Court Kept (Court High 3)

My jaw moved. “Revenge.”

“Revenge?”

I nodded. “And Royal told me that too. That was the reason for the whole thing. She wanted to get someone back and do so with the power of the Court.”

“Who?”

Thinking about previous investigations, I faced him. “I have my suspicions. But only that.”

Ramses considered that, reaching into his bag and crunching on chips again. “And Prinze admitted all this to you? Openly?”

“Pretty much.”

“And you believe him?” He now was almost angry and definitely judgmental from the way he stared at me. “Because he’s dangerous, December. Obviously with what we know.”

“With what we think we know, Ramses.” I stood. “Royal is a lot of things, yes, but there’s also so many things we don’t know, you don’t know.”

Like how he had a heart, a huge heart, and showed it when he didn’t think people were looking. I recalled the stuff he’d done for me in the past. Helping me with Hershey, saving me and Hershey at one point, and then the other things. He sent Knight to Arizona to watch over me, an action that ultimately kept something really bad from happening to me in the end. Thinking it over, Royal had done a multitude of things that, at the time, I hadn’t understood, but maybe I was starting to now. This thing with Mira only helped support it, his possible obligation to her and pushing me away. What if he really was just with her because he had no choice? What if he broke things off with me because of that choice?

And then there was how he’d helped Ramses.

It was something Ramses would never know, as I didn’t have the courage to tell him. Royal protected Ramses and had obviously done so for me.

“I think you know why, Em…”

He’d said that to me too, keeping Ramses from that other haze for me. Knowing that information may or may not hurt Ramses’ pride, and I didn’t want to make things worse. I’d kept all this from him, talked to Royal instead of him, when initially, we’d been in all this together. I didn’t want to lose our friendship. It was something that was important to me and kept me out of a lot of hard times in the past.

Ramses sighed, his large shoulders sagging. Balling up the chip bag, he tossed it in the trash.

“What do you need from me, then?” he asked, surprising me. He really was that friend I believed, completely there for me even though I didn’t deserve it. He didn’t owe me anything.

Maybe that’s what made him better than me.

I snuck a glance over. “You still wanna help?”

He shrugged. “I don’t trust Prinze as far as I can throw him, but if you believe in him. I’ll help you.”

Relieved by that, I threw my arms around him, I think surprising us both. I’d hugged him before when I thought he was dying. And really, that time hadn’t counted because I was just trying to get him warm.

Unlike that last time, he was able to hug back, his arms no longer bound. Laughing, he pulled away, and when he looked at me, he was smiling. “All right, but I didn’t say this wouldn’t come without a cost. You’d owe me. Seriously, I can’t stand that guy.”

Chuckling, I sat back. “Okay, how would I owe you?”

This got that Ramses to grin. He crossed his legs at the knee. “Nothing too big. Just a break from our double lives for a night. You game?”

Was I game? Seriously, I’d be owing him. I laughed. “Duh. What do you want to do?”

The alarm sounding the end of lunch flooded over the campus, and after tossing away the rest of the trash, we got our coats back on.

“It’s really nothing major,” he said, handing me mine. “Just dinner.”

“Dinner?”

“Yeah, um… with my family.”

That gave me pause, but before I could protest, he put up his hands. “Okay, so it’s so not really a thing.”

“How is it not a thing, and how is that a break from our double lives?”