Defiant Princess (Boys of Oak Park Prep 2)

That was what Mason had come from. That man shared his DNA, had been the primary influence in his life.

The thought was vaguely terrifying.

Mason’s gaze passed over me as they walked farther inside the gymnasium, and for a moment, the facade cracked. His features softened, his expression warmed.

Then the two of them were gone, swallowed up by the crowd.

I had alrea

dy seen Elijah’s parents once, but it was a much different experience now that I knew what I knew about them. His father projected strength and control, but I was sure he hadn’t seemed so controlled when he was high off his ass on coke. His mom looked exactly the same as she had last time I’d seen her—perfect, elegant, regal. It was hard to imagine her destroying Elijah’s guitars, and I wondered if she’d gotten one of the house staff to do it or done it herself.

Elijah’s uniform was crisp and pressed, and his mask of perfection fit him so perfectly it was hard see past it. But now that I knew him better, I thought I could glimpse beneath it—could see the acute misery below the surface.

He caught me staring at him and dipped his head slightly, looking almost ashamed.

Finn was the only one who didn’t seem to change entirely in front of his parents. He shot me a broad grin as they walked in, and when his folks moved quickly through the crowd and left him behind, he wandered over to my table.

Guess I lost that bet with myself.

“Hey, Legs. Got roped into working this thing, huh?”

“Yeah.” I picked up one of the tri-folded pamphlets in front of me. “Can I interest you in a brochure?”

He rolled his eyes. “Nah, I’m good. I see their strategy though. Get the hottest girl here to hand out the most boring shit. It’s the only chance they have of anybody taking one of those.”

The honey-brown of his eyes darkened as he spoke, and I shifted slightly, an ache building up beneath my skin. My body responded to all four of the Princes in ways I’d never understood, as if I were some kind of instrument only they knew how to play.

I was about to make some lame joke back when Finn’s expression grew suddenly serious.

“Hey. You okay? Being”—he gestured with his head around the room—“back here?”

He didn’t have to explain what he was talking about. It’d been the first thing I’d thought of when I’d walked through the door, and no matter how much I tried, I hadn’t been able to undo the lingering knot in my stomach.

I was surprised he’d asked, that he’d openly acknowledged that awful moment in our history. We didn’t talk about it often, although it colored almost every interaction I had with the Princes.

“That depends,” I said evenly. “Are you planning to wreck my life again?”

“No, Tal.” His gaze was serious, his voice even more so. “I told you. That’s over. Never again.”

He had told me that. And I had told him to prove it, to try to win back my trust by demonstrating over and over that I could trust him.

And he had. He’d done exactly that ever since the day I’d broken his phone.

But I’d also told him it might never be enough. That I might never stop waiting for the other shoe to drop, for them to twist everything that had once seemed beautiful and good into something awful and destructive. And as he took in my expression, I could tell he knew I was still waiting. That I still didn’t trust.

A flash of sadness passed over his features, but then he squared his broad shoulders. He leaned across the table and pressed a kiss to my cheek, his breath warm against my skin as he murmured in a low voice, “It’s okay. I’ll keep trying.”

Then he pulled back and picked up one of the brochures on the table, making an exaggerated show of studying it intently as he walked away. I shook my head, smiling in spite of myself at the goofball. It was moments like those that made me want to pretend this could all be okay, that there really could be a reset button, a chance for me and the Princes to start over.

I glanced over the crowd again as Finn walked away, catching sight of Cole and his family. His little sister had come too, and my heart jumped with a strange sort of recognition. After hearing Cole talk about her and what I’d read about her, I felt like I knew her already. Penny was holding tightly onto their mom’s hand—the petite, almost frail-looking woman I’d seen at the awards ceremony.

As they moved through the crowd closer to my table, my stomach dipped. There was a purple mark on Cole’s face that I was sure hadn’t been there when I’d seen him earlier in the day.

He hadn’t gotten it from the royals’ fight club, and I was sure he hadn’t walked into a fucking door.

His dad had hit him.

It was ballsy, in a sick-as-fuck way, to go for the face like that—especially before “Parent Appreciation Night”. My dad had generally kept his targets where no one else would see them, only going for the face when he was really drunk or lost control.