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Then the door swings open, and Harper marches in.
I roll off the desk, scrambling to pull up my jeans.
“Uh oh, Mommy’s here,” Duke calls. “Fun’s over.”
“Lo?” Harper asks, looking confused. “I thought you didn’t want to join.”
“I’m not,” I say quickly, buttoning my jeans.
“You think we’d let her be a Swan?” Duke asks, howling with laughter. “She’s our entertainment, not a member!”
Harper glances from me, the Duke, to the others, to the bottles scattered around the room.
“How long have you been here?”
“Long enough for a pregame warmup,” Baron says, staring her down.
She turns to me. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I say, smoothing my hair down and facing her squarely. “I’m fine.”
“Why wouldn’t she be?” Baron challenges, his gaze still locked on Harper.
She glances around uneasily. Gideon drops his gaze when she looks his way. DeShaun cracks a beer.
What would Baron do if I challenged him right now? If I said, no, I’m not okay. If I told Harper what I did, what I’ve been doing for two years now, what they’ve done to me.
But if I did, she’d ask why I let them.
She’d ask why I didn’t walk away.
A girl like Harper, she’s strong. She would have fought back, not caring what it cost her, even knowing she’d never win. She doesn’t know what it’s cost me, the times I tried. She doesn’t know that if I fight back now, if I open my mouth, I won’t be the only one who pays. She’ll pay too.
So I don’t say anything. I start picking up beer bottles, collecting the caps. It only takes a minute. I knew where most of them were already.
“You can go, Glory Hole,” Baron says. “We have important things to do.”
“I don’t have a car here,” I say, depositing the empties in Duke’s backpack.
“I’ll take you home,” Gideon says.
I wait for them to tell him he can’t leave, like they did before, but after a short silence, Baron turns to Harper. “You’ve got the key.”
She gives me one more look, but I avoid her eyes, afraid she’ll see, even in the darkened room, that I’ve been crying.
“I’ll call you,” I tell her.
I let out a breath of relief when she goes to the bookcase to open the door. As they disappear down the stairs, I can’t help but marvel at what she’s done. She fought her way into their all-male secret society, got control of the key that opens their lair, and somehow avoided being treated the way they treat me, the way they treat all girls.
What does she have on them?
It doesn’t change anything for me, though. Knowing they treat another girl with a modicum of respect doesn’t mean they’ll ever treat me that way. Even if she told me whatever secret she has on them that she’s used for leverage, it wouldn’t save me. Because she has something more powerful than even the most damning evidence against them. Something I never had, something that will protect her and give her even more immunity than Dixie has, because she earned it.
She has Royal’s love.
“I’m going to clean up,” I tell Gideon, then duck into the library bathroom.
I try not to gag as I feel the wet weight of my underwear, the grimy, slimy, sticky feeling between my legs. I pull off my jeans and toss my underwear—Sorry, Mom—and clean up with the wipes in my purse before fixing my makeup and returning to the library.
