Broken Empire (Boys of Oak Park Prep 3)

He grinned at me, his dimples popping out in his cheeks, and all of a sudden the foot of space between us felt like nothing at all.

“We are doing something, Legs. We’re keeping you safe. Honestly, that’s the best fucking revenge there is against that bitch. And besides, it’s all that matters.”

“But she’s ruining your reputation around the school. Don’t you care?”

He cocked his head as if seriously considering my question. Then he shrugged.

“Not as much as I thought I would, honestly.” He scooted a little closer to me on the couch, and it got a tiny bit harder to breathe. “When we first got here—our freshman year—there was another group that kind of ran things. We became the kings of our class, but they ruled the school. When they graduated, we took over. We started throwing parties at Clarendon Hall. Making nice with the right people and being assholes to the right people. And our families were already well known by everyone who goes here, so it just made it that much easier.”

He pulled his bottom lip between his teeth, pausing for a second as he considered his next words.

“But you know what? It was fucking lonely. I mean, we had each other, and I love those three fuckers like my own flesh and blood. But that was all we had. That’s why when we threw parties at Clarendon, we always ended up in a back room, just smoking and drinking by ourselves. Because we couldn’t trust anyone. Everyone wanted something—either a favor or to bring us down or just to get close to the fucking school royalty, you know? None of it was real. Not even whatever fucked up ‘relationship’ Adena and Mason had. It was all… fake.”

He leaned against the back cushions of the couch, putting his feet up on the coffee table and tugging me back to rest beside him. He left his arm around my shoulders, and his thumb rubbed gentle circles over my upper arm as he added, “So, no. Maybe I won’t miss whatever reputation I had around this place. Maybe it doesn’t fucking matter.”

I leaned into him, enjoying the strong, solid feel of his body against mine. My cast was too clunky for me to put it up on the coffee table too, but I put my good leg up, stretching it out alongside his.

“I never would’ve thought I’d hear one of the Princes say that.”

“Hey.” He poked my shoulder, careful to avoid any of my scars. “People can change, you know.”

The monumental meaning of those simple words, spoken with casual ease, hit me right in the chest.

He was right.

People could change.

But they so very rarely did.

“I know,” I whispered. Then I turned my head and craned my neck to press a kiss to his cheek, stealing a hit of his sunshine scent as I did.

His breath hitched, and his arm tightened around me, and for a second, my heart slammed wildly in my chest. Our faces were so close together—close enough that just the slightest shift of his head would bring our lips into contact.

He hesitated, and I could feel the coiled tension in his body, a mirror to the energy that pulsed through mine. Terror and giddy hope swept through me like a tidal wave as the moment seemed to hang suspended in time.

Then Finn cleared his throat, giving my shoulder one more squeeze before sitting up straight and grabbing his literature textbook off the table.

“Okay. So… what the fuck is this thing about?”

A snort-laugh burst out of me before I could stop it, and I scooted forward on the couch, grabbing my phone instead of my textbook. “Before we do that, I wanted to show you a couple things I found. I don’t know if they’re any good, but there are some tricks people use to…”

I went over what I’d found on the internet, passing the phone over to him a couple times to show him images and graphics that’d popped up. He nodded and occasionally shook his head as I talked, but the things I was saying seemed to make sense to him. I hadn’t been sure they would, since I didn’t know quite what it was like to be inside his head.

We spent several hours studying, working through a few techniques to help him sort the shapes of the letters into recognizable words. The whole time, our bodies stayed close, our sides pressed together as we bent our heads over the phone or the book. My skin felt electric and alive, as if the contact between us was building up a static charge, but maybe the most surprising thing about it was that I felt… comfortable.

I’d become almost used to the intense physical reactions I had around the Princes. My body had been drawn to them even when my mind and heart rebelled against that fact. From almost the first moment I’d met them, that connection had existed between us.

But this was different. The intense attraction was still there, but it was both tempered and inflamed by the fact that something else was there now too.

Something deeper.

A feeling I didn’t dare put words to yet.

Before Finn left, he bent down to where I still sat on the couch and pressed a kiss to my cheek, just like I’d done to him earlier. I watched him leave and stared at the door for a long time after he was gone, fingertips still brushing against my cheek.

He’d almost kissed me on the lips. I was sure of it.

And maybe more terrifying was the realization that I wished he had.