by Eden O'Neill
WE THE PRETTY STARS
Court High Book 4
By Eden O’Neill
WE THE PRETTY STARS: Court High Book 4
Copyright © 2020 by Eden O’Neill
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, including electronic or mechanical, without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to any person, living or dead, any place, events or occurrences, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
Table of Contents
Prologue
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Epilogue
Prologue
Last Summer
Royal
“Royal, it’s your dad. Calling me this time.”
Probably because I’d been ignoring him. I waved Knight off, folding my arms as I leaned back against my Audi. My dad had been bugging me like crazy all day, which was normal for him when he got on a trip. I tipped my chin over at Knight. “Tell him I’m busy.”
Hushed tones beside me on the phone, my friend whispering into the device. After a few moments, Knight shoved the phone in his pocket and came over.
“You tell him?” I asked, studying my boots. I was busy, extremely. I looked up to find a scowling Knight Reed, the blades of his dark hair sweeping forward when he forced his hand through them.
“He says we all better be at Windsor House in the next hour or he’s sending the artillery,” he said, and not looking happy about it. He crossed his buff arms. “My grandpa’s with him. Some Court stuff we gotta do.”
There was always some Court stuff, some Court events, and I didn’t give a shit about any of it. I hadn’t for a long time.
Try telling my father that.
It was his legacy, the only thing he had that connected us and put me on a path toward something he found acceptable about me. It pissed me off, which was why I tried to shun my legacy as much as I possibly could. Especially recently with the closer we got to high school graduation. I wouldn’t hesitate to put both him and this town in my rearview mirror, the place and him a reminder of what my father saw me as…
The one who ruined our family.
The guilt of that weighing on me even now, I pushed off my car, LJ and Jax shifting on their feet beside me. They’d been watching on when Knight got his call. All our phones had rung, but the difference was Knight hadn’t ignored his. He had a good relationship with the Court, his grandpa and everything, so if my dad, one of the senior members, called him, he answered. He answered to the Court because he wanted to, not because he had to.
With that, LJ came over, pushing a hand to my shoulder. The guy sighed. “Probably for the best, man,” he said, sweeping long blond locks over his shoulder when he turned. “She has to do this on her own.”
She was in the distance, our friend. Paige had been standing out in the middle of the field for a while, her vantage point the Route 80 train tracks. She’d called us out here, completely in hysterics, and when she explained what she wanted to do, I went into hysterics. I admit I lost it, left the conversation.
There was another way…
She didn’t seem to feel that way. She believed this, and the Court was the only way. I wouldn’t lie. I always wanted Paige to join us. I had always wanted her to be a part of Court and that bond that united the other guys and me. That’d been when we were kids, though. It’d been before all the constant obligations and phoniness of the brotherhood. There was a lot of power in our ranks, a lot of dark deeds and corruption we constantly had to ignore. A drugged-out prostitute found in a random bedroom at Windsor House? One covered it up, couldn’t be a thing. Word of one of our dads or uncles fucking around with someone at the office behind their spouse’s back? Definitely didn’t make a note of it. We couldn’t, repercussions too severe. That’s how things always were, and with that, more power than any man or woman should have. Being in the Court basically gave you permission to ruin someone’s life. A guy got to play God while being a mere mortal, and something I’d been willing to do on my own for someone I cared about. I’d do whatever I had to do for that girl who was currently mad at me by those train tracks. The only problem? That girl never wanted to be saved. People didn’t save Paige Lindquist.
She saved her fucking self.
I couldn’t even watch the guys as they left me, heading over to Paige and what we ultimately had to allow her to do. The guys wanted to get all this out of the way, and though there was a process into the brotherhood, the end result was all the same. If Paige accepted the challenge of a haze now, it’d be under at least our control. We’d do it for her and with her. It’d be done, and then she could go through all the easy stuff later. She’d be one of us.
I braced my arms, forcing myself to approach. It was well into night, the headlights of my car guiding me and the others. It shined on Paige, her back to us all. Knight put a hand on her shoulder, and when he pulled her around, she pushed her arms around his big body.
“I’ll be fine,” I heard her say to him, myself lingering on in the distance. I couldn’t quite go over there, not ready. What she was wanting to do was crazy and banned for a reason. So much could go wrong.
The sickness of my reservations I forced down as I watched Knight step away, which allowed LJ in for his own hug. Paige actually lifted the motherfucker off his feet, a good head or two of height the guy had on her. She liked to show her strength, that she wasn’t weak, but she didn’t need to do things like that to prove her place with us. We knew who she was, stronger than all of us.
After putting LJ down, she grabbed Jax’s basically buzzed head. He always had his hair shaved down so he didn’t have to do anything with it, the lazy shit. She pulled him to her by the head, and after telling her to be safe, Jax let go of her. The guys came to me after that, pushing fists into my arms and giving Paige and me a moment. My friend stood before me in her jeans and a dark hoodie. It was the start of summer but it still could get terribly cold at night.
“You don’t have to do this,” I said, one final plea. “We can find another way.”
We could find another haze, not one that had been banned by the brotherhood. Ramses Mallick’s little bitch ass had let it get out that he’d been challenged with this haze, failed by denying this haze, and though I resented him at the time, he was right. Doing this could get someone hurt, even killed. It didn’t matter these particular tracks rarely got used. That’s why they’d been chosen for this haze, but still, shit could happen.
Instead of talking, Paige came over to me, and when she put out her arms, I grabbed her by the back of the neck, pulling her into me. She didn’t get to be the guy on this one. She was going to let me.
“That’s why I’m doing it, ass,” she whispered, holding me close and smelling like candy. I always loved that, how she could smell so sweet but still be such a badass. She braced my back. “You know those assholes will never accept it if I do anything else.”
Her doing the one haze that was banned amongst us would make a statement, get her acceptance. Not one woman had attempted to be a part of the brotherhood, an
d if she did this, her presence wouldn’t be challenged. She was breaking the horse that couldn’t be broken before and making us all look subservient to her because of it. Though she was right about what she said, that still didn’t mean I had to like that truth.
“You’ll call me,” I said, pulling her away. “You’ll call if you need anything. My dad’s summoned us tonight, but I’ll try to come back as soon as—”
“You won’t.” She put her hands on my chest, putting distance between us. Dark strands of her short haircut crossed her face, the wind breezing them over coal-black lashes. She pushed the hair away. “Because you can’t. It has to just be me.”
“It’ll be whatever I want. I can be here.” I could do whatever I wanted, my place high in our ranks. My dad owned half this fucking town. I could do whatever the fuck I wanted and would.
Paige shook her head. “I don’t want you to be. You can’t. I need to do this, Royal.”
With every word, she was ripping me apart, and I turned away.
Paige grabbed me this time, pulling me in. A quick hug and she was pulling my head over into the line of her voice. “Now help me.”
Help consisted of me getting her settled. She lay on the tracks, but when she pulled out the ropes, I hesitated again. This was a part of it. The haze had to be tied down to make it more of a challenge, but the whole thing made me sick.
Paige frowned. “Royal, please.”
I’d do anything for this girl and she knew that, taking advantage of that. We were each other’s everything, had been for so long. She was there through all the bruises, all of the pain of my father. In times I thought I’d give up, I didn’t want to because she was there. She was there with her own problems, and I was there for her too. We were an unbreakable unit, bonded through so many hurdles. She knew I’d do anything for her because she would for me.
In the end, I tied those ropes around her wrists, binding her to the tracks, but I kept them so loose it was laughable.
“You tug these if you need to,” I told her, the knots tied in a way so all she’d have to do to get up was move her wrists. “The knots are loose. You can get free easy.”
And she wouldn’t fight me on that no matter what she said. She was tied to the tracks. She was bound, and she could tell people that for the sake of the challenge.
Understanding, Paige let me have my way for once, smiling at me. Her chuckle was light. “Got it, and I’ll be fine.”
She better be, and after making sure she had her phone to call me, I did something rash. I took my own Court ring, pulled it right off my finger and put it on hers.
“This is yours now,” I told her. “I’ll get a new one. You’re Court after you finish this. No one can contest that.”
Her smile widened, and when the tears glassed her eyes, I almost broke down too. I had no idea why she was getting emotional, but because she never did, seeing it fucking did me in too.
Fighting it, I put a hand on her head, leaning down and kissing the top of her hair. She owed me one more thing before I left her, a promise and the only way I’d leave her.
“You’ll tell me who it is after this,” I stated, refusing to leave until she gave me her word. She’d kept certain information under lock and key from me, fearing I’d so something, and I probably would. I’d destroy the person who hurt her. I shook my head. “I want to know who hurt you.”
Her chin lifted after I said that, her smile fading. My best friend wasn’t without her own mistakes. She’d chosen to do certain things. She chose to sleep with a married woman but what she hadn’t chosen was to be promised things, to be told she could have a life with this person, only to be toyed with for nearly a goddamn year. She led my friend on and told her there was hope for them. In the end, there never was hope, there was only pain, and I’d been there for the brunt of it.
“I promise,” she said to me, a grit to her voice that had never been there before. This woman had broken her, destroyed her with her promises and bullshit. She had never planned to leave her husband. She had just wanted a young fuck, a trophy for her wall. It was nothing if not familiar in this town, my own father showing me that with all the pussy coming in and out of my house my whole life.
Touching my forehead to Paige’s, I stayed there, hard-pressed to let her go. I could have gotten the revenge for her, gotten my brothers to destroy this woman’s life, but Paige wouldn’t let me act on her behalf. She wouldn’t tell me who this bitch was on purpose because she knew things would get real ugly if she did. I’d do anything for this girl, truly, and though she definitely wouldn’t admit it…
This haze was her saving me from that.
One
December
Two girls… Two teenage deaths in a matter of months.
What the hell is going on here?
I hadn’t liked Mira. God, had I not liked her, but I never wanted her dead. I never wanted that, for anyone or anyone’s family to feel what I’d felt over the passing months. I honestly hadn’t believed it when we found out, that assembly the weirdest thing. They placed us all in the gym, Principal Hastings at the front with a microphone. He’d told us something, a student dead and…
The sheriff had been there too, Sheriff Ashford basically a mess standing next to our headmaster. At one point, he hadn’t been able to hold it together and excused himself. After that, the headmaster continued, and though he didn’t give too many details, he didn’t have to in the end. Mira’s story spread like wildfire in the halls of Windsor Preparatory Academy, word of her suicide lining the pages of the local paper. She’d hung herself. Right in her bedroom in the middle of the night.
What the fuck?
I hadn’t slept at all that night, thoughts of Mira and whatever she was feeling replaying in my head. She’d threatened me not hours before that, threatened Royal, but she hadn’t seemed sad. None of this made sense.
If confusion was my reaction, a chill was Royal and crew’s. They wouldn’t talk about any of it all, letting the conversations happen around them. At times, I caught the boys whispering to each other, leaving me out of things, and the day of Mira’s funeral, Royal’s vault of a demeanor was basically the same. He picked me up in his Audi, a stonewall aside from the affection he gave. Since we got back together, he hadn’t allowed me out of his sight except to go home and sleep at night.
Even then sometimes he’d make it through my bedroom window.
Hershey always announced his presence, a soft yip, and after he petted her, he’d join me in bed. He’d hold me, not letting go. He didn’t let go, not anymore. Even now on the way to the funeral, he had his fingers looped in mine while he drove, a lot going on in this car that wasn’t being said. Though I didn’t like that, I allowed it for the time being.
We were going to a funeral today.
The whole school was going, something I think was expected of the town. There wasn’t even any debate that we’d all be going, this town. It was just what was going to happen, everyone coming. Birdie had texted me earlier that morning that she and a bunch of the basketball girls were going together. She’d invited me, but I told her I had a ride. Royal and I pulled up to a large white church with just the two of us, and when he left my hand, it was only for a few moments for him to let me out. Soon, we were united again on the other side of the car, entering a church together filled with so many people. I honestly think the whole town was there, pews upon pews of people, like this was a wedding.
Not yet another dark day.
This town seemed to keep having those, a cloud over this place’s head. Blending in with the masses, I let Royal lead me to an open pew. It had a few people sitting on the end, but the majority of it was free. After taking off my coat, I sat down, and he joined, throwing an arm across my shoulders and smelling so good. I loved that heat about him, his warmth, as his green gaze circulated the crowd. He wore his blond hair pushed back and moussed, a stress lining his face I didn’t like. Again, he was a vault. Albeit a beautiful one. He’d arrived at my house in a
suit not much unlike the tux he’d worn when he took me to homecoming. It hugged his muscular arms and chiseled thighs in all the right places, the pewter tone a wonderful offset to his eyes. When I was with him, I felt protected and usually settled.
But not today. Today I watched him look anxious, a tension tugging dusky blond eyebrows together. I’d only leaned over to talk to him about that when several boulders masquerading as teenage boys arrived at our pew. Knight, Jax, and LJ had obviously driven to the church separately but they were here now. They each clasped Royal’s hand one by one, an assembly line of acknowledgment. The pretty boys wore suits, looking like handsome men today, and after, they looked at me. I sat there, knowing I hadn’t really associated with any of them since the initial assembly. School had been let out early that day due to Mira, and then had been the weekend.
Well, here we were now.
Royal and I were obviously a new development, and though we sat together at the assembly, there wasn’t much talking then. At least to me.
Royal’s arm lowered, and he moved his big body back to allow the boys to pass and sit. In my black dress, I wiggled back too, receiving a “hey” from LJ and nothing but a chin tip from Knight. That’s just how Knight rolled, not ever much for words. When Jax started to pass, he stopped. He made a parting motion for LJ to shift his weight and make room as LJ had sat next to me.
Rolling his eyes, the tall blond moved enough for Jax to push his body into the space, and settled, Jax placed an arm around me. This maneuver caused him to inadvertently touch Royal’s shoulder, which got Jax a swift growl on Royal’s end and a death stare that might scare me had it been directed toward me.
“Sorry, man.” Jax cleared his throat, returning his hand to his lap. He gave me a little wave. “Hey, December.”
It seemed things of the past had been forgotten, his aversion to my relationship with Royal. I had a feeling that had to do with things I’d been waiting to hear about from Royal’s end, but honestly, I wasn’t mad at Jax anyway. Maybe I should be, but a part of me really liked him, liked all of them really. Even Knight. They did always look out for me, there when I never really seemed to know I needed them. They all played a place in my life due to connections with my sister.
