“No, December,” he said, turning on his heels. “What you need to do is stay out of this. It’s dangerous.”
“What’s dangerous?”
“Everything, and if you get involved and something happens to you too…”
He closed his lips, the halls completely silent between us. That ringing in my ears had returned, and I approached Jax.
I swallowed. “If you don’t tell me where he is, I will rip this goddamn town apart until I find him. I’ll make noise. I’ll scream until he talks to me and tells me what I want to know.”
I deserved that. I deserved everything, and Jax folded a hand over his face.
He dropped it. “Wait for my text,” he said, adjusting his bag on his arm. “Because when I come for you, I won’t wait.”
Sixteen
December
Before I left the library, I told Jax where he could come and get me, but he waited until nearly midnight before actually texting me…
And that was only to tell me he was outside.
My dad was in, so I had to take the way out of my room Royal himself had showed me. Paige and he used to sneak in and out of the house through my bedroom window before I came to stay here. Irony hit, I used this passage now, and by the grace of God, Hershey stayed quiet. I put her in her kennel so she could sleep while I was away.
“We’re going to make this quick,” Jax stated pretty much immediately after I got inside his car. I had to go down the street to get in since I didn’t want him to park in the driveway for my dad to see. He started the car. “He doesn’t know we’re coming.”
He didn’t know? Maybe because Jax knew better. I highly doubted Royal wanted to see me.
Well, he was going to anyway.
I had so many questions it maddened. Especially after that confrontation with Jax. He drove swiftly, a red number with a loud exhaust. I had no idea the make and model. He’d stripped all that from the car, a custom job, but it looked really expensive just like everyone else’s rides who attended Windsor Prep. He had money like everyone else, and I only didn’t fight him on his speed since he was doing what I asked.
“Where is he?” I asked along the way. I couldn’t see Jax’s face, a hood over his head like we were about to rob some place. He came over in a black hoodie, not even wearing a coat tonight.
“His house, Lindquist,” he said, then faced me. “His dad’s making him stay there.”
After the suspension maybe, and I wasn’t surprised. Ramses’ family had him under lock and key after all.
Sitting back with that, I faced the window, watching the scenery change from nice to nicer. The foliage was more designed, the houses bigger and with larger yards. Eventually, we ended up outside of a gated community, one Jax key-coded his way into, then down a street that made my dad’s huge-ass house look like a fucking shack.
The homes were basically mini versions of Windsor House, small castles, and if not that, Victorians. The largest castle dwelled on the corner, but Jax stopped just short of that, pulling into a driveway next door. He clicked a button, and the garage door opened, revealing not one but two more luxury cars. One was a Lexus and the other a Mercedes SUV.
We parked between them.
“Why do you have a garage door opener to Royal’s garage?” I unbelted, but wouldn’t be surprised considering they were bros.
Jax smirked. “Maybe because it’s not his garage but mine. Well, my moms’ since this is their house.”
He said moms, as in plural. Caused me to stop a beat but not long. I mean, why would it? Jax stared at me like maybe people had in the past, but seeing I wasn’t now, he got out of the car and I did too. He waved me over after he locked the garage, and instead of going inside the house, we went behind it. We cut across a yard gorgeously landscaped with potted plants, a rock garden, and even a koi pond. It was all lovely, his moms obviously having done a great job. We didn’t stay there long because soon Jax was pushing through tight hedges and into the yard next door. This yard managed to trump even his, the castle next door, and Jax had to guide me with finesse just to work around all the design work and landscaping. There were actual sculpted hedges to look like animals and other various designs. Noticing me looking at them, Jax stopped.
“Royal’s dad keeps up with them,” he said, frowning. “They were his mom’s. All of this.”
I turned in the maze in wonder, and if I didn’t know it now, his words confirmed where I was. We were in Royal’s backyard.
We were at Royal’s castle.
He lived in one like a real prince, steeples and everything like out of a storybook. He had a real castle in the middle of a suburban neighbor.
I buried my hands in my coat pockets, and without any more detours, Jax tour-guided me right up to the back door. He put a key code in, something he knew, and after the security disarmed, he was able to open the door with his key. He stopped a moment, texting inside a dark room, then with the flick of the light, he revealed a celebrity kitchen.