Ramses: Dude, I know. Crazy, right? Mira? And yeah, I’m good. I meant to text. Dad took me out of town. Some weird bonding thing.
I gazed away from the text as I watched another join the boys and Sheriff Ashford, Mr. Prinze. The middle-aged man looked like an older version of Royal himself, tall, dark, and maybe handsome if he didn’t freak the shit out of me. He wore a black pea coat, relieving Royal when he reached a hand out and put it on the sheriff’s back. He guided him away from Royal and his friends, talking quietly to the man. Eventually, Sheriff Ashford nodded his head and allowed himself to be detoured away. Heads together, Sheriff Ashford listened while Royal’s dad talked, the pair putting distance between themselves and Royal and the other boys.
Me: Okay. Just keep in touch. This town is insane.
Ramses: Don’t I know it. You check in too. I’ll let you know when I’m back in town.
Pocketing my phone, I made my way over to Royal. The guys were still staring off at Sheriff Ashford and Royal’s dad. Mr. Prinze had placed the man in a chauffeured car that pulled up right in front of the church. After, the man in the dark coat turned back, staring directly back at us.
Royal panned away then, the other guys narrowing their eyes. Mr. Prinze joined the sheriff in the back of the car, and as they cruised away, I shook my head.
“What was that about?” I asked, burying my hands deep in my own coat. I wouldn’t miss these cold days, spring not able to come soon enough. We were seeing bouts of it, the weather not so cool, but everything was still dead around, no flowers. With almost no acknowledgment to what I said at all, Royal placed a hand behind my back. He started to guide us to walk away, but I wasn’t fucking having that. I grabbed his down coat. “I asked you a question.”
“Yeah, and if you’d give me a second to talk, I’d answer it.” He passed things off with his signature cool smile, but that wasn’t working on me. I was still pissed and didn’t like being ignored. He pinched my chin. “It’s nothing. I’m sure the man’s just grieving.”
“Grieving?”
He pulled me in when he guided another hand to my face. “Yeah,” he said, but when I looked confused, he frowned. “You know, since the sheriff is Mira’s dad?”
What the fuck? I so didn’t know that. Not at all. “Uh, yeah. Didn’t know that.”
He blinked, this obviously surprising him. His hands settled at my neck. “Well, that’s what that was about. He and my dad are friends. Dad’s escorting him to the burial.”
He and his dad were friends? His dad was friends with the very man who I believed helped cover up that my sister did a haze. It was a haze and a time I didn’t understand. That was something Royal was supposed to help me with understanding.
He seemed not too hard-pressed to share all that now, starting to walk away, and I hit my wit’s end.
“You told me something, Royal,” I said, making him stop full stop. Right in the parking lot. All the boys did, LJ, Knight, and Jax. They turned, staring at me. My nostrils flared. “You told me you’d tell me everything. You told me you’d tell me the truth.”
And he seemed not only to not want to do that now, but was passing it off.
I didn’t understand.
What happened to what he said to me, how I couldn’t be owned and we were going to do this together?
I stood up to him, and though he didn’t look at me, I made him when I tugged on his jacket again. “You said you’d tell me everything.”
His gaze hovered on me, the jump hard in his throat. Slowly, his sight veered over to his friends, but turning away, LJ, Jax, and Knight clearly weren’t going to be a lifeline for him. They were leaving him to this as they should. This, what was going on here, was only between us.
Royal squeezed big hands over my shoulders. “Em…”
“Don’t ‘Em’ me.” I wiggled out of his hold. “The truth, now. Do you know why Mira took her life?”
He blanched. “Of course not.”
“Why of course not?” I stepped up to him again. “You know she threatened me? Threatened you? She said she had something on you.”
“Well, that had nothing to do with this. At least I think it didn’t.” He bunched a hand through sandy blond locks. “I don’t know why she killed herself.”
“But you do know a lot of things. A lot of things you’re not telling me, but have no problem giving secret glances about to your boys.”
Those friends here too, they shoved hands into their pockets. Both Jax and LJ turned away, Jax curiously silent. He was always the one to raise a voice about something. He was always the one to joke but apparently not today. He cleared his throat, and in those moments of silence, someone surprising stepped forward, Knight when he pushed a hand on Royal’s shoulder.
“We can protect her better if she’s a part of this,” he edged, causing Royal’s green eyes to close. “Come on, bro. You told us you were going to tell her everything too.”
He had? Told them everything about us? So what had changed?
I saw that all over Royal’s face, a torture haunting those emerald-colored eyes. He had a debate there, one that hadn’t been there before when we were in his bed. It was there now.
He pushed out a breath. “It’s going to take all night to get where we need to go,” he said, his perfect jaw working. “So you’re going to need to pack a bag.”
Two
December
“December, why is Royal Prinze downstairs?”
Dad got back home before expected. He’d been gone since before the weekend, work. “And why does it look like you’re packing?”
This had him moving inside my room, and when he closed the door I turned, the middle-aged man who was my father steaming from the tops of his ears. He’d been pretty laid-back since I had gotten home. Hadn’t gotten on me about anything recently.
Perhaps, this had been too much, him seeing me pack. Because that’s what I was doing, packing for a road trip. I shrugged a shoulder. “Maybe because I am? Packing?”
“And why would you be doing that?” He folded his arms, not even out of his suit yet. He must have seen Royal waiting on the couch for me and come right up here. He and Rosanna were down there, the woman not too pleased when I told her I was leaving too. The difference was she couldn’t do anything about it. She wasn’t my dad, and instead of arguing with me, she sat with Royal, the two sipping tea she’d made him right about now. My dad honed in on me. “Where are you going? You’re leaving somewhere with him?”
I nodded, letting go of my stuff, and Hershey raised her head. She’d been watching me pack things into my duffel on the bed. I threaded a hand through my thick wavy hair. “Yeah, and we’re going on a road trip.” I couldn’t give him more details than that because I didn’t have any. I placed my hands on the bed. “We’ll be back soon.”
Dad visibly shifted red, his face filling up and everything. “You’ll be back soon?” He threw a hand out. “And I, as your dad, am just supposed to be okay with that?”
He was going to have to be. I was eighteen and could do anything I wanted it. That decision ultimately might cause me to have to leave his house, but I was prepared for that. I had been before when he basically kicked me out of his life emotionally.