by Rebel Hart
Copyright © 2020 by Rebel Hart
www.RebelHart.net
Photo by Regina Wamba
Cover by Robin Harper of Wicked by Design
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contents
1. Cherri
2. Cherri
3. Deon
4. Cherri
5. Deon
6. Cherri
7. Deon
8. Cherri
9. Cherri
10. Deon
11. Cherri
12. Deon
13. Cherri
14. Deon
15. Cherri
16. Deon
17. Cherri
18. Deon
19. Cherri
20. Deon
21. Cherri
22. Cherri
23. Deon
24. Deon
25. Deon
26. Cherri
27. Deon
28. Cherri
29. Deon
30. Deon
31. Cherri
Epilogue
About the Author
Also by Rebel Hart
Evil Villain
THE ROYAL COURT - BOOK THREE
Rebel Hart
1
Cherri
Waking up in the mornings now made me sadder than it used to.
At least when I woke up in Deon’s bed, it smelled like him, but it’d been eight months since he’d last been there, and his scent was officially gone. Any clothes he left behind were clean and smelled only of laundry detergent or the gathered mildew from being untouched for more than half a year. If I wasn’t staying with his mother, I’d be inclined to say that I didn’t have anything left of him, but at least I still had his smile through hers.
Even if she didn’t smile much those days.
“Good morning, sweetheart.” Ciara was standing at the kitchen counter and looked back over her shoulder to smile at me when I walked in. “Would you like some eggs? We have leftover ham, so I could put some ham in like you like them?”
“That sounds really yummy, thank you,” I replied.
Sinking down into one of the kitchen chairs, I noticed that the microwave said it was just past seven in the morning.
Eventually I’d have to leave and face my life.
Ciara’s deep red hair was pulled back into a messy bun with wisps hanging off of it, and her eyes were sunken and sallow. Though she had never been a particularly large woman, she was borderline emaciated from how little she’d been eating as of late, and whatever energy she did have from the little bits of food she ate were going into worrying about her son.
I couldn’t blame her.
“You’re having some too, right?” I asked.
“I’ve already eaten,” she replied.
Without responding, I scooted my chair back from the table and walked over to the sink, I looked into it, seeing it totally bare and bone dry, then I looked over at Ciara. “Really? Out of your hand?”
She glared over at me. “What are you, my mother?”
“I might as well be,” I said. She was cracking eggs into a bowl, so I walked over, picked a few additional ones out of the carton and cracked them into the bowl. “There. Enough for two.”
A huff of frustration puffed out of Ciara’s nose, but she didn’t say anything back, just resumed mixing the eggs with a little bit of milk and some seasonings. I returned to my seat and rested my head on the table, knowing that Deon would want me to be making his mother eat, at least a little bit. If he knew she was starving to death while he was missing, it’d make everything worse.
I was making a list in my mind of everything that I had to take care of, starting with leaving my current accommodations and ending with going to my new ones. It would require a chat with my parents, and probably my brother too, though I was dreading that the most. I also had to face my friends, to whom I’d been absolutely awful for the past six months.
“Ugh,” I opted to say out loud. “It’s gonna be a long day.”
Ciara snickered from over near the oven. “What makes one of the first days of summer vacation for a rich girl a long day?”
One place Ciara and I differed was in our pocketbooks, but nearly everything else was the same. I used to live in the same rundown neighborhood as her until my dad got promoted and we moved to South Postings. Being back in her house in North Postings felt much better to me. I missed being in a house where you actually crossed paths with the people you’re living with.
“Well, first—and this is bad news for you and me—” I started, and Ciara looked over at me. “I think I’m moving out today.”
She scoffed. “So much for sixty days’ notice.” Then she chuckled. “I’ll be sad not to have you around anymore. Are you going back to your parents’?”
“No,” I said. “I’m actually—prepare to lose your mind—going to stay with Nathan.”
Ciara’s eyes widened. “What?”
My cheeks puffed up as I took in a huge gulp of air, and deflated as I sputtered out. “I’ll wait until the eggs are done. I’ve got some explaining to do.”
Ciara’s eyebrows went up, but she took my excuse and returned to the eggs. Like me, Ciara always maintained that Deon was still alive. When I lost my mind a little bit after his disappearance, my parents kicked me out and I ended up going to stay with Ciara. I hadn’t told her that, as of a week ago, I had confirmation that Deon was alive out there somewhere, even if I didn’t know where. There was no guarantee he was going to survive his battle with Connor. There was no guarantee any of us were going to survive. Ciara was better off with false hope than worrying herself even sicker that her son was maybe tied up in a chair somewhere being tormented by his own father.
Eventually, Ciara finished putting together the ham and eggs and set a couple of plates down on the table. She then got some coffee and a bottle of water for me and brought them over and set them down as well. She sat down across from me, and we each took a few bites of our food before I finally cleared my throat.
“So, these past six months living with you have been so amazing,” I started. “I’m really going to miss you, but I wasn’t myself. I was… mourning, and it made me treat my friends terribly.”
“Mourning?” Ciara said. “Deon’s not dead.”
“I think that too,” I replied, “but at this point he’s gone, and as far as I know, he isn’t coming back.”
“Did Nathan tell you this? Is that where it’s coming from? He’s pressuring you into moving in with him or something?”
“No. Nathan actually thinks he’s alive too, but none of us has any clue where he is or anything… My old friend group, The Royal Court, they’ve had a tough six months and we all just really need to hunker down together and treat ourselves well after the time we’ve all had. It won’t just be Nathan and me. Sicily will be there a lot too, plus all of my other friends, and Nathan has a new girlfriend now. A girl he’s always been in love with, named Nikita.”
“After what he did to you, suddenly he’s a good guy?” Ciara asked.
She was referring to the fact that, by all accounts, Nathan raped me. I was far from the last person that was going to make any excuses for a man that assaulted me, but the man that was in that bathroom that day, pointing a gun at me and forcing me down to my knees, was not Nathan Loche. He was Connor Loc
he’s darkness in Nathan Loche’s shell.
“What he did wasn’t okay, but he was just as much a victim to Connor Loche as me or you. Maybe even more because you were able to fight back, I was able to leave, but Nathan had nothing. Connor tortured him, Ciara. For all intents and purposes, he tortured his own son. It’s not his fault. I’ve forgiven Nathan for that. Truth told, I forgave him for that before Deon even went missing. I knew it wasn’t him.”
“That’s why you went to save him from Connor?” Ciara asked.
“Yeah, and I know you won’t believe me, but Nathan loves Deon. He loved Deon when he went to live with them, and even when Deon came home, Nathan tried in his own way to extend an olive branch. It was covered in Connor’s shit, so it didn’t work, but he did try. He’d be just as happy to see Deon again as we would be.”
Ciara sat in silence for a few minutes, took a few bites of her food, took a few sips of her coffee, and then sighed. “So you’re going to work with Nathan to find Deon?”
“Well, if we hear anything we’ll follow it, but we don’t have much to go off of right now,” I lied. The truth was, we had more than a couple of threads to pull on, but Ciara didn’t need to know that for now. “I’m going to go and talk to my parents. Give them a much needed apology, then I’ll be headed to Nathan’s.”
“I understand,” Ciara said. “I’m going to miss my roommate.”
“I’m gonna miss you too, but I promise to check in often, and who knows, maybe this time next year, we’ll be sitting around a table with Deon, laughing about all of this nonsense.”
A small smile came to Ciara’s face. “I certainly hope so.”
I took my time finishing breakfast and talking with Ciara, then I packed up the clothes I had, gave her a huge hug, loaded into my car, and started it up to leave.
Ciara leaned into the driver’s side window and petted a hand over my hair. “You’ll be careful, won’t you, sweetheart? Sometimes I think you forget that you’re still just a kid.”
“I will, I promise,” I said.
She pulled back, and I gave her one final wave before backing out of the driveway and officially leaving North Postings for a while.
It’d been a while since I’d last driven down to South Postings. My family lived there, ever since my father got promoted, and all of my friends lived there as well, apart from Sicily, who lived in Postings Proper not far from the high school. The time between when Deon first went missing and the beginning of winter break, I just sort of went through the motions, but I officially started to lose it during the break. I’d stay out all night with Sicily, sometimes not coming home, and eventually my parents started to lose their patience with me. All they had to do was see my new, dramatic look and learn that I wasn’t going to any classes when school resumed after winter break to tell me that if I didn’t shape up, I was gone.
They kicked me out a week after that.
Fortunately, Ciara took me in, and at least from the standpoint that she was suffering in the same way I was, I was far more respectful of her home than my own parents’, which was far from fair. That was where I planned to start my apology. They wouldn’t get the full, honest story, because I wanted them to have deniable culpability if shit hit the fan, but I’d tell them enough to explain.
I’d have to deal with Gus too, but I was dreading that more than my parents.
Even though I had a key to the house, I knocked when I got to the front door. My heart was pounding faster than I expected it to be. They were just my parents, that was it, but that didn’t make me any less nervous.
The door opened and my mother was standing on the other side. Her face flashed a variety of emotions all in the span of about six seconds—shock, relief, anger, love, frustration—all emotions she was entitled to. “Cherri,” she finally got out.
“Hi mom,” I said, and the more normal tone of my voice must have instilled some confidence that I was better than the last time we spoke, because she smiled a little. “Um… I’m here to apologize, and explain. Can I come in?”
Instead of a verbal response, my mom reached out and curled her arms around me. She dragged me into a hug, squeezing me tightly, and I hugged her back with the same veracity. I’d always been very close with my parents, and being without them those past six months had been awful.
It felt nice to be back.
“Come in,” she said. She released me and led the way in. “Should I call Gus or just your father?”
“Just Dad for now,” I said. “Gus is going to be a whole different battle.”
She looked back over her shoulder at me. “Yes, he will.”
We walked into the kitchen, and I sat down on one of the stools at the island. My mom continued through the other exit back towards the hallway leading down to my father’s office. It was a little strange being back in the kitchen, with its marbled granite countertops and dark brown cabinetry. For some reason I was looking for differences, as if things would have changed drastically.
It was only me that had changed.
“Cherri.” I looked up and my dad was rounding the corner into the kitchen. He led with his arms out wide, and the tears that I didn’t realize I was holding back broke free.
“Daddy.” I leapt down off the stool and met my dad’s embrace, burying my face in his chest, and letting my emotions spill out. “I missed you.”
“Aw, baby,” he said in his comforting, dad-voice timber. “I missed you.” He let me go and used his thumbs to flick away my tears. “I’m happy you’re home.”
“Come, sit,” I said. “We’ve got a lot to talk about.” My parents did just that, each sitting themselves down at the island, and I walked around to the other side so I could face them both. Standing allowed me to fidget as I pushed myself to begin my apology. “I, um… I owe you guys an apology. You’re wonderful parents and you didn’t deserve the way I behaved these past handful of months.”
“I just don’t understand,” my mom said. “You’re a good young woman. I think what upset your father and I the most is that we didn’t raise you that way.”
“You didn’t,” I said. “A friend of mine… died.”
“Who?” my father said. “Not Avery?”
“No, none of my friends from these past few years. A friend of mine from South Postings.”
“Deon?” my mom asked.
I nodded. Imagining his smile and my heart breaking. “Yeah.”
“We saw him on T.V.,” my dad said. “I was unaware you were spending time with him again.”
Deon’s name and face had been in the news right around the time he went missing. Connor attempted to frame him for Miss Abrams’ death, but not much else about Deon had been released. As far as they knew, Deon was a kid I stopped hanging out with four years ago, and then they didn’t hear anything else about him.
“It’s complicated, and a lot of it I’m not in a place to discuss, but we’d been speaking again. We were going to be together before… it happened.”
“What happened to him?” my mom asked.
That was the only part of the story I’d planned that I hadn’t quite figured out. Anything too permanent would result in their later disbelief if Deon did come home again, but anything too vague would make them think I was lying again.
I went for the only thing I could say honestly. “I don’t know.”
My mom and dad exchanged an uncertain look. “How do you not know? If you can’t confirm how he died, how do you know that he died?”
“His mother told me,” I lied. “Naturally, she didn’t want to discuss the details. We’d only just recently reconnected so…”
My mom stood up and walked around the kitchen island and pulled me back into a hug. “Sweetie, I’m so sorry. Losing someone is never easy.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
She leaned away a little, but kept her arms fastened around me. “Where have you been staying? It’s time for you to come home.”
“Just… another friend, but…” I looked over at my dad wh
o was watching me with sympathy, and then looked back up at my mom. “I’m not moving home.”
“What?” my dad said. “Cherri, I know we had to put our feet down, but this is your home. We can see that you’re remorseful, and that’s a difficult thing to go through. We can help you through it.”
“My friends, the ones you do know, we’ve all had a really hard second semester. Now that we’re all graduated, The Royal Court is going to kind of hole up together and spend the summer relaxing. We’ve earned it, I think,” I said.
“The Royal Court?” my dad said. “You’re going back to them? Are you… reuniting with Nathan?”
“No,” I said exasperatedly. “He’s got a new girlfriend. A woman he actually likes. Nikita. We will be at his house, but we’ll all be there. Avery, Alistair, Colette too. Kyle, Brayden probably. Even Jaxon. It’s a recovery for the six months we all lost.”
“Okay, sweetheart,” my mom said. “You go. We trust you.”
My dad scoffed. “Rebeccah. She should be at home.”
“She’s been away from home this long and has done fine,” my mom responded. “It’ll be good for her to be with her friends.” She looked down at me with a hiked eyebrow. “If you’re being honest, that you’re sorry to your father and I, you can prove it by continuing to be responsible. Check in often. Take care of yourself.”
“I will, all of that,” I said, then looked at my dad. He stared back at me, still uncertain, but then he nodded. “Thank you, daddy. I love you.”
“One other thing,” my mom said, bringing my attention back to her. “You need to go make nice with your brother.”
