Feeling a little better, I slipped my key card into the entry door of Prentice Hall and stepped inside. Several people were gathered in the downstairs common room, but their voices died out as the door clicked shut behind me.
I glanced up to see three painfully familiar faces—Leah, Maggie, and Dan.
“Oh! Hey, Talia.” Maggie half rose from her seat on the couch, then glanced at Leah and sat back down. “I heard you were back… but I wasn’t sure if it was true.”
“It’s true.”
“Yeah, I see that. You, um, just get in?”
“Yeah.”
My skin crawled with discomfort, and even though I was talking to Maggie, my gaze kept flicking to Leah.
Leah, who’d been my best friend on campus until the Princes crept into my life and overtook it. She’d blamed me for falling in with them, and I could only imagine how fucking vindicated she must’ve felt when they’d aired that video of me at the award ceremony in the spring. It made me hate her a little, just for being right. For knowing what would happen and letting me get sucked into their orbit anyway.
But wasn’t it my fault, really? She hadn’t forced me into the Princes’ arms. I’d walked that fucking plank all by myself.
Dan’s head was swiveling back and forth between the two girls next to him and me. Leah still hadn’t spoken, but her lips were pressed into a thin line as she stared at me. Her auburn bob was different, cut at a steeper angle—short in the back and long in the front.
“So you’re stuck in Prentice again, huh?” Maggie tried again to smooth over the awkwardness with conversation, even though it wasn’t helping. “Yeah, me too. And Dan’s next door.”
“Yup.” Dan opened his mouth like he might say something else, then shut it again.
For a moment, we all stared at each other in awkward silence. Then I lifted the bags slightly. “I… better go up.”
“Yeah! Yeah.” Maggie nodded enthusiastically, relief coloring her features. “See you around.”
I gave a stilted nod and started toward the stairs. As I walked down the hall toward my room, a weight settled on my chest.
Not only did I have four enemies at Oak Park, I’d managed to lose just about every friend I’d once had here too.
Chapter 4
When the alarm on my phone chimed at seven a.m., I pressed the button to turn it off immediately. I’d been up since four, just pretending to sleep, trying to convince myself adrenaline wasn’t flooding my veins. I threw off the covers and headed for the shower, enjoying the fresh, non-mildewed scent.
Leah had called the Prentice Hall dorms shitty when she’d shown me around on my first day. But I’d never been able to see it. They were big, and they were clean, and that was a lot more than could be said for the other places I’d lived.
After slipping on my uniform, I blow-dried my hair and straightened it, then applied a little eyeliner, mascara, and blush. I didn’t usually wear much makeup, and I wasn’t quite sure why it felt important to do so today. Maybe it was just because I didn’t want the Princes to know they’d beaten me down—didn’t want them to see any of the past three months on my face. Or maybe I was just stalling, looking for more excuses to linger in my dorm.
But either way, I couldn’t hide out forever. At 7:45, I shouldered my backpack and walked out of Prentice Hall, keeping my back straight and my eyes fixed straight ahead.
As I neared Craydon Hall, I could feel gazes on me again, could hear whispers springing up in my wake, but I ignored them all, focusing on the large doors of the main school building. I stepped quickly up the broad stairs leading to the entrance and marched inside.
Several heads turned to look in my direction, and as if pulled by the wave of motion, Elijah, who stood several yards down the hall, looked toward me too.
His whole body jerked when he saw me, and for a moment, I wondered if word of my return hadn’t actually reached the Princes. Had he not known I was here? But that would be impossible.
Whether he’d known I was coming or not, the sight of me had definitely knocked him off balance, and I felt a little thrill of vindication as something like shame worked its way across his face.
He had frozen in place when he’d seen me, but I’d made a point to keep moving, to not let my feet stick to the floor. So we were only a few feet apart when he murmured, “Talia.”
It was hardly more than a breath, and I wasn’t even sure he knew he’d spoken out loud, but I heard it. Then his hazel gaze flicked to something behind me, and he stiffened.
I did too. I couldn’t help it.
The other three Princes closed ranks around us, and I felt them before I even saw them, as if their presence altered the very air around them.
I kept my shoulders squared, standing taller despite the heavy weight of my backpack, as I turned in a slow circle.
All four of them were here, the other three completing a box that Elijah now formed one side of, with me in the middle.
When my gaze met Mason’s, I stopped. My heart pounded against my ribs in an angry, desperate rhythm as his soft green eyes studied me. It’d been weeks, months, since I’d punched him, but I could still remember the red mark below his eye from where my knuckles had collided with his face. I wanted to put a new one there, wanted to hit him over and over until the fucking mask he wore—the one that looked like a handsome, aristocratic, human young man—cracked, and everyone could see the monster that lived underneath.
But I knew it wouldn’t be enough. I’d probably only get one or two punches in before someone pulled me away, and whatever marks I left would fade just like the last one had.
I needed to hit him somewhere the mark wouldn’t fade, somewhere he couldn’t recover from.
And like he’d once told me, that required playing the long game.
So I didn’t do anything, just stared right back into his too-warm emerald eyes.
“Idaho.” His voice was a deadly purr, anger and sardonic humor mixing into one. “What the fuck are you doing back here? I thought we already took out the trash.”
I shrugged. “I’m paying my own way now. So if you’re looking to get rid of me again, guess you’re gonna have to do the dirty work yourself this time instead of getting an old woman to do it for you.”
His lip curled, his eyes hardening. “That sounds like a dare.”
“Nope.” I shook my head, clenching my fists at my sides. “Just the truth.”
Something rippled across his face, an emotion there and gone so fast I couldn’t register it. Then his jaw tightened. “Is that so?”
A crowd was gathering around us. The students who’d been covertly glancing at me as I walked across campus were openly staring at the five of us now. I probably wasn’t the only one who’d been anticipating this meeting—although I might’ve been the only one who was dreading it.
But instead of making me feel smaller, the attention of the gathered crowd made me feel bolder.
The Princes ruled this school through fear and favor. They rewarded those who fell in line and punished those who didn’t. But I didn’t want their favor, and I had no intention of falling in line no matter what they did to me. No matter how scared I was.