Broken Trust: A Dark High School Romance(52)

But now it wasn’t enough.

It wasn’t good enough for her.

I just had to figure out how to get us out without the elders destroying us all.





21





The morning after the gala, I woke in Beck’s arms, and the fissure which had appeared in my chest last night, after I’d lost control with him, increased. All of the emotions I’d worked to conceal, they were leaking from me, and I couldn’t quite figure out how to cram them back inside again.

Sneaking out of the bed, I crept through the penthouse and stepped out onto the huge balcony, closing the door behind me to give me some privacy.

My phone trembled in my hands when I lifted it and dialed a familiar number.

“Riles…” Dante’s voice was rough. “Is everything okay?”

I swallowed hard. “I— I’m fucking this up, Dante.”

It sounded like he was changing positions in bed. “Fucking what up? Has something happened?”

I hadn’t told him about the almost gang-rape, because I was afraid that he would infiltrate the school and kill everyone involved. Well, all of those not in the hospital from Beck already.

This wasn’t about that though. This was me … slipping back into my old life. The one that had almost destroyed me. I needed my best friend to knock some sense into me.

“They’re worming their way back into my life. Into my emotions. I’m scared. I know it’s stupid to trust them, they’re definitely going to hurt me again, that’s inevitable, but I can’t seem to help it.”

Dante took a moment to answer, and I started to pace, the freezing air biting into my skin. “I think you’re okay to let this go, Riley,” he finally said, and I almost dropped the phone.

“What?” That advice was the opposite of knocking sense into me.

“People fuck up,” he said softly. “Sometimes they get caught up in surviving, and then shit gets out of hand, and then people get hurt. I don’t think they did it deliberately, they just had no choice.”

There was something odd in Dante’s voice, something I hadn’t ever heard before, and it sent a jolt of unease through my body. That unease settled in low, and for a moment, I wondered if maybe he knew more than he was saying. This didn’t feel just like random advice. It didn’t even feel like advice connected to the specific incident I was talking about.

“What do you know?” I pressed, more bite in my tone. I trusted my best friend more than any living person in this world, and I knew him very well, which was how I knew he was keeping something from me.

Dante’s voice was suddenly clearer, as if he’d sat up. “Riles, seriously, you don’t need to worry about me. I’ve got your back, always. I mean … I think I’m finally getting my life under control, taking back my power, and once I do that, no one will ever fuck with us again.”

Again his words were confusing, and I was almost certain we were no longer talking about Beck and the shooting incident.

Before I could say anything more, the door slid open behind me, and I spun to find Evan there. “You should come inside before your nipples freeze off, Spare,” he said, eyes dropping to the thin sleep top I was wearing.

I wrinkled my nose and turned my back on him. “I gotta go, Dante,” I said into the phone. “Will I see you soon?”

“Yep,” he replied. “I’ll be out in the next week or so for your birthday. I’ll keep you updated.”

Birthday, right, that was soon.

“Bye, love you,” I told him before hanging up the phone.

Evan was gone, so I stepped inside and beelined straight for the shower. Thankfully it was empty, and I managed to shower, dress, and get back out for room service breakfast in record time.

The five of us sat, and I held my hand out for coffee, because there was no way they could have forgotten how badly I needed that to function. Beck placed it in my hand, and as I stared down at my mug, the one with the queen on it, my eyes burned.

“I figured we needed a little unity,” Beck said softly, taking the seat on my right side, pulling it very close as his dark gaze devoured me.

I looked around, and sure enough, everyone had their personalized cups. Fucker. He knew exactly what buttons to press in my stupidly sentimental body. It had meant everything to me to feel like I was one of them, especially after their early efforts to push me the fuck out of their lives. I’d finally felt like I’d made it, only to have it all ripped away in one moment.

My hands trembled, and for a second I didn’t know if I was going to smash the cup. That would have been very dramatic and symbolic of my current anger, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to break it. Not yet.

Instead I took a sip of perfectly brewed coffee.

My groan was low and breathy, and I ignored Beck and Dylan as they chuckled at my expense. “Let her enjoy her coffee,” Jasper said. “She’s much less of a bitch when she has it.”

I flipped him off without even opening my eyes. The second sip was just as perfect.

Everyone started to eat, there was a huge spread of food, but my stomach was in knots from Beck, and everything else that had happened in New York, so I just sat back and watched them. In unguarded moments like this, it was the time I learned the most about all four of them.

They left all of the crunchy bacon for Evan, because that was the only way he ate it, and the scrambled eggs were Dylan’s while Jasper preferred fried. Beck devoured French toast like it was the best thing he’d ever eaten, the more syrup and fruit the better. They all drank coffee, and it was often Dylan who acted as the house bitch and refilled their cups.