by V. Darling
“During the second half. I was on the bench. I saw him follow her from the bleachers. He’d dragged her to the end of the lot, where it was dark. I didn’t save her; she saved herself. Kicked him in the shin and ran. She said he didn’t get far—shoved his fingers inside her panties, and then she heard me calling to her, so she took the chance while he was distracted.”
“And you beat the shit out of him?” Saint’s face is stoic, but I know this asshole. He’s wondering why I didn’t end that fucker’s life.
“I would have,” I say clearly, “if she hadn’t been there, trembling in shock. If she hadn’t needed me. I would have beat his fucking head in. I would have killed him. I want to kill him.”
Saint nods. For all his control, for the calm façade he puts in place for the world, there’s something deeply disturbed about my closest friend. Fuck. It’s why we’re friends. We’re kindred spirits, closer than Nav and I ever were. Saint is broken too, in different and darker ways than I am. He’s just better at hiding it.
“Did she tell anyone about the blackmail? Nova? Blythe?” I frown. Why wouldn’t she come to me with this? If they were blackmailing her with this sex tape, I had a right to know. I could have prevented this from happening.
Saint shakes his head. “I don’t think she’d tell Blythe or Violet, but Nova didn’t know anything about it either. She was just as shocked as I was.”
“I want to see them.”
Saint releases a deep sigh. “I’m not sure you want to.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“They turned my stomach. The things he said to her.”
“Show me.”
Saint leads me downstairs into the kitchen. I can hear the guys in the lounge, my brother’s drunk accusatory rambling as Saint pulls the letters from an envelope in the top drawer.
I read them, one after the other, each growing more disturbing than the last. When I get to the letter about meeting in Saxon Woods, I blanch. Had that been the day I met her? Thank fuck I came along when I did. Jesus. Justin had attacked her in the school parking lot where anyone could have found them. Alone with her in the park? She might have screamed for hours with no one to save her.
“Why wouldn’t she show me this?” I ask Saint. What I really want is to go upstairs, shake her awake and ask her, but she doesn’t need any more stress tonight. We had to hand her a couple of sleeping tablets to get her to rest at all.
“I can’t be in the same fucking house as him,” Nav shouts. and a beat later, the front door opens and closes.
“Go sleep it off, brother,” King calls after him. I shake my head. I don’t have time to deal with my twin’s ego right now. I’m sure at some point we’re going to have it out again, and next time, King, Saint, and River won’t be there to stop us. We’ll settle it the way Fox men have settled every dispute in our family—with blood and pain and fists.
I stare at the letters in my trembling hands. Rage courses through me from head to toe. Why wouldn’t she mention this to me? What the fuck was Scout thinking?
I drop the notes on the counter and stalk toward the door.
“Where the hell are you going?” Saint says.
“To kill Justin Hearst.”
Outside, an engine roars to life and Saint and I share a worried look. “No! No, he isn’t!”
He darts toward the door and I follow as the engine roars in the drive. The other boys join us, and we all clamber out the front door in time for Navrin to throw Saint’s McLaren in reverse and peel out of the driveway.
“No! No! No! No!” Saint falls to his knees. “You fucking Foxes are nothing but thieves.”
“Fuck!” He’s in no state to drive, much less to have the speed of a McLaren at his fingertips. My bike is still at the school, or I’d have already taken off after him.
I glance at the Jeep in the drive. “River, give us your keys.”
He tosses them to me as I dart toward the Wrangler. “Call Violet and get the girls over here. Scout shouldn’t be left alone.”
“On it. I’ll take care of her. Don’t worry,” River says as he pulls his cell from his pocket.
I jump in the driver’s seat and tap the frame. “Let’s go.”
Saint and King scramble in and I peel out of the drive with a screech just the way my brother did.
“Where the fuck would he go?” Saint says.
“Where we all want to,” I reply. But as I drive the few blocks over to Hearst’s house, Saint’s car is nowhere to be seen.
“Fuck!” I bang my fists against the steering wheel. I don’t know what I’m more pissed about—Nav not being here, or the fact that Justin is just a few feet away, presumably in his bed, and I’m going to miss another opportunity to beat the shit out of him.
“What now?” King says.
“Now we find my fucking brother. Later we deal with Hearst.”
I push the pedal to the floor and we take off in a screech of burning rubber.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Lev
For two hours we drive around, but there’s no sign of Nav. Wherever he went, we’re not finding him tonight.
When we pull into the drive, River is waiting outside to meet us.
“What happened?” I ask, barely shutting off the engine and stepping out of the Jeep before he’s rushing to my side.
“The police came to your house. I saw the cruiser pull up. Your dad’s on his way back from his tour.”
I grab River’s shirt and ball it in my fist. “What happened?”
“Nav’s in the hospital. He was in an accident.”
“Oh, shit,” King says.
“Where’s Peaches?” Saint asks.
“Still asleep upstairs.”
“Wake her up. She’ll want to be there. Even if Nav doesn’t want to see her.” Saint climbs back in the passenger seat. “You can get the girls there, right?”
“Yeah, we’ll take Blythe’s Range Rover.”
“Which hospital?” I ask.
“Lenox Hill.”
“In the city?”
River nods gravely. “They airlifted him there; that’s all the police would tell me.”
I throw the stick in reverse and slam my foot to the floor. The Jeep jerks backwards, but thankfully, Saint and King know better than to say anything.
The next hour is spent in silence as I run red lights and weave through traffic on my way to Lenox Hill. Fuck. They airlifted Nav to the city. This is my fault. I could have prevented this if I’d just kept my hands to myself, if I hadn’t fucked his girl, none of this would have happened. Once we arrive, I pull into the ambulance zone and jump out of the vehicle.
“We’ll find a park and meet you inside,” Saint says, sliding over the center console into the driver’s seat.
I don’t bother responding; I just stalk forward into the ER and demand to see my brother. The nurse forces me to show her my ID, and then she tells me to wait while she finds a doctor.
It’s the longest ten minutes of my life. Finally, Saint and King join me and a young female doctor in a white coat that swamps her small frame and makes her seem like a child leads us to an OR waiting room.
“Your brother sustained extensive injuries. He’s in surgery now. His left leg was completely shattered. We’re putting multiple plates in place—”
“Wait ... he’s gonna play football again, right?”
Her throat bobs and her lips turn down in a perfunctory frown. “You should prepare yourselves for the possibility that he may never walk again without some sort of aid.”
“What?”
“I’m sorry. That’s all I can tell you until he’s out of the OR. We’ll know more then.”
“Jesus Christ.” I slump down in a seat and bury my head in my hands.
Twenty minutes later, Scout, River and the other girls enter the waiting room. I stand and Cub runs into my arms. She soaks my T-shirt as she cries. I hold her as if the world is ending and she’s the last thing I’ll see.
&nbs
p; “Oh, that’s ... so weird,” Blythe says. I open my eyes and glare at her over Scout’s shoulder. She grimaces. “Sorry. It’s just ... going to take some getting used to.”
“What is?”
“That you two aren’t trying to kill one another.”
“Shut up, Blythe.” Scout murmurs and I let her go. Saint moves one seat over and Cub takes hold of my hand as we sit.
“You doing okay, Peaches?” Saint bumps his sister’s shoulder.
“No.” She shakes her head. “I’m really far from okay.”
He takes her other hand in his and squeezes. “I know.”
For hours, we wait. Scout falls asleep on my shoulder, no doubt still feeling the effects of the sleeping pills, and everyone else takes turns getting coffee, snacks, or dozing on the uncomfortable waiting room chairs.
I stare at the sleeping girl beside me, at her hand tucked in mine. So right, and yet everything else is so, so wrong.
I didn’t force Navrin to drink and get behind the wheel, but I sure as hell drove him to it. I’m to blame here. He was drunk because he found out I fucked his girlfriend more than once, and Nav, being the man he is, was headed to beat the shit out of Justin—I know because it’s what I wanted, and we might have a lot of differences, but we still share a twin thread when it comes to acting on our basic instincts. He was headed to Justin’s, so why didn’t he make it there?
Unless Justin wasn’t home. I beat the shit out of him and left him lying in a pool of blood in the school parking lot. Justin wasn’t home, because he was in hospital. And where do beyond wealthy patients go when they need a hospital? To Lenox Hill.
“He’s here,” I whisper.
“What?” King says.
I ignore him and slip my hand from Scout’s, easing her head from my shoulder onto her brother’s. She startles. Everyone does, but I don’t turn around. I don’t have time to explain. I don’t want to, because then they might stop me.
“Lev,” Saint calls. “Where the hell are you going?”
I hit the button for the elevator and the doors open with a ding. I press the “L” for the luxury floor and grind my teeth as I wait for the elevator to stop. When the doors open on a nurses’ station, I slide my gaze away as if I’m bored by this whole tedious hospital thing. I straighten my spine and project confidence from every pore.
The woman at the desk is on the phone, and she doesn’t give me a second glance as I glide past and head down the hall. There are long windows cut into the doors, because the rich can never do anything by halves, so it’s easy to see the patients within. Old lady, old man, labor suite—yikes—and finally I come to the last room. Justin Theodore Hearst. Right there on his chart.
I ease into the room. He’s alone, of course, because no one actually gives a crap about this kid. Sure, his parents foot the bill, but like all of our folks, their money raises us. Au pairs raise us until we’re old enough, and then we raise us. Our parents are too busy being billionaire oil tycoons, senators, rock stars, and self-made multi-level marketing moguls. They’re too busy reliving the youth they wanted to really give a shit about us.
Justin doesn’t wake as I close the door and step closer. His face is bruised, purple and swollen beyond recognition. He looks like shit, and I smile as I wrap my hands around his already bruised throat and squeeze.
His eyes fly open, his mouth gasping for air I won’t allow him the privilege of. His arms flail, hitting me, attempting to pry me loose, but I squeeze and squeeze and squeeze until his face turns puce.
Saint shouts from behind me and jerks me away as the nurse bustles toward the bed and hits a button on the wall. “Code violet, luxury suites. Code violet.”
“You’re fucking dead, Hearst!” I roar as Saint pushes me out of the room. “You hear me? I’m gonna fuck you so hard you’ll wish your mother had swallowed instead.”
Saint grips my shirt and shoves me through the door, down the hall and into the elevator. I might not be able to finish it in his private hospital room, but I meant every word I said. I will end Justin Hearst, even if it’s the last thing I do.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Scout
My window slides open and I roll over in bed. Lev stands in the dark, but he doesn’t come closer. I haven’t seen him for almost a full twenty-four hours. Not since he ran out of the waiting room early the previous morning.
I’ve left messages. I’ve been to the house, but no one answered. His brother—my ex-boyfriend—is in a medically induced coma, so I’m trying not to take his absence personally, but it hurts all the same.
“Well, are you going to climb into bed, or just stand there all night like a creeper?” My voice is full of trepidation as I break the silence. He doesn’t answer. “Lev?”
I turn on the bedside lamp, momentarily blinding us both. When I adjust to the brightness, his face is a mess. It’s swollen, beaten bloody, and one eye is almost completely closed. The other is red-rimmed, vacant, and haunted. The scent of whisky overshadows his usual delicious leather and sage.
“Oh my God. What happened?”
“Senator Fox.”
“Did you go to the police?”
He shakes his head. “I provoked him. I spurred him on. I deserve this.”
“Lev, no.” I throw back the duvet, but he sinks to his knees in front of me, seeking solace in my arms. I wrap them around him, stroke his hair back from his face. My stomach turns at the blood caked in those luscious curls and I hold him as tightly as his injuries will allow.
“He’s in a coma. My brother’s in a coma, Cub.”
I nod. “I know.”
“It’s my fault.”
“No. None of this is your fault. We need to get you to a hospital.”
I wipe the tears from my cheeks, smearing blood from my fingertips on my face. Lev’s blood.
God. We really made a mess of things.
He shrugs. “He drove into oncoming traffic, Cub. He went to find Justin. I know he did, but he was so fucked up, he plowed Saint’s car into a truck. His left leg is shattered. He’ll never play again. That’s my fault.”
“How? You didn’t force him to get behind the wheel when he was so drunk he couldn’t see straight.”
“We did this. That video? It destroyed him.”
My door opens and Saint barges in. “Don’t you dare put this on her. I told you what would happen, you selfish prick. Sure, I may not have anticipated Nav stealing my car and driving drunk, but you knew what this would do to him.” Saint kicks Lev’s side, not hard, but it’s far from gentle. “Get up. I’m driving your drunk ass to the hospital.”
“Saint, get out!”
“No. I let you get away with a lot, Peaches. Too much. But you’re going to listen to me for once and stay here while I take Lev to the hospital. We need to have a talk.”
I leap to my feet and glare up at him, pointing my finger in my brother’s face. “You can’t stop me.”
“It’s okay, Cub,” Lev coughs out, clutching his side where Saint kicked him. “I deserve everything he’s saying and more.”
I ignore him. “I know Nav was hurting—no one knows that more than me, no one feels guiltier than me right now—but we didn’t force Navrin to go off half-cocked and drive headfirst into another vehicle. Lev is not the bad guy here.”
“Then why are you shaking so hard, Peaches?”
I glance down at my hands, breathing hard as adrenaline courses through me. I understand the boys’ instinct to turn violent when those they love are hurt or need protection, because I’m prone to it too. I have all of this pent-up energy and I have no idea what to do with it. “I’m fine. Help me get him into the bathroom.”
Lev shifts his weight, and he winces as he clutches his side. Saint appears to take pity on him and helps me get him to his feet. We lead him into my bathroom, then my brother just stands there, scowling.
I turn to Saint. “You can go now.”
“I’m not going—”
“I’m not gonna hur
t her,” Lev mumbles. “I would never hurt her.”
“Funny,” Saint says, folding his arms over his chest. “That’s what you said in your yard the night I confronted you about this shit show.”
“Saint, the quicker you leave the quicker we can get cleaned up and to the hospital.”
“Fine, but I’m leaving your bedroom door open.”
“Gah! Get out, already. Before I make you.”
Saint leaves, and I grab Lev’s hand and sit him down at the vanity.
“You look like you’re going into battle, Cub.” He smooths his thumb over the blood smeared on my face.
“Yeah, well, someone has to be in charge of you dumbasses.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Lev
For an entire week I’ve watched Scout be shunned, made fun of, and treated like a pariah at Scarsdale High. All because of one asshole: Justin Hearst. I may have ended up with three broken ribs, a fractured jaw, and more bruises than I can count on my body from my run-in with dear old Dad, but I’m not too beaten up to keep my promises.
I’m also lucky enough to have a little help from my friends.
King, River, and Saint stand beside me in the dark outside the Hearst Mansion. Slowly, quietly, we climb the fence and drop down into the yard, then we sneak around the back of the house to the gaming room. Hearst is alone, watching porn—watching some crusty snuff film with a woman old enough to be his mother—as he plays with his pin dick. King busts down the door. Feminine moans and then screams come from the huge flat-screen as the woman is hacked to death and a shriek equally as girly comes from Justin. He stands there with his hands over his junk, his balls swinging in the breeze, sweats down around his ankles, his eyes wide, mouth open wider, and a horrified look on his face.
I pull out my phone and snap a few choice pictures for the yearbook.
“Well, well, it seems Hearst has a thing for violence,” I say to my brothers.
