Boys Club by Selena
thirteen
Harper Apple
“Come on,” Baron says, his hand falling on Royal’s shoulder. “It’s time to go.” He gives me a tight smile, something close to regret in his eyes.
Royal tenses, breaking our kiss. And though his face shows nothing, I’ve studied him for the past four months. I’ve learned to read him a little, enough to know that he doesn’t want to go. It’s in the way he stiffens, almost annoyed, at the interruption. It’s in the reluctant way he drops his hands from around my body and steps back.
“See you around, Jailbird,” Baron says. “Stay out of trouble.”
Gloria appears at my side, linking her arm through mine. “Oh, but we’re planning on getting in lots of trouble tonight,” she says, batting her lashes at the boys. “Aren’t we, Harper?”
“Where are you going?” I ask.
“Somewhere you aren’t invited,” Royal says flatly. “And leave the rest of my family alone.”
Duke appears on his other side, already swaying on his feet. A flicker of irritation crosses Royal’s face, but he jerks his chin at the twins. “Let’s go.”
Without a word of goodbye, he turns and stalks off. The twins follow, Duke stumbling drunkenly beside Baron.
“What the fuck was that?” I ask.
“Oh, you know,” Gloria says. “Boys will be boys.”
“They’re going to a Midnight Swans meeting, aren’t they?” I ask, remembering Mr. D’s introduction. He said they meet at midnight once a week. What better night than New Year’s?
“You have to let them have their own lives, too,” Gloria says. “You wouldn’t want Royal all up in your business seven days a week.”
Royal has made it very clear he has the right to be up in my business any time he wants. True, he lets me have Saturdays, and I let him have Sundays, but there’s no agreement beyond that.
“Let’s follow them,” I say, grabbing Lo’s hand and dragging her toward the door. “Come on!”
“Are you crazy?” she asks, digging her heels in.
“Abso-fucking-lutely,” I say. “You have your car here. It’s the perfect chance to follow them and get info on one of the meetings.”
“Harper, they don’t want us there.”
“Of course they don’t want us there,” I say. “That’s why we’re following them. They’ve never wanted me anywhere. I sure as hell didn’t get where I am by leaving them alone when they told me to.”
“Harper,” she says firmly, grabbing my wrist and finally grinding to a halt at the door to the fancy ballroom where the hotel is throwing a party for what looks like every rich person in town. “Listen to yourself. You’re going off the deep end. This isn’t how you relationship.”
“And you know how to relationship?” I ask. “You’ve been chasing a guy who doesn’t like you for two years.”
“I’m not chasing Royal,” she says. “And if I was, I sure as fuck wouldn’t be a desperate, aggressive bitch who didn’t know when to leave well enough alone.”
“Is that why you let him take you here every Sunday to fuck?” I ask. “Because you’re not some desperate bitch?”
“You need to calm down,” she says. “Let him want you. Chase you. Stop throwing yourself at him.”
“I’m not throwing myself at him,” I say, stung. I draw back, looking at this girl who has been a friend for all of a month. I got so caught up in finding out about Royal I almost forgot she’s his friend first. That she’s not like me, she doesn’t know why I’m so desperate for information on the Swans.
“It’s okay for him to have his own life,” she says. “He’s with his brothers. He’s not with another girl, and he’s not going to get himself killed. Isn’t that enough?”
No. It’s nowhere near enough. Because if I don’t get this information, I won’t be back at Willow Heights with them. And I’m not naïve enough to think Royal will still talk to me, still want anything to do with me. When I’m back at FHS, he’ll find some other Dolce girl, and I’ll be just another notch on his belt. He’ll leave this town when he graduates in five months, and I’ll probably never leave at all. Not if I get shuffled back to Faulkner.
I could live through losing Royal. But I can’t live through losing my scholarship.
“I don’t care if he’s pissed,” I say. “I need to know.”
“Why?”
“Doesn’t it bother you?” I ask. “Being left out all the time? Being excluded from their secret society just because you’re a girl?”
“Of course it bothers me,” she says. “Do you know how many doors open for Dawson and then slam in my face?”
I didn’t even think of that. Her brother is a Swan. Of course he is. He’s one of the Dolce boys’ three best friends.
“Then you know how much it sucks,” I say quietly.
Gloria fluffs her blonde hair, which she hot-rolled into big, loose curls, and shrugs like nothing can get to her. “I’m used to it. If I fly off the handle every time I’m offended, I won’t have time to live my own life. I know when to pick my battles. Maybe it’s something you should learn, too.”
This is my fucking battle. I know it’s too late, though, that they’re already gone by now. Part of me wonders if Royal put Gloria up to this, if the whole reason she invited me to this party was so that he would know I was occupied while he went off to his meeting. But that’s ridiculous.
Isn’t it?
I made a big deal about it when he wouldn’t let me join. I completed the first challenge. Maybe it’s just another line of questioning he shut down when I tried to pry into his life, but maybe it’s more. Maybe this is one of the initiations—being there at midnight on New Year’s.
Or maybe Gloria is right, and I’m being clingy and crazy as fuck, and I need to accept defeat and let this go. Not my strong point, that’s for damn sure. But this isn’t the first time someone told me to chill the fuck out. I remember Colt saying something along those lines when we were locked in the dumpster the first month of school—that I couldn’t attack everything with brute force. Some things take finesse.
And getting into the Swans is probably one of those things.
Gloria slips her hand into mine and offers me a sly smile. “Come on, let’s get a drink and have so much fun Royal will wish he stayed. Hell, if I have a few more, I might even make out with you.”
I muster a half-hearted smile and let her tow me back to the open bar. Long tables laden with fancy finger foods line two of the walls, and I have to resist gawking. I haven’t eaten, as I’ve been with Royal since we walked in an hour ago. I grab a plate and load up while Gloria gets drinks. Rich people parties are weird. The hors d’oeuvres probably cost five times as much as steak and potatoes, but they’re five times less satisfying. I just want to sit down at a table and scarf down something solid until I’m stuffed. Instead we stand around like storks, nibbling at our food and sipping the champagne, pretending we’re not eyeing the table for seconds like everyone else.
“See, that’s much healthier,” Gloria says. “Eat your feelings and resist the urge to stalk your boyfriend.”
I force a laugh, but even the food isn’t distracting me enough. I can’t help but feel like I’m missing my last chance to stay at Willow Heights. I need to get down there, into the Swans’ lair. Maybe Gloria’s not down to be an accomplice, but that doesn’t mean I can’t go on my own. I’ve been on my own my whole life. One month of having a friend doesn’t mean I’m dependent on her.
“I’m going to go talk to King,” I say after a while. He’s standing over between the bar and the tables, looking on just the way Royal does in the café at school.
Lording their power over others must run in the family.
“You mean the one person Royal told you not to talk to?” Gloria asks, rolling her eyes. “You really can’t help yourself, can you?”
“Not even trying to,” I admit. I head over, leaving Gloria with some other girls from school. King’s standing with a couple men, one of whom I recognize as DeShaun’s dad. King’s eyes lock on me as I approach, and he says something to his companions. They glance at me before shaking his hand and dispersing. If I didn’t feel self-conscious approaching a powerful stranger, I do now. I don’t miss the way heads turn when I make my way toward King. Attention isn’t my thing, and I have to force myself to keep my head high and act like it doesn’t matter.
“Hey,” I say, stepping up beside him. In my pissed off state, I may have downed one too many of glasses of champagne, but I clutch the one in my hand like a lifeline.
“Harper,” he says. “Glad to see you here. We didn’t get a chance to talk much earlier.”
“You mean when you gave me the third degree about messing with Royal?”
“Yeah,” he says, giving me a cool look. “That’s when.”
“I figured you’d be at the Swans’ meeting with them,” I say, deciding to play the angle that I already know more than I do. “Once a Swan, always a Swan, right?”
He huffs a little breath out through his nose, offering me a haughty smirk. “What do you know about the Swans?”
I shrug and smile back. “Enough.”
He narrows his eyes, studying me in a way that’s just a little too intense for comfort. “You and my brother are close?”
“You could say that,” I say, sipping my drink and shooting him a look that dares him to contradict me. I don’t know what Royal’s told him, so I’m not about to lie and call him my boyfriend or say he told me all about the Swans, but there’s something about this guy that makes me uneasy.
“How long?” King asks.
“How long have we been close?” I say, trying to guess what Royal would tell him. Guys probably measure by the length of time we’ve been fucking, so I go with that. “A couple months.”
King studies me in that unnerving way for another minute. I feel like I’m on fucking trial here, like one wrong answer will get me convicted and sentenced to execution, gangland style.
“You care about him?” he asks at last.
“Of course I care about him.”
He watches me another minute, a stitch pulling between his brows, his jaw working like he’s trying to decide whether to say more. At last, he does. “He treating you okay?”
That’s about the last thing I expected to come out of his mouth. And of course I can’t answer honestly, that Royal mostly treats me like shit unless we’re alone together. Then he’s a different person, leaving behind his cool, cruel exterior and becoming the most intense, overwhelming, dominant person I’ve ever met, forcing me to bend to his will, whatever it may be that day. Sometimes he’s selfish and filled with rage, like the day he threw me down on the side of the road and fucked me, and other times he’s vulnerable and needy, practically forcing me to cum for him until I physically can’t do it again, like he has something to prove. And sometimes he treats me like I’m air itself, the only thing he needs, the most precious thing in the universe, the only one who he can share his pain with, one story at a time.
And even though I know better, I’m falling for him despite all the ways he’s treated me.
“As good as I’m treating him,” I answer King at last. “What about you? Are you guys close?”
“Yeah,” he says, watching a girl on the dancefloor as she sways her hips and smiles seductively at him. He frowns and glances at me. “Or, at least, we used to be.”
I’m not sure what to say, so I settle for the generic, “I’m sorry.”
It’s not like he needs my ass explaining to him that his brother is guarded, hard to love, and all that other shit. He probably knows Royal a hundred times better than I ever will, even if they’re not close anymore.
“It was easy to keep an eye on them when we all lived in New York,” he says. “I always knew what they were up to. Now…” He shrugs and shifts his feet, watching me from the corner of his eye.
“Now you’re asking me to do it?” I say, a coil of unease twisting inside me. It’s been months since I seriously considered that Mr. D was anyone other than a Darling. But my earlier question about King comes back to me. What if it really is this guy, someone who wants to know about his brother but can’t keep an eye on him? They’re all rich. He could have floated my scholarship, and either he’s not part of the Swans, or that’s not what Royal is doing tonight.
But why would a New Yorker care so much about some secret society in Arkansas, even if his brothers are in it? And if this guy got kicked out along with the olds, they must have started fresh when the Dolces won the town. I can see why he’d be pissed, after helping them take down the Darlings, if they turned around and kicked him to the curb. But why would they? What are those boys doing that they don’t want anyone to know about, not even their own brother?
*
The King
The king in the faraway lands
At the borders of his kingdom
Doesn’t see the destruction at home,
Within the walls of his own castle,
Or hear the whispers of dissent
As the royals dance drunkenly in the sacred throne room
And deface his great throne.
