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Things like this necklace around my neck.
I played with it, very aware of Ramses patiently waiting beside me. He stared at me, his figure in my periphery.
“Do you not want to do this today?” he asked, and when I faced him, he frowned. “If we don’t right now, I don’t know when I can. My dad freaked the fuck out. Like seriously lost his shit. The only reason I’m out now is because he and my mom are out to dinner with some of my dad’s staff. We might not get another chance for a while if we don’t do this today.”
I moved in the seat. “You still think we should do this? That it’s a good time?”
He passed a look like he didn’t understand. “Why wouldn’t it be? Like I said, we might not get another chance. I don’t know what it is, but my dad went hard on me after we left the school. I mean, I knew he and my uncle would be like whatever—”
“Yeah, and what’s up with that? Principal Hastings being your uncle?” Too weird. “You so didn’t mention that.”
“Never came up, I guess? He’s my mom’s brother, and honestly, outside of school, I don’t really have a relationship with him. None of us do. He keeps to himself mostly.”
I wouldn’t want to be in casual conversations with the guy, not the best people person. I figured that was just because he was headmaster and that’s how he was at school.
“Fuck, they handed me my ass.” He put his head back. “That’s why I got out after Royal and his dad. They were going over ‘how I was better than that,’ and I kind of just wrote it off. It wasn’t until after I got to the car and my dad literally took everything he could away from me for the next two weeks I started to listen. I swear it’s like a goddamn switch went off. In my uncle’s office, I got limited car and social privileges. But the minute my dad and I were alone, he took away everything. I literally had to bribe our staff to give me the keys to my car and my cell phone tonight. I don’t know what my dad’s deal is. He’s never been that strict, let alone cared.”
Maybe things were different now that he was Court. Maybe he was held to a high standard like many of the dads did here apparently. Royal’s dad was terrible.
You own me…
I clicked my seat belt on, and turning in his seat, Ramses sat up.
“Changed your mind?” he asked, and I just told him to drive. I did have a reason for wanting to go to Windsor House. That was the only thing that hadn’t changed.
The drive over was pretty silent between Ramses and me, Ramses doing most of the talking. He wanted to go over objectives, like what we both should be acting and doing once we were there. We both took the position that we should try to blend in, and if there were opportunities to ask anything, we should do so with caution. He planned to corner a few of the guys and get some good questions in. I, on the other hand, wanted to talk to Royal myself. There were some things so off going on here, off about him and the things he was both saying and doing. His actions were definitely doing one thing, but his words were saying something entirely else. I wanted to talk to him, get a read on him.
I wanted to know the truth.
Now, whether that truth would come out tonight, I didn’t know, but I wanted to try as Ramses let us into the steel gates of Windsor House. People weren’t playing out on the lawn today despite there being no snow. I guess too cold, a hard chill before the temperatures warmed and the flowers came out for spring. I hoped that day would start to come soon, too many of these cold, cold days. We pulled up the cobblestone walk, and after getting out, Ramses came around the car. He guided us from the garages up to the front door and seemed to navigate the winding property pretty well considering he’d never been Court before. I asked him about that, and he shrugged.
“Any guy worth his weight in this town has been coming here since we were kids. They, the fathers and grandfathers, in this town try to get us knowledgeable about the brotherhood early.”
This all sounded so cult-like it wasn’t even funny, a thick bond, which I knew about, and Ramses put out a hand.
“You ready?” he asked, but his hand ended up lowering when I left him hanging.
“I need you to be completely transparent about something,” I said, thinking about something else. “What exactly did you do to some of the guys in there?”
“Do?”
I nodded. “You know the whole bully thing?”
There were a lot of things I let go after he told me he’d been one, but if what Royal said about him was true, then there was a reason they’d all planned such a cruel haze. It was a reason I definitely wanted to know, and though it wasn’t my job to judge, those facts were needed on my end. They’d help me process a few things, one or two.
A sigh and Ramses was pushing a hand to his neck. “You wanna do this now?”
I knew what he said about the time he had out tonight, but I did. I leaned back against the door.
Another sigh before he tucked hands under his arms. “Mostly jostling.”
“What kind?”
“Rumors. Calling guys shit behind their backs. Idle gossip.”
“Okay.”
“Then there were some other things.” He lounged against the door too. “Things like screwing around with a guy’s girl behind his back.” He raised a hand. “Really, ’Zona, I’m not proud of it, and I don’t do shit like that anymore. It’s fucked up, and I know that. Happened to me at my last school, and I really know that.”
