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I don’t know how to navigate that kind of thing, if I’d have to get on the dark web for it. I sure as fuck can’t ask Baron Dolce, the most well-known hacker at Willow Heights. But Colin knows people on the other side of town, people who might be able to find something like that without leaving a footprint. I’ll have to find a way to anonymously spread it around school, but luckily, there’s a girl who would be all too happy to withhold my name for a piece of juicy gossip like that. Once we expose Gloria to the whole school, she’ll no longer be queen.
She’ll no longer go to parties with those fake ass bitches who pretend to be her friends. She won’t have to impress rich psychopaths like the Dolce brothers. She’ll be home on Saturday nights with me instead of out with other people who don’t even matter.
I should matter more to her than those assholes.
Pretty soon, she’ll see that, when she’s brought down to my level. She won’t think she’s too good for me when she’s worse than a nobody. Once everyone knows her secret, she’ll be a loser like Colt Darling, but instead of being left alone, she’ll be tormented for being a slut.
And I’ll be there to hold her when she cries. She’ll see that I’m the only one she has to turn to when all her so-called friends disappear. I’ll be all she has left, her only friend. Then she’ll realize she doesn’t need anyone else, that I’m enough.
I’m more than enough, more than anyone else. I’m not just some guy she fucked.
I’m her boyfriend. Her savior. Her hero.
seventeen
Rumor Has It… With WHPA’s two kings suspended for a week, anything could happen on the field. Will the parents be angry with a suspension that doesn’t affect a game, or has Lady Luck smiled on the Knights this year?
Colt Darling
Duke roughly hauls me away from the building and jerks the hood of his jacket down over my head while I shove my arms into the warm sleeves. It feels so good I want to moan at the warmth on my shaking limbs, but I don’t have time to enjoy it. I grab onto Duke’s shoulder, and he crouches so I can climb onto his thigh and then shoulder before I reach up, snagging the iron bar where Gloria hangs, about ten feet above the ground. That leaves our feet within reach.
I realize in that moment that Duke didn’t give me the jacket for warmth. He gave it to me to disguise me, so no one would know I went onto the roof. If they know it’s me, they’ll tell Baron where I went. He just fucking saved my life, and though it doesn’t make up for the hundred other fucked up, unforgivable things he’s done, I’m not like him. I can’t just leave him there.
“Duke,” I call. “Come with us. They’re going to kick your ass when they find out you helped me escape. Grab my legs.”
He looks back, sees the crowd rounding the corner, now about thirty people.
“Hurry,” I bark.
He jumps, his body slamming into mine as his arms wrap around my thighs. My shoulders pop, and a blinding pain knocks into me as my muscles scream in protest. I don’t even know what curses are leaving my tongue, and I can’t think straight, can’t see, can’t do anything except grip the bar with all my strength and wonder what the fuck I was thinking. I should have left him there to face the consequences of protecting a Darling. Even Baron won’t kill his own brother.
“Fuck, sorry,” Duke says through panting breaths, having scrambled up my hanging body to get the bar. He shoves himself up like he’s climbing out of a pool, wraps an arm around the upright corner bar, and holds out a hand to me. The zombies start shaking the scaffolding, and Gloria shrieks, her body flopping in the air with the force. I grab Duke’s hand and drag myself onto the bar so they can’t reach my feet. Just as I get my balance and reach out a hand for Gloria, a zombie grabs her foot. One of her hands slips free, and she turns in the air, twisting her body. She pulls back her foot and slams it into the guy’s face.
He curses and stumbles backwards, blood spurting from his nose. “You bitch,” he screams.
Gloria twists, grabs the bar with her other hand again, and scissors her body, getting her leg onto the bar. She hooks her knee over it, then pulls her other foot up and over. Her gaze rises to mine, and she gives me a smug smile. “Guess my furry pink boots do the job after all.”
“Take my hand, you psycho,” I say, unable to keep from smiling back, even though my stomach is lurching with every tremor of the iron bars. I focus on her and force myself not to look behind her, at the drop to the ground.
She stares at my outstretched hand for a second, clearly contemplating whether to take it. She’s in an impossible position, her knees hooked over the bar like she’s going to let go and hang upside from a set of monkey bars. But there’s nothing to brace her feet on, and her choices right now are to flip over and land on her feet on the ground if she’s lucky, or take my hand and trust that I’m not going to let her fall. She must think I’m as cold-blooded as she is if she thinks I’d drop her ten feet onto asphalt, but then, vicious people always assume others are as heartless as they are.
She swallows, and I smirk down at her. “What’s the matter, Butterfly? You don’t trust me?”
She winces. “Don’t call me that,” she snaps, slapping her hand into mine.
“Mufasa then. I guess this is my Scar moment. Seems like a fitting name, don’t you think?” I wrap her fingers in my scarred, four-fingered hand.
My stomach swims sickeningly when I look down, and I squeeze my eyes closed and force myself to focus on the sensation of her small, soft, cold fingers against my calloused palm. It calms me momentarily. Still fighting nausea, I pull her up onto the bar.
“Guess you’re not Scar after all,” she says. She quickly pulls her hand from mine, then eases along to the corner, holds the upright bar, and reaches up for the next cross beam. Together, we work our way higher while the zombies clamor and shake the scaffolding. The only consolation I can find is that Baron isn’t in this group, and no one else seems too interested in which of Duke’s friends is climbing onto the roof with him and Lo. There’s no way they’d ever guess it’s not a friend at all, but their sworn enemy.
Five minutes has never lasted so long. With every shake of the iron bars, my head spins and I can hardly breathe, sure I’m going to look down and piss myself at any second. I force myself to look up, focus on the edge of the roof and my desire to reach it. I fight back the flood of memories that charges through me, reminding me of all the reasons I hate being so far off the ground, all the ways I could die from it.
The moment I heave my body over the edge of the roof, I throw myself face down on the flat, rough asphalt surface and suck in one ugly, ragged breath after another. I don’t care if I look like a freak. I’m up here with two of the last people on earth I want to spend the next few hours with—a guy who burned my arm until I could smell my own flesh cooking and vomited from the pain, and a girl who has mocked that injury and anything else she could use as ammunition, no matter how low she had to stoop to find it.
“Is he okay?” Gloria mutters to Duke from a few feet away.
“Leave him alone,” Duke says. “He’ll be alright in a minute. His sister was like that too. Must run in the family. One time, we held her over the balcony railing and fucked her while she freaked out.”
