The Help (Kings of Linwood Academy, #1)(12)

I like thinking I’ve surprised them. But I hate the feel of their gazes on me. I try to ignore it, but it prickles against my skin like little ant bites, constantly tugging my attention back toward them.

And that’s the last damn place I want it.

What is it about them that makes it so hard to look away? Partly their looks, I guess. They are fucking hot, asshole tendencies aside. But there’s something else too, and I can’t quite put my finger on it. Is it because of the instinct of a prey animal to keep an eye on the nearby predators at all times? Or is it because of that whole commanding aura they have, and the fact that they somehow, wordlessly, seem to demand my attention?

I don’t want to give it to them, so I finish off my lunch and head to my next class early. I still haven’t found out where a poker game will be happening, but I’m not going to give up. There must be one—probably more than one—and I’m going to find it.

Rich kids love to throw their money around, right?





5





On Friday, I finally find what I’m after.

It comes from an unexpected source too. I’m walking down the hall with a guy from my Biology class, Max, when he mentions a game he went to last weekend. He could just be talking about football, but it seems too early in the semester for that—we’re only a week in. So I press him a little harder, until he tells me about an underground gambling ring run by a few students. They use an abandoned warehouse space that one of their families owns and host card games every other weekend or so.

“But you wouldn’t be interested in something like that,” he assures me, flashing me a smile that’s somehow both skeevy and condescending. “It’s a really high buy in. Not for pool girls.”

I grit my teeth. Motherfucking assholes.

That name has stuck like glue, as have a million different rumors about how poor my family is, and what my mom and I did to earn money before we got here.

But I’m about to find out where I can play some poker, and I don’t want to risk missing out by pissing Max off.

“Yeah.” I bite my lip. “But I’d still kind of like to check it out. I think I could probably muster up the buy-in. I have a job.”

“Right.” One corner of his mouth tilts up, as if I just made some kind of innuendo.

Ugh. Gross.

“So where is it?” I press. If I’m going to let him get away with this shit without smacking him in the mouth, I’d better at least get some useful information out of him.

He gives me an address that means nothing to me, but I file it away in my head. I’ll look it up later. The game starts late enough that I should be able to borrow Mom’s car and sneak out.

Once I get what I want from Max, I veer down another hallway, doing my usual scan of the space before proceeding forward.

People haven’t gotten tired of giving the new girl shit yet, especially not after the wonderful ammunition Lincoln and his friends gave them. Pieces of trash are still randomly thrown at me, which is annoying and also fucking dangerous. I don’t think anybody really cares what they’re throwing, they just look for the nearest object and hurl it at me.

Chase said he wanted to introduce me to the school, and oh boy, did he. Everybody knows me already—or at least, they recognize me. And I don’t know if it’s out of sheer boredom or a compulsive need to suck up to their kings, but a lot of them have gotten on board with bullying me.

Fucking assholes.

I make it through the rest of the school day without having to wash and dry my shirt in the girls’ bathroom, so that’s a win, I guess.

Back at the Black mansion, I change into my pristine maid’s uniform and do some laundry—which has indeed turned out to be my designated job.

I’ll never get over the fact that I have to touch Lincoln Black’s damn boxer briefs, and it takes all my self-restraint not to fuck with them somehow. I dunno, put a little cayenne pepper in the crotch maybe?

But the goal here is to not get my mom and me fired, so I just fold his underwear like a good little servant and deliver them to his room when I’m done.

It’s weird. At home, he never talks to me and barely ever looks at me. But at school, I can always feel his gaze on me if we’re anywhere in the same vicinity. And he talks to me a lot at school, although he never has nice things to say.

I don’t know what his fucking deal is, honestly, and it’s exhausting.

His parents are just as damn weird. His mom’s on something, I’m sure of it, and his dad just seems obsessed with pretending everything around here is normal—which only serves to highlight how not normal it all is.

I barely ever see the two of them talk, and when I do, their conversation seems forced and stilted, like two strangers who are only pretending to have been married for years.

After I take care of what needs to get done around the house, I change into shorts and a tank and have dinner with Mom. Then I chill in my room until eleven. I know Mom probably passed out around ten, and the fact that she’s in a separate apartment makes sneaking out easy.

But as I open the door to my bedroom and creep out into the hall, low voices catch my ear.

Huh. I really thought everyone would be asleep by now. I tiptoe a few steps down the hallway, sticking close to the wall.

A deep, baritone voice I recognize as Mr. Black’s meets my ears. But it’s not coming from the master bedroom—that’s a lot further down the hall, in the east wing of the house. No, it’s coming from the guest room on the other side of the laundry room from mine.