The boys keep going with their shifty eyes, each of them looking a little more guilty than before. “Okay, yeah,” Grayson says slowly, a slight cringe playing on his lips as he realizes there is no way around this. “We’re all a little older. I’m twenty-two. I did a year of medical training after I graduated high school, Carver was twenty-one the month before you got here, King is twenty and Cruz … well, clearly you know Cruz will be twenty soon.”
King scoffs shaking his head as he looks at Grayson. “Really, man? After all these years, you’re still forgetting my birthday?” He looks across my room, meeting my hard stare. “Just for the record, my birthday was a month before Carver’s. I’m twenty-one.”
I shake my head. “I don’t care how old you guys are. I want to know why the hell you’ve lied about it for so long.”
Cruz shrugs his shoulders. “Technically, we haven’t lied about it. You never specifically asked how old we were. If you wanted to know, we would have told you at any time.”
I adjust my blanket, pulling it tighter around my body. “You let me think you were all graduating high school with me. You might not have technically lied, but you did when you let me believe that you were in school with me. Like what the fuck was that? Were you just in school to keep an eye on me?”
Carver nods. “Pretty much,” he says with a bored shrug. “We started ‘school’ at the beginning of the year so we could learn the layout and get familiar with everything for security reasons. To all the other students we just looked like four new transfers at the start of senior year. We knew every inch of that school. Fuck, I bet these guys even know that school better than they know every inch of your body.”
My cheeks flush the brightest shade of red as Cruz smirks. “Nah, fuck the school. I don’t know anything better than your body.”
Holy shit. These guys.
I give myself a second to cool down before getting back on track. “You guys went to graduation and even had the principal reward you with a certificate, like come on.”
King just laughs. “It was far too late in the game to give up the act. All the other students thought we were graduating. It would be fishy as fuck if we showed up to watch you graduate and not get a certificate ourselves, and with the entire Ravenwood Heights police department sniffing around, we couldn’t afford that kind of attention.”
King’s comment pulls at a memory of Ember standing before me on my first day at Ravenwood Heights Academy, telling me how she has been crushing on them for years, how she’s been watching them around the school since she was a freshman, and how the whole school has been trying to decode the secrets of Dynasty. But that doesn’t add up. How could she have been crushing on them for years if they only showed up at the school a few months ago? And since being here, Ember is the only person who’s even whispered the name Dynasty to me … apart from the boys of course.
Someone’s lying to me and I don’t think it’s the boys, but why?
I let out a heavy sigh and stare at them all, my mind beginning to whirl. I’m not ready to question them about Ember, that’s too raw and I want to be sure before I go accusing her of anything, but what am I even accusing her of? I don’t know.
Not wanting the guys to see that something is bugging me, I force a smile. “So, I’ve been screwing a bunch of old fuckers.”
Cruz laughs and scoops my tank off the floor. “Get dressed and go to sleep. It’s been a long as fuck day. Besides, you’re never going to heal if you keep letting us assholes fuck you into oblivion.”
I roll my eyes and go to pull my tank over my head, but as the blanket falls to my waist, I don’t miss the way that Carver’s gaze drops to my tits with a need that nearly knocks me the fuck away.
“Well what are you waiting for? Get out of here and give a girl some privacy,” I grumble to all four of them, sliding down in my bed and letting my head crash onto the pillow. “If you need help with your hearing aids just let me know.”
The guys walk away, scoffing and laughing to themselves, and when a soft “Night, Winter,” sounds through the room, I raise my head off the pillow and look back toward the door to find King standing there with his fingers resting over the light switch. “Love you.”
Warmth fills my chest, and as I look back at him, taking in the adoration shining through his ocean eyes, I realize just how right this is. It’s pure, unrelenting, and absolutely everything. I will never find this kind of deep, unfiltered connection with anyone.