Not even a goddamn kiss.
Mira had her own agenda in this town and her own dirty work she was trying to do. She was using me for her own purposes, and since I was using her too, all was fair game. I’d kept her on a short but far-enough leash where I hadn’t had to touch her. She enjoyed being with me, the influence of me, and since that kept her quiet about certain things, I put up with it. It also kept me close to a source I needed, her father.
I swallowed hard as bodies crowded behind me, a shake in my arms. I’d been getting panic attacks lately, even worse than before my mom and sister died. I’d been in a dark place then, but managed to be darker now. I couldn’t help it with what I’d both seen and knew.
It’d prepare me for what I’d ultimately have to do.
We were playing with the big boys now, and anyone who I didn’t want to be around for the fallout couldn’t be. I had to protect December.
Even if I had to destroy her.
“Are you sure?” LJ asked me, and despite asking the question, he had his phone to his ear. He was ready for whatever I wanted to do. All the guys were. They knew the stakes here and weren’t playing around. They knew my need to get December out of here regardless of what I’d told them about her and me, us. They’d help me run her out of this town.
They’d help me keep her out of the flames.
Two
Ramses
“Have the girls seen this yet?” Meaning one girl in particular. I cringed at the display on my buddy’s screen. December may have kept whatever relationship she had with Prinze close to the cuff, but no one, I repeat, no one wanted to see this regardless of whatever relationship they had with someone.
Especially with what happened during Christmas Eve.
I didn’t mean for things to come out the way they had, and I obviously had been unaware she’d been in my dad’s study. But now that December knew what kind of stuff she was dealing with, that made things a whole lot easier. Nothing had changed since I left this town, absolutely fucking nothing, and not only did that unsettle me, it pissed me off it’d happened to her too. She’d gotten driven out of this town, her sister dead, and once I found all that out, I couldn’t sit idle.
I wished I could have sat idle.
What was displayed on Luke’s phone screen seriously disturbed the fuck out of me, and I had no idea if this was just how Prinze and his lot got their rocks off or if they were seriously just into some messed-up stuff. Whatever the case, December didn’t need to see this. I waved Luke and the other guys at my locker to put the phone away, but by then, the girls had passed us in the hallway, casual traffic between classes. Birdie and crew shook their greetings, the basketball chicks always more like bros than actual girls. With Birdie there was Shakira, Kiki, and some of the other girls, and with the height of them, I’d been deceived December wasn’t with them at first. She blended in with girls over a head of height on her, but not only was she there, she noticed the crowd over Luke’s phone.
A dark head of hair eased out of the bunch, balled up and messy behind her head. She was the only one out of the lot of us who actually fit her academy uniform properly, the only one normal-sized with her petite shoulders and little body. She could easily be lost if one wasn’t looking for her.
“What’s going on?” she asked me, had to ask me first. It didn’t help I was closest to Luke’s phone screen. Looking guilty as hell, I hovered over it with my hands in my pockets.
I must have not been speaking quickly enough because she pushed into our circle, smelling like lilacs and other flowery stuff my housekeeper put in potpourri sacks around the house. I noticed December always had that distinct smell, smelling like home, and that really bothered me in the beginning.
It didn’t so much now.
Nudging Luke, I took his phone, then handed it to December but only because I had to do so. I’d been caught right over it, the evidence there, and I pushed a hand behind my neck.
“The video was texted to him by like three people,” I said, surprised I hadn’t gotten it. At the announcement, the girls crowded around December too, studying the device, and that’s when I looked up.
This thing was everywhere.
Literally people were on their phones all over the halls, hands over mouths and gasps in the air. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what they were all looking at. Only so many things could elicit such a strong reaction, and the girls in our circle did the same. Many of them cringed, others murmuring, “Oh my God,” but it was December I couldn’t get a read on. She just stared at it, her dark eyes almost blank while she held the phone. She wasn’t giving me anything to make a reaction off of.
She just watched the footage, completely silent, and worried by that, I eased in close to her.
“We don’t know who all it is,” I told her, honest. Upon watching the video, nothing but shadows could be made out. Shadows that moved and sometimes bounced. It was the sounds that brought the whole production into perspective, grunts of pleasure, moans, and needless to say, the imagination did the rest. This was an orgy before us, an orgy with multiple people, both guys and girls. Occasionally, the flash of a nipple would surface or even a dick shot, but with how dark it was in the room, it was impossible to determine who belonged to any of it. The way the footage was shot made everyone who participated completely anonymous and the only indicator Prinze, and obviously the rest of his lot, was involved was because Prinze himself was named. A girl had cried out his name.
One who mysteriously sounded like his current girlfriend, Mira.
&nbs
p; She’d been in on this too, all of this disturbing as shit, and in my wildest, I honestly couldn’t believe it. Stuff like this didn’t happen in real life, not here and outside a frat house somewhere. This was a new low, dirty.
And was nothing but affecting people.
It affected one person in particular, and I watched the moment Prinze’s name was moaned beneath the shadows. It was said repeatedly, the guy obviously getting a lot of action. December and her blank stare continued to absorb it all in, seemingly lost before me. The only reason the phone hadn’t been taken from her by me was because someone beat me to it—Birdie snatched the device right from December’s hands and thrust it at Luke. She smacked him over the head right after, she and the other girls calling it disgusting. I would have weighed in and agreed on that sentiment too, but was suddenly tugged by my uniform jacket.