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Now everyone at Willow Heights sees what Colt has known all along.
There’s nothing special about me, nothing worth admiring behind the smile. I’m a product of the Dolces’ creation, and without their decree naming me queen, I am nothing.
I thought I had the key to my armor, that I could open my cage and escape one day. But all along, they held the keys. It was never mine, just as the choice to step inside it was never mine. It was the Dolce boys’ all along.
Of course it was.
I snarl at Colt like a wounded animal when he reaches for me. Some instinctual terror has gripped me, and all I want is to grab onto something to save me, the way he grabbed Duke on the roof that night. I reach for Rylan, the life raft that has saved me in my dreams all these years, the hero who loved me so much he tracked me down and moved his whole family across the country to rescue me.
But my hands grope at thin air.
Rylan just stares at me like I’m a stranger. That’s what starts snapping the threads of my control as the world crumbles around me. I’m holding on so tight, curling my toes into the sand, but the beach keeps receding, and I can’t stop it.
“Rylan, he’s lying,” I plead, tears threatening to destroy the last vestiges of poise I hold at this school, the last wisps of the illusion that I am untouchable. “Please.”
This is our chance. This is his chance to be with me, to show me the words he said were true, that we don’t need any of them. We only need each other. He can save me, stand by my side and support me in a way the Dolce boys never have, be my hero. If I only have him, like Colt only has Dixie, it will be enough.
“Did you fuck them?” he asks, while the whole school strains forward, gagging with anticipation at the reveal that Baron predicted would be too good to miss. The moment when Rylan finds out I didn’t just fuck Royal, but that I’m every bit the whore everyone knows I am, will be the highlight of their senior year.
“I didn’t have a choice,” I whisper.
Before he can answer, Duke captures Rylan with an arm around his shoulder, answering his question and the one I didn’t get a chance to ask, showing me that I can’t even take my boyfriend with me, the one they never wanted me to have. The one who never fit with them the way I did, who never even tried. Just as I denied Rylan’s words when I told him I had to obey, just as I bought into the hierarchy when I was on top, now he does the same. I can’t blame him. I know how addictive the allure of fame and power and status can be.
“You lying whore,” he says quietly.
It’s the nail in the coffin, the last piece of evidence the crowd needed. Their wishes have been confirmed. Not even my misfit boyfriend wants me.
When he turns away, I try to follow, but Harper pulls me back. I know I’ll be grateful later that I didn’t chase him through the school begging like a pathetic bitch. But I can’t even summon that now.
I’m done.
It’s over.
I should be relieved, but the storm of grief and frustration and fury and pain crashing over me sucks away all rational thought. I collapse into Harper, and the next thing I know, Colt is carrying me across the grass to the bleachers, where they sit with me while I implode. The waves keep hitting me, the screams buried in my throat coming up one at a time, so forceful I can barely hold them back. I choke them out as sobs, letting them wreck my throat, the beast inside me wanting to tear out of me and leave me in tatters before it razes the whole world with its fury.
I cry for a while, letting out the turmoil and anguish in a way that’s at least slightly more acceptable, even if it does make me look weak. What does it matter anymore?
You don’t deserve to cry, you stupid bitch. You deserve everything that’s happening to you right now.
By the time I’ve gotten myself together, I feel Colt’s hand gently stroking my back, and it nearly undoes me again. It’s the first time he’s touched me in a non-sexual way, and the intimacy is a shock to my system. I’ve done so many sexual things I wasn’t into, performed so many acts in group settings with spectators and participants, that nothing sexual could short-circuit my brain the way his casual, comforting gesture does.
How does he always know just how to fuck with me?
Instead of being cruel to me, calling me a whore the way he did on the roof or making me kneel and bow to him now that I’m no longer queen, he soothes me.
Is this what Duke feels like when I hold him?
I sit up and he stops. Tears threaten to return at the loss, and I want to scream and grab his arms, wind myself up in them like a blanket. So this is why Dixie clings to him like she does. Because his touch delivers care instead of violence, because it leaves loneliness instead of bruises.
I force myself to sit up straight while Colt and Harper talk like I’m not having a fucking breakdown beside them. I’m thankful they don’t make a big deal of it. I take a minute to open my phone, though dread sinks like a stone inside me. I have to know. I have to see what they’re saying about me, if I’m truly finished, if the last two years were all for nothing in the end.
Dixie’s blog is already up. It hasn’t even been an hour. She couldn’t wait that long to destroy me.
And why should she? I fucked her boyfriend. She should have done it a long time ago.
Willow Heights Gossip Grrl
Fallen Queen or Exposed Imposter?
