Saints: A Reverse Harem Bully Romance (Pawns of Patience Book 2) Page 3

  I assumed Smith was letting Jax push him around. But I think it’s more than that. He really is protecting Jax, for whatever reason. Though, knowing what an asshole Jax is, it’s hard for me to imagine him needing someone else’s protection.

  Smith stands up, pacing several steps away to the opposite side of the gazebo before he turns back. “You ask too many questions. You need to learn when to shut your mouth.”

  He might as well have slapped me the way my head snaps back. “We’re done here,” I growl out, pushing myself off the swing so hard it goes flying backward, the chains attaching it to the gazebo’s ceiling rattling heavily as the whole thing works to shake itself back into place.

  “I didn’t mean it like that.” Smith puts his hands up, that same familiar gesture he always does when he’s fucked up. It pisses me off. Like he’s trying to calm a startled animal instead of a legitimately upset human being. I’m not sticking around for this. I take the stairs two at a time back down into the main part of the backyard. Fuck Smith for being an asshole just because I had the nerve to question his friendship with a guy who’s literally not stopped attacking me from every angle since I got here. It seems like if he really wanted a relationship with me he might be a little more sensitive to that. But no, he’d rather I just kept my mouth shut.

  Smith catches up to me before I reach the back door. He grabs my wrist and uses my own momentum to yank me back into him. My back gets plastered to his front as he puts an arm around my waist, trapping me there.

  “Let go,” I tell him, squirming. The movement has the opposite affect. He holds me tighter, keeping me against him even as I can tell he’s becoming decidedly uncomfortable in the pants area from all my wiggling. I stop struggling, realizing I’m only making that particular situation bigger instead of better.

  “Juliet, I didn’t mean it like that.” He softly plants a kiss on the place where my neck meets my shoulder. My sweater has slipped slightly off my shoulder, leaving that patch of skin exposed. The feel of his lips makes me shiver, wiggling against him in an entirely different way. It’s an instinctive reaction, one that I can’t help at all. Damn him. “You have so many questions all the time, and I want to answer them for you sometimes, but sometimes the answers are better left unsaid. And if you don’t stop asking every question that comes to mind, you’re going to get wrapped up in things you’re not ready for.”

  I mull over his cryptic words. It’s not the first time someone’s cautioned me against being too curious. Hell, it’s not even the first time Smith’s done it.

  “Ace would tell me,” I blurt out before I’ve thought it through. Smith lets go of me like I’ve suddenly lit myself on fire and he’s afraid of getting burned.

  “Asher Van Doren? That Ace? What the fuck does any of this have to do with him?” That is a very good question. Why did I even say that? It’s got to be just because being in the gazebo always reminds me of that first night I got here when he was the first person to give me space to breathe.

  Smith’s staring at me like I’ve grown a second head, and maybe I have. That would sure explain why my brain doesn’t seem to be functioning as one coherent unit tonight. I wrack my brain for some type of response because he’s still waiting for me to give him some kind of answer. Join the club, Buddy.

  “Ace is the one person that didn’t hesitate to give me answers when I had questions. And he didn’t treat me like I should shut up instead of asking, either.” Well, Brock Forrester was pretty forthcoming last year, too, but I feel a little weird thinking about that. Much less do I want to bring him up right now.

  “Yeah,” Smith says slowly, “And he also betrayed your trust and posted half-naked pictures of you on the internet. Is that really who you want to be comparing me to right now?” Super glad we’re talking about that again.

  “You mean the pictures that Jax somehow had access to? Including ones that never got posted? Now, I might not know everything that goes on around here, but I’d be willing to bet Jax was somehow involved in all of that from the beginning. In fact, before the pictures happened, I considered Ace a friend, and I’m pretty sure he considered me one, too. So I wonder what Jax could possibly have done to Ace to make him betray me like that?”

  Smith stares at me with a blank expression, but I’ve spent enough time with him now to tell when there’s more going on behind the eyes than he’s letting on. He’s taking in my words and thinking them over.

  “I have to go.” He turns, his feet carrying him halfway across the yard before I realize he’s serious. He’s going to leave in the middle of an argument, just like that. Not only is it rude, but it’s sketchy as hell.

  “Smith? Where are you going?” I call after him. It looks like maybe there was more truth in my words than I realized. Because I’d bet everything I own—which admittedly, isn’t much—that he’s running to Jax right now. And it pisses me off more than ever to not have any answers as to why.

  Chapter Four

  I climb out of my SUV in the school parking lot, trying not to hyperventilate as I imagine walking back into this building. It was easy enough to try to pretend the leaked pictures of me didn’t happen when I didn’t have to face the place where it happened, but now I can’t think of anything else. At least, that is until I take a good look at what’s happening at the front of the school.

  There’s a big canvas picture hanging on the front sign just like the one of Smith and me that Jax made last semester. Only this time, Kathryn’s the one on display, and there doesn’t need to be a death threat because she’s already dead. If she were still alive, I’ll bet she would have freaked seeing the picture they chose of her. It has to be a couple years old because she’s got braces showing through a big, cheesy grin. I’d guess she was a freshman at most.

  Students are milling about everywhere, none of them apparently ready to step foot in the school building just yet. Many of them are gathered around Kathryn’s pictures but there are also a lot of them standing off to the side, mixed in with several adults I don’t recognize. I tilt my head watching them; none of them look familiar so I don’t think they’re school staff. They’re dressed way too casually to be parents from around here.

  “Grief counselors,” someone answers my silent question.

  I turn to glance over my shoulder to see Cece passing through the parking lot between cars. She stops between my SUV and the car next to it, pausing a few steps behind me. She looks a little too put together for someone coming back to school for the first time since her best friend died. The two of them were always together, but looking at Cece now, she has the same bright eyed expression she always has.

  “Seriously?” I look at our classmates again, struggling to understand all the wailing girls and the cluster of boys shuffling their feet as they stand around with a man that must be one of the grief counselors.

  I think back to how many times we had a classmate die at Nikon Park High. Mostly drug deaths, but we had the occasional gang dispute, too. When it was gang related, we usually lost more than one in a week. Retaliation killings. Maybe all of that is why I’m feeling so numb right now. Seeing Kathryn’s lifeless body from over the side of my three-story roof? Traumatizing. The first day back to school with her gone? This feels like nothing in comparison. I have to remind myself that everyone else grew up with her and knew her their whole lives—even if she was a bitch to most of them—and I only knew her a few months in comparison.

  “And they all call me overdramatic.” Cece scoffs. To be fair, I’ve heard plenty of people call Cece overdramatic, but in a musical theatre kind of way, which makes sense considering Cece’s the star of The Patience School’s theatre program. Her being called overdramatic is just par for the course. This is… something else entirely.

  I take another look at Cece, a closer one. She should be the one being overdramatic in this big, sloppy, emotional way that other people are showing off. Instead, her blonde hair is carefully styled into a blowout, the pieces turning out to frame her face in a
way that didn’t exist last semester. The longer I look, the more I think the style looks eerily similar to how Kathryn’s looked that night, framing her motionless face.

  I swallow, hard. “How are you?” I ask her, lowering my voice so no one can eavesdrop. She blinks at me a few times, staying silent just long enough that I start to wonder if she even heard me. Then, she throws her head back and laughs lightly.

  “You might be a Lexington, but you’re insane if you think I’d ever confide in someone like you. No matter what the Harringtons might think, you’re not one of us—and you never will be.” She laughs again, this one sounding more like a witch’s cackle. Though to be fair, that might just be my imagination talking.

  It wasn’t like Cece and I were besties or anything last semester, but we got along well enough. There was the time I let her and Kathryn drag me along to The Patience Club. Or, oh yeah, the time when I saved her ass from alcohol poisoning and whatever other nefarious things Jax would have done to her if she’d kept doing shots with him last fall during Brent Forrester’s yacht party.

  If I wasn’t looking Cece Winchester in the face right now, I would have sworn I was actually talking to Kathryn. I assumed someone would fill Kathryn’s shoes. I mean, it’s high school, for fuck’s sake. But I never imagined that person would be Cece.

  “Now can you move, please?” I step aside, dumbstruck by this side of her I’m seeing for the first time. Hell, I guess I should just feel flattered she said please.

  As Cece flounces past me, I see Smith’s car pull into a spot a few down from mine. My whole body goes jittery with nerves. After that bizarre encounter, I could use a friendly face, but I’m not sure if that’s what I’m going to get from either of the Harringtons.

  A major cold front has swept in, leaving me shivering in a gust of wind as I wait to see what kind of welcome I’m going to get from the only two people who might possibly be happy to see me.

  Smith is the first to step out of the car, but it’s Sadie who immediately draws my eye. It takes me a beat to actually recognize her, temporary confusion swirling through me before she turns and I see eyes that could only belong to a Harrington. They both start picking their way around the cars towards me. Their expressions don’t say much, but I’m hoping this is a good sign.

  “Holy shit, your hair,” I breathe out as Sadie reaches me and my eyes study the mixed shades of purple covering her newly shortened hair. It’s still shoulder-length, so not as drastic of a cut as it could be. Still, it’s a huge difference from the blonde curls I’m used to seeing cascading down her back.

  Sadie runs the tips of her fingers through the ends. “Nothing freaks a parent out quite like having their daughter drastically change her appearance when she’s fresh out of rehab.” She says it in a light voice that makes it clear she’s joking, but I’m not so sure it’s funny. “I am a little mad about how fast it’s fading, though. Do you see all these streaks? It was all one color at first, this is just how fast the color’s fading out.”

  Personally, I’m less worried about her fading purple and more worried for her about the fact that her non-natural hair color is so glaringly against dress code. I was under the impression this place was strict, but between Jax suffering no apparent consequences for what he did last semester and now Sadie’s hair, I’m not so sure.

  Maybe I could get away with skipping classes after all. Hell, I’ll probably need to now with Jax back. I don’t see his car yet, but I know his return is inevitable. I wonder if Smith talked to him after we talked. Now’s probably not the best time to ask.

  “You look beautiful.” I say it because it’s true, but seeing Sadie so nonchalant about such a drastic change to her appearance puts me a little on edge. How many times did my not-really-my-mother mother swear she was getting sober only to ride this same manic train back to a relapse?

  “I tried to tell her Dupont’s going to freak when he sees this.” Smith stares at her hair like it’s personally offended him. Maybe it has. After all, it’s much harder to see the similarities between the two of them now that Sadie doesn’t share his pretty blonde curls. She’s got her purple hair straightened into a more sleek style now. If a person didn’t look closely enough to see their identical blue eyes, they definitely wouldn’t mistake them for twins.

  “Patrick?” I don’t see why he should get to have an opinion. I’m sure he’ll keep flirting up a storm with Sadie no matter what her hair looks like. Unless it’s the whole rule breaking thing. Maybe he’s not into that. I don’t know. I hate that I’m suddenly so concerned with what Patrick might think.

  Smith frowns at me. “What? No. Headmaster Dupont.”

  “Oh. Right.” Well, that makes much more sense. I’m an idiot.

  Sadie huffs out, “I don’t care what Dupont thinks. Dad shells out big money for us to be here, what’s Dupont gonna do, kick me out?” She rolls her eyes so dramatically that if I didn’t know any better, I might have mistaken her for Cece. Old Cece, not weird, mean girl New Cece.

  And speaking of Cece… the three of us fall silent as we get closer to the front of the school and she crosses over the path in front of us, having picked up an entourage now that seems to be hanging on her every word.

  I can only catch snippets of her conversation as she floats past us, but it sounds like she’s bragging about a date with some big-shot Broadway producer. It makes my stomach churn to think of her getting herself taken advantage of, she hasn’t proven herself to be the most competent at personal safety, but I also haven’t forgotten our night at The Patience Club. Like Kathryn, the idea of older men didn’t seem the phase her.

  “What the hell is her deal?” Sadie asks. I know exactly what she’s really asking, because it’s the same thing I was just wondering about. Cece has never been this popular on her own. Everyone saw her as Kathryn’s sidekick and they treated her as such. But now they’re treating her like a queen. It’s a little nauseating to see Cece essentially sliding into the spot her dead best friend vacated.

  Smith shrugs. “You better watch your back with her.” I don’t realize Smith’s talking to me at first, but then I realize he’s looking right at me with serious concern in his eyes.

  “Huh?” Cece and I got along fine before. If she’s acting a little off today, it could just be part of her grieving process. Or at least that’s the version I most want to believe.

  “Oh, yeah.” Sadie nods along with him. “He’s right. If Cece thinks she’s going to slide into the hole Kathryn left in the social strata, you’re now her biggest competition. Top of the food chain would be rightfully yours if you wanted it.”

  Everyone knows a Lexington outweighs a Lassiter. Wasn’t that what Jax told me my first day? “That’s ridiculous.” I roll my eyes, still completely baffled by this system of popularity where surnames matter. The Lexington name might be my legacy, but the only thing I did to earn it was to show up. As Mary-Sue of me as it is to think, popularity should be based on someone’s actual likability. And as far as the people of Patience are concerned, mine still seems to be pretty damn low.

  “What’s ridiculous is that this school is going to let Cece Winchester pretend she’s anything more than a second-string pick.” Sadie’s words are so harsh I have to look away so she doesn’t see the inevitable judgment in my eyes. Cece might be a little high strung and not necessarily all that bright, but she’s never been outright mean the way Kathryn was. As if Sadie can read my mind she says, “You can judge Kathryn for the way she was, but this place made her that way. You don’t sit at the top of the food chain without being willing to prey on whatever’s beneath you. It’s not our fault that you’re not ready to accept that concept.”

  “Sadie, that’s enough.” She turns to Smith, and the two of them share a brief stand-off as if I’m not right there next to them.

  It was nice of Smith to stand up for me, but I wish he didn’t need to. Sadie’s never been anything but nice about the fact that I come from a very different background than her. This is the
first time she’s said anything to make me think’s maybe not all that accepting after all. But grief does do funny things to people. I guess I could see her being justifiably upset if it seemed like I was being a little too critical of something that Kathryn’s life revolved around.

  “I’ll see you all later,” Sadie says, her pout clear from the way her bottom lip folds over to the way her voice quivers.

  Smith shakes his head to me as she abandons us, rushing through the front doors ahead of us as if she can’t get away fast enough. “I’m sorry. She’s been a little touchy ever since she got back from—” he pauses. “That place,” he eventually finishes in the most diplomatic way possible. I’m assuming he doesn’t want anyone around us to hear him talking about Sadie having been in rehab.

  “It’s okay,” I reassure him. I feel a sudden, overwhelming sadness. And maybe it’s a little selfish of me to be feeling this way, but it all feels too familiar. Worrying about someone’s sobriety. Analyzing every little detail in an attempt to catch the warning signs before it’s too late. I’ve spent my whole life doing the same damn thing, and now here I am. This place shouldn’t be anything like Nikon Park, and yet sometimes it feels like they might as well not be different places at all. Not in the ways that count.

  We’re barely through the front doors before Smith puts a hand on my elbow, pulling me to one side of the hallway. “Listen, I know I need to apologize for the way I acted last night.” I open my mouth to protest—this probably isn’t the best time or place to hash this out now—but he stops me. “I thought about bringing you flowers but somehow that didn’t feel like our thing. So, I brought you this instead.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a thin book, holding it out to me as he nips nervously at his bottom lip.

  “What is it?” I take the gift from him, studying the front cover.