that out loud, but the thought popped into my head so fast that my mouth didn’t cooperate. While preparing for the move, I’d read countless books on the British government, Parliament, the Royals … all to associate myself with the culture I would be immersed in.
“The one and only, that’s my pop. But don’t ask for an autograph or anything, that would be so American of you.” To his credit, Drake winks and makes me feel on the inside of a joke for the first time since I’ve been here.
Not like I was considering it or anything … okay maybe for a minute. I had a thing for government officials.
“Such a shame you had to leave so quickly on Saturday, we were having so much fun.” He twists his green and blue plaid tie around his finger in such an effortlessly sexual way that I realize I’m drawn to the motion.
“I didn’t want to invade on you and your friends, like I’d said.” And his friend Asher had confused my body and mind more than anyone I’d ever met, but I wasn’t about to say that.
“You are one of us now, love. Better get used to it, or you’ll never have any fun.” His expression, guilty and playful all at the same time, told me exactly how much fun he wanted to have.
I squirmed in my chair, wishing the professor would walk in and start class soon. All around me, students were filing in, chatting or checking their smartphones. Winston was a world of its own, with social rules and a hierarchy that mimicked my high school in Pennsylvania, but were amplified to the tenth degree. Where kids back home had pickup trucks, Winston kids had drivers and Rolls Royces. Where we had Home Economics and English, they had Etiquette class and 19th Century Romantic Novelists. Where we had Lucky Brand jeans and Forever 21 crop tops, they had Chanel, Dior and Prada.
I wasn’t one of them, and I never would be. So I changed the subject. “You’re a senior, right? What do you have lined up for next year?”
It seemed a safe bet, since everyone around the academy was buzzing about university acceptances. I’d applied to a few US and UK schools, but it would be months before I heard anything.
Drake rolled his eyes. “The only thing I’m looking forward to next year are parties, but I get enough of those now so how fun can university be. I’ve already been accepted to Oxford, same as Asher.”
Of course they’d already been given the key to the golden gates … the top of the top. “Well that must be nice, having a friend there when you go to college.”
Drake chuckles, one blond brow rising. “Oh you poor thing, you don’t get it. Let me fill you in; people of our stature don’t have friends. We have allies and enemies. Those who have the most power stick together, take up for each other with our steel armor and quick swords of manipulation. And our enemies … well, let’s just say they are left quivering in their own poverty. This isn’t the suburbs of wherever you came from, this is the grand event. Either walk over the weak’s bodies, or fall to the bottom with them.”
I sucked in a breath at his bluntness, because the sheer, cruel honesty of these people still caught me off guard. In America, we glossed things over, putting on a smile and a wink while we went behind your back. Or at least … people who did that kind of stuff did. I was finding that in London, they came straight out with their verbal assaults and fear mongering, they had no time for pleasantries or two-facedness. It was both refreshing and terrifying.
“I’ll … keep that in mind.” Not that I ever planned to step over anyone’s body, but it would be wise to keep my cards close.
“Good.” He reached over to pat my hand as if I was a school child he’d just taught a lesson. “Now that that’s learned, I’m inviting you on our trip to Paris this weekend. And before you say no, just know that I won’t allow it. So simply, darling, say yes.”
The professor for our Human Biology and Anatomy course walks in, clapping his wrinkly old hands to quiet the chattering students.
Drake’s advice about allies and enemies rings in my head, and I think that maybe it’s just about time I started weighing the positives of following his suggestion. All my life, I’ve stayed in the background, settled for being the girl who quietly went about her business in the shadows and didn’t try to rise above the hand she was dealt.
But now I’d been dealt another hand. And that allows me to lean over, making eye contact with Drake, and mutter yes before the lesson begins.
“I’m home!”
My words echo off of the big front entry way to our residence in Kensington Palace, and I forget again that those words sound different when the people in the house probably can’t even hear you. And to my assumption, no one answers.
I hang my coat up in the closet and place my backpack on the floor, taking out the textbooks I need to do my homework for the night. I know that there is a whole staff of people to clean up after us, but it is still something I can’t get used to. I don’t need people to do things for me when I’m perfectly capable of doing them myself.
Making sure everything is neatly put away, I go off in search of any living soul I might find.
Ten minutes later, I find my mom in the study upstairs. “Hi, Mama.”
She instantly looks up, her smile radiating through me. “Hi, sweetness. How was your day?”
You’d think that after the hours of events she puts in all week, she’d look exhausted. But as usual, my mom looks fresh faced and incredible. She’d had me when she was eighteen, and as an eighteen-year-old now, I could never imagine doing what she’d done. Even after the asshole who’d helped create me abandoned her, she’d loved me more than humanly possible and provided as best as she could. It may go against every other angsty teenage girls’ thoughts, but my mom was my hero.
"It was good. I feel like I'm being challenged more, so I guess that's a good thing."
I had always kept my answers about school very nonchalant, very typical-kid responses. Even when we lived in Pennsylvania, I never wanted her to be stressed about what was happening with me at school. So, especially now, I didn't want to give her anymore to pile onto her plate.
"That's so great, honey, I'm glad you're adjusting more. Lord knows you'll get a better education here than you ever would have back home. Although, you’d excel anywhere, I know that. Oh, man …”
Mom looks down at the laptop propped on her lap, the velvet green arm chair capsizing her in its largeness. It’s funny, I never thought my mom quite looked right anywhere in our small town, but here? The elegant decor, the jewels, the gowns, the prestige … she just fit.
But being the fiancée, and soon-to-be wife, of a future king was hard work. She was working sixty hours a week with the schedule they had her on, more than her job at the diner back home. Appearances, charity events, etiquette classes, lessons on the government, ribbon cuttings, anything that she had to do to please the people of Great Britain, she was doing it.
“Mom, maybe you need to slow down?” I knew she wouldn’t, but I had to say something.
She smiled wearily, pushing the same red hair that matched my own over her shoulder. “I’m happy to do this if it makes it easier on Bennett.”
Of course she was, and in a way, I didn’t blame her. If he didn’t see what a sacrifice she was making for him, I would have protested. But I knew how much he loved and adored her.
I didn’t want to add one more thing to her plate, but I found that I wanted to go to Paris. Desperately. Drake had lit that idea of freedom in me like a low blazing spark, and it was slowly eroding my insides.
“So … school was so good this week that I actually got invited to hang out with some classmates this weekend …”
At that, she shuts her laptop, the sound reverberating off the oak-paneled walls. “Really?! Honey, that is awesome!”
Now for the tricky part. “Yeah … well, you know these type of people, Mom, and well, this group of friends invited me to go to Paris for the weekend—”
Mom cuts me off before I can even try to throw out lame excuses. “Um, what? Paris? You’re joking, right? You think I’m going to let my eighteen-year-old go to a foreign country with a bunch of peers for the weekend? Dream on, toots.”
Annoyed for her in a teenager way I probably never had been before, I rolled my eyes. “It’s not a foreign country, it’s practically a state next door! And come on, this is me we are talking about. I’m responsible, reliable. I’m sure Bennett has eyes all over that area, and I’ll check in every hour.”
I’m all but stamping my foot and slamming my bedroom door. I can see her hazel eyes start to soften, and I know I’ve planted a seed of doubt in her brain.
“Come on, Mom. This is a great opportunity for me. I’ll see a new city, be able to make some friends. Really branch out for the first time in my life.” And now the guilt came in … I couldn’t believe I was playing the card but the words were tumbling out. “We moved here so you could follow your dreams, and your love. And I love that, I love you … but you have to let me have my own dreams and freedom too.”
Sympathy and guilt cloud her eyes and I know I have her. I feel a bit slimy for playing her like this, but I want to go. For the first time since we got here, and maybe in my life, I actually have a niggling interest in doing something with kids my own age.
“Okay … fine. But you keep the tracking on your phone, and one of Bennett’s bodyguards is going with you.”
In a weirdly rare moment for me, giddiness bubbles up through my throat and out in a screech as I hug my mother. I’ve never been the excitable, boy-crazy, hair flipping teenage girl … and I’m not really going to start now. But, in this moment, I get the excitement that used to wash over my high school classmates when they talked about prom or Friday night football games.
What did one even pack for a trip to Paris? While I didn’t need people to do things for me, I could admit when I was defeated. And fashion was definitely one of the areas that stumped even my brain.
It was time to call in the professionals.
Chapter Seven
Asher
Push, pull. Burn, relief. Sink, stroke.
The ache in my muscles was one I craved, the mindless action of my body a thing I lived for. This was something I knew inside and out; an activity I was bloody good at without having to try or concentrate at all.
Although most things in my life were like that.
The coxswain yelled out commands, but I barely registered his orders. I knew the timing, the depth of the oar, the speed of which the waves were coming. My motions were fluid and precise, dead on with the other members of my rowing team.
I’d been in the water since I could walk, and the minute I’d been eligible, my father had signed me up for the only sport dignified enough to qualify under his standards. Rowing was a distinguished sport, an activity that could be viewed during sunny London afternoons where posh people watched from the banks and then enjoyed a glass of bubbly after.
“Rowing to China, eh, mate?” Winston, one of the teammates I’ve come up through the ranks with, nudges me with his foot as we continue to glide effortless through the water.
I snap out of the trance I’m in, not even having realized I was furiously putting my all into it. “Shut up, wanker.”
“Oh come on, you don’t need to exert that much effort, Frederick.” He laughs, missing a beat with his oar.
“And that’s why your family is just beneath the upper crust. An attitude like that will get you nowhere.” I grunt out the dig.
He makes a muffled, pissed off sound, and I feel ashamed for a minute. The slimy grief that sludges through my veins for that backhanded comment weighs me down, until it slides right off my back. It’s what I do, my method for everything. Bully, manipulate, belittle … I learned from the best. It comes so second nature to me; my soul must be as black and burnt as an ashen volcano by now.
The boat reaches its destination point, and everyone relaxes, ceasing the furious motions we were just completing in sync. My body burns, my calves and biceps roar with exertion. But it feels good, cathartic, to release all of the pent-up frustration inside of me.
This week has been a notch above hell, with schoolwork and my father on my back, piling up the demands day after day. The knowledge of Bennett’s betrayal, which weighs heavier on me each second of my life, pounds on my temples like a hammer. Seeing glimpses of Nora in the hall, in the courtyard, getting into her car … I want to approach her again but I need her to come to me this time. To seek it out.
I don’t linger to talk with my teammates, most of whom I don’t attend school with. Some of them have already moved on to university, and others are in different private schools around London. I head for the bathhouse, wanting the showers to myself before the animals descend.
As the hot, soapy water makes its way over my abs and still aching thighs, my thoughts drift to the plan. The one I’d set in motion months ago, to once and for all disgrace the man who’d killed my mother.
If it wasn’t for my father, when he was on the p
iss and stumbling around like a wounded animal, I would never have known that my mother died for any other reason than it was her time. At first, it was just ramblings. He would sit in his study at night, me as a child sitting by the fire playing with my train set.
“She was murdered … he took her … he’ll pay.”
As I got older, I understood what his knackered diatribes were about, the person responsible for my mother being behind the wheel the night she went over the side of London Bridge that night ten years ago.
Wiping my brain of the cobwebs of terrors past, I dried off and changed. I had a plane to catch, and it just so happened that Paris for the weekend was exactly what I needed.
Thirty minutes later and I’m pulling my Aston Martin onto a private runway, where a gleaming white jet awaits with its stairs waiting to take my friends and I up and away.
“How come when I get an auto, you always get a posher one?” Ed slams the door of his red Ferrari, which is too obvious for my taste.
As the steward grabs my luggage and takes it to the plane, I fall into step beside him. Patting his cheek, I find I’m in a rather chipper mood. “Mate, you haven’t come to that reality yet?”
“Psh, whatever. I’m going to see some French birds tonight and at least that will ease my pain. We better be staying at your father’s flat, that place is bloody brilliant.”
His pain, yeah … the guy had never suffered in his life. By most folk’s standards, neither had I.
“Quit being a desperate git … but yes, we’re staying there. Now get on the plane.”
We boarded, Ed taking a minute too long to check out the pretty flight attendant. I smack the back of his head, nudging him down the aisle. The beige leather and polished wood of the cabin comes into view, and there is already an entire bar set up between the chairs on the right side. Soon, Katherine and the rest of the girls come along in a gaggle, toting the stench of perfume and too-large handbags with them.
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