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“Yay, Eli!” I yell. Gabriel whistles. Eli’s eyes seek out mine as he climbs on stage and accepts the crown from Cleo. He waves to the crowd and flashes them his perfect smile, but his eyes are for me only, and they are deep chasms of hurt and regret.
“And now, the moment you’ve been waiting for… this year’s homecoming queen is…” Cleo frowns at the name on the envelope. “Is… Mackenzie Malloy. What the actual fuck?”
I’m too busy snort-laughing at Cleo swearing into the microphone to register the name she calls out. That is until Gabriel nudges me. “Go on, Your Majesty. Go get your crown.”
I shake my head. “No way. No way did these idiots vote for me.”
“Why not? You’ve shaken up life at Stonehurst with your antics. And remember, you fucked up Alec LeMarque, something everyone has wanted to do for years.” The way Noah says the child actor’s name in that dark voice of his, I know he’s thinking the same as me – that I wasn’t the first girl Alec tried to hurt.
“And don’t forget, you have the shaggable arse.” Gabriel pinches it for good measure. “Plus, you miiiiiiight have had a little help from your favorite lovable scamp.”
I punch Gabriel in the arm. “You had something to do with this.”
Gabriel winks at me. “I can neither confirm nor deny that I bribed the app developer with backstage passes to the sold-out Broken Muse LA show.”
Before I can protest, he shoves my ass toward the stage. I stumble forward but catch myself before I fall over. The steps seem so high, so far, and at the top is…
Eli.
He’s playing the game, his mouth a crooked smile as Mrs. Drysdale places a glittering tiara on my head – it’s small and fits inside the crown I’m already wearing. Eli looks like he was born to wear a crown. I’m not the right kind of queen for this shit – my kingdom is blood and violence. It should be Mackenzie’s honor to stand beside him under the lights, the rulers of this school. And even though I had nothing to do with her disappearance, for the first time since I started wearing her skin, I feel the pinch of guilt.
I don’t have any right to Eli. Like everything else in my so-called life, he belongs to her.
Mackenzie Malloy is the ghost who will always keep us apart.
The school cheers as I take a seat beside Eli on the thrones festooned with shell garlands. I look out over a sea of faces, and regret churns in my stomach. The tiara slips down over one eye. Cleo and her friends whisper furtively, and I know I’ll pay for this slight.
At the back of the room, standing with a grinning Tiberius, is Antony. His hands remain folded across his chest. He doesn’t applaud.
In a room filled with students who voted me queen, only Antony knows that the crown I wear is made of thorns that dig into my skull.
Ms. Drysdale announces the homecoming court dance. Eli holds out his arm for me. He stiffens when I slip my hand in his, but he keeps the facade in place. The band starts up a slow, mournful waltz, and the lights swirl around us – bubbles of purple and ocean blue that cannot hope to match the depth in Eli’s eyes.
We descend the steps together, and Eli leads me to the middle of the dance floor. The prince and princess are next to us, swirling through their steps perfectly, chatting away like old friends. My heart is ready to leap out of my throat and smack Eli across his sad, crooked mouth.
Eli looks as if he wants to run, but he’s trapped by this charade, too. He’s far too kind to make a scene, so he endures my touch as we reach the bottom of the stairs. He drops my arm roughly, pushing me away, but then grabs my hand and knits his fingers in mine. He squeezes, and I want to tell him it hurts, but the hurt is so right.
The fingers of his other hand graze the small of my back, where the dress dips so low he’s touching bare skin. He shuffles closer, and his whole body is stiff, corpselike. He shuffles me in a circle, and everything about this would be so awkward and horrible if not for the electric charge of his skin touching mine. There are a million miles between us, and yet I’m aware of every movement, every kiss of his breath on my skin.
“Did you read the diary?” I whisper.
Eli’s fingers scrape against my skin as he tugs me close, until my breasts are right against his broad chest. His touch destroys me, but I want to be destroyed and made anew. I wish that I deserved you.
“Stop trying to pretend you give a fuck about me,” he hisses into my ear. “You’re using her words to stop me from going to the authorities. You’re protecting your own ass.”
“If all I cared about was my own life, I’d kill you,” I answer. Eli’s fingers crush mine. “Killing you would be sensible. Tidy. But I don’t do sensible.”
A shudder rocks through Eli’s body, and I feel it in my own. This dance is the equivalent of what Noah and I did in the panic room, back when he thought I was responsible for his brother’s death. This is Eli stabbing through his pain. I don’t know what lies on the other side.
“Do you think giving me a page of her diary is going to make me change my mind about you?” his breath rasps. “How do I know you weren’t the one who had her killed?”
“I guess you don’t know that,” I say. “Except on some level you believe my story. I don’t think you’re going to the cops. If you were, you’d have done it already.”
“Maybe I’m waiting for you to make a mistake. Maybe I have FBI agents watching you every moment, waiting for you to take control of that gang so they can swoop in and wipe you all out. You lied to all of us and you nearly got Noah killed, all so you can steal Mackenzie’s house.”
“I’ll give up the house,” I say. “I’ll move out and let it rot back into the earth if that will make you happy. But not until I know you’re safe. Right now, the house and her life is a shield that protects not just me, but you and Gabriel and Noah, too. While Mackenzie Malloy lives, I’ll protect you, whether you want me to or not.”
The song rises to a crescendo. Eli spins me so fast that the room becomes a maelstrom of bubbles and colors and his deep blue eyes so filled with a pain that rivals my own.
