Black Knight (Royal Elite #4) by Rina Kent

The fact she didn’t use the bathroom in Elsa’s room also means she’s hiding something.

What on earth would she hide from her best friend?

I push on the bathroom’s door and it opens with a slight squeak. My feet are silent as I close it behind me and stalk to inside.

What I see makes me pause. The tap is running, but as I expected, Kimberly isn’t anywhere near it.

Her small frame is perched in front of the toilet as she empties her stomach into it.

But that’s not what gives me a what-the-fuck-are-you-shitting-me moment.

It’s when she pauses heaving, sticks her forefinger in her mouth, and then vomits again. She does it a few times more until she’s dry heaving.

A red-hot rage takes hold of me at the view of her in that position.

The pieces of the puzzle all fall into place now.

It’s because she ate those avocados. Now, I know why she always disappears after lunch, why I never see her eating with Kirian.

She said Ronan and Elsa see her, but she couldn’t be any more wrong.

She doesn’t even see herself.

Not like I do.

I see her when she’s a mess, when she’s fake, when she forces herself to laugh and just be there.

I see her even when she refuses to fucking see herself.

I’d hoped that the moment I was out of here and stopped fucking seeing her altogether, it would be all over, but this is a lot worse than I initially thought.

There’s no way in fuck I’m going to let her be invisible to her own self. Not even if that costs me in the long run.

She had to fucking push me off the edge, and now that I’m falling, I’ll drag her down with me.

I straighten and place my hand in my pocket. When I speak, my voice is low and deadly calm. The same calm before a lethal storm. “What the fuck are you doing, Kimberly?”





6





Kimberly





“What the fuck are you doing, Kimberly?”

The voice coming from behind me might as well be a bomb. Otherwise, why would I feel like I’m being detonated to pieces?

My knees shake on the tile floor as my hands fall lifeless to my sides.

No, it’s not him.

He can’t just figure me all out in one day. That’s not how it works in real life.

Besides, he could’ve only walked in on the heaving part and nothing else.

No matter how much I reassure myself, my lower lip trembles and I bite down on the tender flesh so I don’t give in to the need to run and hide.

You’ve got this, Kim. You’ve totally got this.

Taking a deep breath, I rise to unsteady feet and take my sweet time flushing the toilet. Maybe if I stay here long enough, he’ll disappear and leave me in peace.

Maybe the whole thing is a play of my imagination because of being jumpy since earlier.

The prickling at the nape of my neck says otherwise, though. Razor-sharp attention is dissecting me slowly, as if cutting me open from the inside out.

It’s all because of those avocados – I should’ve refused Elsa’s offer, I should’ve not taken them. But if I had, she would have started to suspect me, and then maybe she’d regret being friends with me.

I can’t lose Elsa. She’s one of the few threads that keeps me hanging on to this existence.

Wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, I turn around, silently praying all this is a nasty nightmare.

The moment my gaze meets that ocean-deep one, I confirm it is a nightmare.

A real one.

The one I can never come back from.

“What are you doing here?” I speak lower than I intend to, but at least my voice doesn’t shake like a pathetic idiot.

“The question is, what are you doing, Kimberly?”

Kimberly.

Kimberly?

I haven’t heard him call me that in…well, ever. When we were young, he used to call me Green, or Kim when he was mad at me. After I fell from his grace, I became Berly, that stupid bullying name.

The fact that he’s calling me by my full name is new and somehow…intimate.

Don’t you dare like it, Kim. Don’t you fucking dare.

“You never saw anyone vomiting?” I start past him towards the running tap, pretending he doesn’t exist.

The keyword being pretending. There’s no way in hell I can erase his presence, especially in the small space of the bathroom. My arm brushes against his and I falter for a fraction of a second, fighting the urge to close my eyes and soak in that contact.

I’m like a starved animal, waiting for a mere brush of clothes against clothes. What the hell is wrong with me?

I wash my hands, rubbing them harsher than needed until they turn red, and then take a gulp of the mouthwash I always keep in my pocket.

Maybe I’ve overestimated what he saw. It’s just someone vomiting, after all. Upset stomach, wrong food, bad weather. I have a multitude of excuses. Hell, I can even blame it on his existence and say it disgusts me.

Though, I’m not as cruel as he is – or as heartless.

“Why, yes. Of course I’ve seen someone vomiting.” His voice is calm and steady, even though the undertone is sinister. “Nasty business, that is.”

I spit out the mouthwash and clean my mouth. “Yup. Very nasty.”

“Especially when you stick a finger in your throat and make yourself vomit. Nasty, indeed.”