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People want to read about the exclusive inner circle, about who the kings are fucking and the queens are blowing. So I told her every detail Baron relayed to me. Now he’s cut out the middleman, that’s all.
It’s fine, though. It’s all fine.
Didn’t I want them to let me go at the start of the year? And now they have. Sure, it sucks to be the loser, but really, I got lucky. I just have to survive a few more days until Thanksgiving, and then people will have a week away to forget the drama. Sure, Mom will be pissed. I’ll never be popular again. But it could be worse. The twins could have punished me instead of letting me go. As far as Dixie goes, well, I deserve everything coming my way. After all, I fucked her boyfriend.
five
2 YEARS AGO
Rumor Has It… After a rough second semester last year, a certain Founding Son was seen reveling at the annual back-to-school party as he did in days of old. Has he returned to his position of power, or will new royalty put him in his place?
Gloria Walton
“Ready or not, here I come,” sang a voice with an accent that was all too familiar after only a week at Willow Heights. A shiver ran down my spine when the New York-infused tone found my ears. A bomb had detonated in my life when Dad got arrested, and every day since had been an exercise in survival, picking through the minefield left of our lives. But nothing had prepared me for the savage New York boys who ran this Arkansas school.
“Stay there,” I hissed through clenched teeth, my eyes drilling into my sisters’. “Do not make a sound.”
My heart was slamming so hard in my chest I thought I’d faint when I stood and adjusted the pool noodles to cover the last sliver of blonde hair. I was relieved that my sisters were safe, if they kept their wits about them, but I wasn’t so lucky. I’d spent the head start the psychos gave us making sure Everleigh and Eleanor wouldn’t be found. Now I could hear footsteps on the grass, and I was out in the open in front of the pool house.
Gentle blue light emanated from the rippling pool with a hot tub at the far end, and the covered stone patio was lit up, though no one was sitting in the outdoor seating. The party wasgoing on in the Montgomery house—our neighbors. If I could make it across the lawn to our house…
But there was no way. I’d be exposed, open to being picked off like a deer that veers from the herd. Those were the ones Dad always shot.
“I smell fresh pussy,” the voice taunted. “Who’s ready to get pounded?”
I swallowed the terror in my throat and ducked around the back of the pool house, flattening myself against the stone wall and sidestepping as fast as I could. Footsteps landed heavy on the tile around the pool. I’d never in my life been talked to that way—or hunted like prey. When I played this game with my boyfriend, it was fun and cute, not terrifying.
I didn’t even know what we’d done to draw the attention of these boys, but they’d set their sites on us the first day of school, and it had been a week of non-stop rape jokes that I was pretty sure weren’t jokes at all.
So here I was at the back-to-school party my mother forced us to attend so the neighbors didn’t get the wrong impression, trying not to have my virginity stolen by a terrorist straight out ofA Clockwork Orange. I’d gone to a private school in Savannah, and I wasn’t naïve enough to think there weren’t boys taking advantage of drunk girls at parties or coercing them with promises of love, but they had the decency to keep it secret, a topic admitted in their boys’ clubs and locker rooms but not classrooms. These boys were flat-out criminal and made no attempt to hide it.
My pursuer cursed when he bumped into a deck chair, the legs scraping on the patio. I peeked around the corner of the building to make sure one of his brothers hadn’t circled around to cut me off, but they must not have seen where I went, because no one was there.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” he sang.
I raced on tiptoes along the other side of the pool house, back toward the front. The boys weren’t the only ones playing, but they made it known they were coming for us the moment the game started. I didn’t even want to play, but they chased us out of the house, and now it was no longer a game.
It wasn’t hide and seek.
It was hide and rape.
A second, shadowy form stepped from behind a tree, and I knew he’d see me in seconds flat. I turned and grabbed the side door of the pool house, knowing if it was locked, it was over for me. I felt like I’d puke with fear, but the knob gave way. I fell through it and into the darkness within. My hands were shaking so hard I could barely get the door closed, but I managed to push it back as quietly as I could. My breath was loud and ragged, halfway to a sob. I blinked back tears, forcing my mind to stop spinning. If I lost my shit now, they’d find me. I had to hide in there, before they figured out where I went. I turned the lock and then stepped away from the door.
That’s when I heard a masculine groan and a little chuckle.
“You like that, don’t you?” a male voice asked. “That’s it, little pig. Blow my house down.”
“Wait,” said a muffled female voice. “I just heard the door open. Someone’s in here.”
“Yeah, what about it?” he asked. “Maybe they want to join.”
“You’re the pig,” she snapped.
“Wouldn’t be my first threesome,” he drawled, sounding wholly unconcerned.
I held my breath, trying to swallow past the thudding of my pulse.
“Hey, you a dude or a chick?” he asked from the darkness, where I could just make out the vague shape of a bed against the wall. “We’re good either way. Aren’t we, pup?”
