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“You never saw him?” I leaned toward her. “Not once? You never heard his name until after she was gone?”
Jacqueline gazed at me suspiciously, confusion crossing her features. “No. Never. We didn’t even know she was in Sand Valley until several years after she left, and we didn’t learn Leonard’s name until after she died. What is this about, Talia?”
“Nothing. Just wondering.”
I sank back into my seat, turning to face the water again. I could feel my grandmother’s curious gaze burning into me, but I didn’t look back at her.
My father—the man who had raised me—had never told me about Roseland or my grandparents. He had certainly never mentioned living here himself.
It was possible he had lived here, that he’d met my mother here, and that he’d kept all that from me. It was possible he and my mom had been in some kind of hidden relationship, and that she’d moved away with him when she’d left California and her family behind.
But wasn’t it also possible that my dad—that Leo—hadn’t talked about Roseland because he hadn’t known about it? That someone else had been the father my mom had refused to name?
Jacqueline had said it herself—Adam Pierce wasn’t of the same “caliber” as her daughter and her friends.
So why would my mom ever tell her that he was the man who had gotten her pregnant?
Chapter 16
I stayed for dinner at Philip and Jacqueline’s house, but I called Elijah before we ate to invite him too. I knew the guys didn’t mind driving me around—they insisted on it, actually—but I felt like an asshole making him wait that long to take me back to Oak Park.
That didn’t ease any of my nerves about having him over for dinner though.
I wasn’t sure how much Jacqueline had heard about the Princes from the Roseland rumor mill, but I was positive she’d picked up at least snippets of the shit that Adena had broadcast to the world. And considering Jacqueline’s tendency to judge people almost solely on their social standing, I was more than a little afraid she’d be a bitch to Elijah.
But she obviously didn’t know that his parents had threatened to transfer his inheritance to his younger brother, because she treated him like fucking royalty. And Elijah knew just how to handle her, how to handle the serving staff and the fancy silverware and all of it. Sometimes I forgot how perfectly he’d been groomed by his parents, brought up with the singular purpose of upholding the family name.
No fucking pressure or anything.
He slipped into the role so easily and completely that it almost broke my heart—knowing how much he hated it. He had been stuffed into a mold by his parents, and even though he fit inside it perfectly now, that was only because they’d broken parts of him to make him fit.
Philip was friendly in a more real way than Jacqueline, and the whole dinner was, on a surface level at least, pleasant.
And I counted that as a win.
On the way back to Oak Park, Elijah fiddled with the buttons on the dash until a sweet song came on the radio. Then he reached over and threaded his fingers through mine, lifting our joined hands to his lips.
The warmth of his breath traveled over my skin before he pressed a kiss to my knuckles, and I closed my eyes, feeling a sort of contentment wash over me.
If I ignored the fact that the queen bitch of school was out for my blood, that I wasn’t sure who my real father was anymore,
that unanswered questions and unknown allies and enemies lurked at the edges of my world… If I ignored all of that, I could’ve just been a regular girl driving back to school with her boyfriend after dinner with her family.
I wasn’t. My life had never been that simple.
But I liked the sound of it.
So for the rest of the ride back, I let myself pretend it could be true.
The twenty-four hour security detail from the Princes continued, and whether it was because of that or because Preston had been bluffing about what he and Adena had planned, no new threats came my way.
I was growing more accustomed than I should probably have let myself be to the four boys’ constant presence in my life. Little things of theirs were scattered around my apartment, making the small dorm feel more lived in than it ever had when it was just me.
The strangest part was that my friends seemed to be getting used to it as well. Dan, who’d never been particularly interested in the social hierarchy of the school, was the first to break down the barriers, talking sports with Finn at lunch or getting into passionate debates about music with Elijah. Maggie and Leah took a little longer to warm up, but over the next couple weeks, I noticed both of them joking around with the Princes—boys they’d once held in both awe and disgust.
It made me glad to see the two sides of my life coming together, although it occurred to me that maybe part of why my three friends were so relaxed around the Princes was because the four boys were no longer treated like royalty by most of the Oak Park students.
That was why I was a little surprised when Finn told me the four of them would be hosting a party at Clarendon Hall on Thursday—their first one all semester.
