Now, it was time to forget about Keaton Constantine. I was going to lay low and survive until Paris, when my life could truly begin, and I didn’t have time to worry about spilled coffee or the rugby-playing sons of well-mannered criminals.
And I definitely didn’t have the time to think about his full lips and tousled blond hair. Or his wide, powerful shoulders. Or his midnight-blue eyes.
No time at all.
I flipped open a fresh notebook, took a deep breath, and began taking notes.
2
Keaton
Bloody back-to-school night.
I knew for a fact the storied tradition was designed for the purpose of torturing students. The only people who looked forward to the weekend were parents who loved to come back to Pembroke Prep. Show off their money, their influence, all the while leaving behind their precious cargo for someone else to raise, someone else to teach.
Well, most parents anyway. My mother was wholly devoted to her fulltime job of being the matriarch of the Constantine family—which mostly involved hosting lavish parties, keeping my sister Elaine out of the press, and making sure my oldest brother Winston continued raking in money for the family through our various business holdings. She wasn’t cold, but she wasn’t warm either, and it didn’t matter how many rugby games I played or how many championships I won, she was more concerned with my future than my present.
And my dad?
Dead.
Murdered five years ago, killed by the fucking Morellis—not that we could ever prove it.
He would have been here tonight, I thought bitterly. He never missed anything. He was a busy man, certainly, and not always an easy man to love, but he did love us, and we fucking loved him.
And now he was gone, and sometimes it felt like all my mother wanted was for us to forget our own lives and jump right into forwarding his legacy.
But not that you care.
Not that I expected Mom to show up today anyway. After all, I wasn’t perfect, successful Winston, or forever-a-mess Elaine. And I wasn’t Tinsley, the baby of the family, who’d decided to go to school closer to home in Bishop’s Landing. I made a mental note to myself to check in on her later and make sure she was staying well away from trouble.
So, no Mom and gotta babysit Tinsley. Awesome start to the year.
Even Rhys’s parents were here. And given that Rhys was the devil himself, I was pretty certain he had nothing but disdain for them. It wasn’t a stretch; Rhys disdained everyone. If you weren’t Hellfire, you were on his shit list. Top of that shit list was Serafina van Doren.
New girl’s new best friend.
Stop calling her new girl. You know her name. After all you’ve been low-key stalking her for the past week and a half.
So sue me if I’d made it a point to know everything there was to know about Little Miss Perfect with the perfect parents. I made it my business to know. After all, I was in line to be valedictorian. If she was a threat, I needed to know that.
Also, I was a Constantine. I might not be my tightly wound oldest brother, but control was still in my blood. She was an unknown quantity and I needed to quantify her, that was all.
Oh sure, those are the only reasons.
My phone buzzed, and I scowled down at it as I headed towards the British literature stacks in the back. Clara . . . again.
Clara: Where are you?
Clara: Can you run interference?
Clara: You okay?
I tried not to be annoyed about my wellbeing being last. After all, Clara was Clara. And she had her own cross to bear. If Caroline Constantine’s parenting motto was rub some dirt on it, the Blairs’ motto was Mommy and Daddy know best. Which was why Clara pretended to date me, a Constantine, when she was really going out with a local boy and had been for the past two years. I told her that if the townie knocked her up, she was on her own though. Not because I didn’t care about Clara—she was one of my oldest friends—but because Caroline Constantine would kill us both . . . after the baby was born and she’d already whisked it off to Bishop’s Landing to play with bespoke silver rattles while wearing the same booties as the royal babies did or whatever.
I slid my phone back into my pocket without answering.
I couldn’t be bothered with Clara or her helicopter parents right now. The last thing I wanted to do was have to explain why my mother couldn’t be bothered to visit while I mustered up dry cheek-kisses and hugs to keep up the ruse that Clara and I were truly together.
The library, on the other hand, was safe. It was the first stop on back-to-school night. The headmaster always gave his address here, and Headmaster Briggs had already finished his pointless speech and then whisked the parents off to see the new swimming pool, which left my Pembroke sanctuary completely to me. Which meant I could lose myself in Keats and Longfellow as I waited for the wealthy and elite and the sycophantic to give me my campus back.
Amongst the stacks and stacks of books and the nooks and crannies, I’d learned to find solace. A little peace and quiet where no one would look for me. Sometimes, it was like they all thought I was a jock only and forgot that I was smart. And actually liked to read.
As I strolled along the smooth stone tile at the library, surrounded by the dark wood and stacks of books at the reference section, I inhaled it all. That smell of vellum and leather. It always brought a smile to my face.
Books helped me get out of my own head when my family was being waspish dicks, which was pretty much every damn day. Luckily, aside from Tinsley, I didn’t have to deal with them today.
I passed one of the stacks and paused, then took a quick sniff. What was that smell?
It smelled like something floral. Something sweet. It smelled like her.
The new girl.
Fucking Iris Briggs.
I’d gotten close enough to her that first day to catch a hint of roses and vanilla in the air. It wasn’t overwhelming like some girls who liked to drown themselves in the latest Dior or Lady Gaga, or God help them, eau de RiRi.
No. This was some simple essential oil type of shit. Just enough to linger and tease. Not enough to overpower. But she wasn’t here.
As a matter of fact, I’d barely seen her since that first day. It was almost like she was taking all routes to purposely avoid me.
Why do you care? You have Clara.
Yes, I did have Clara. At least, that’s what everyone believed. We were the golden couple, the ones people wanted to be like. I wondered how people would really feel if they found out just how fucked up Clara and I both were.
Well, they’re never going to figure that out.
When I turned towards the fiction stacks, I froze. There, perched on one of the rolling ladders, was the source of the rose and vanilla. The source of my fucking sleepless nights for the past week. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
Her head snapped up and she gasped. “Jesus, you scared the shit out of me.”
Why was she looking at me like that? All fresh faced with her sky-blue eyes and her dusting of freckles on display and looking so clean and fresh and fucking pure. I wanted to make her dirty.
What the fuck is wrong with you?
“I repeat. What the hell are you doing here?”
She narrowed her eyes. “It’s a free country,” she said slowly, as if she was trying to control her temper. “I’m reading. What are you doing in here?”