“Maybe. And you’ll never be taken seriously because no American aristocrat worth their weight in salt wants to marry you. I can get any girl at the academy if I wanted.”
“Please,” Harper snorts, but Tristan’s face is already twisting into a cruel smile.
“Really? Because I’ve fucked every one of your friends but you, and that shriveled trollop you call a best friend. Imagine that.” Harper’s blue eyes go wide, and she swings her arm at the table, knocking dishes to the floor.
“Get up from our table.” She turns her gaze to me. “And get that whore off of my chair before she leaves one of her peasant diseases on it.”
“Harper, get fucked,” I snap, tossing my orange juice in her face. Her cronies are up the steps in an instant, and all the boys are rising from their chairs, legs scraping across the floor. There’s a bit of a standoff there where Zack and John Hannibal are in each other’s faces, and Windsor is clutching a knife like he might stab Gregory Van Horn in the neck.
The doors open again and in walks Ms. Felton.
She pauses when she sees us all up in arms, and frowns.
“Is everything okay in here?” she questions, her voice stern and accusatory. A long moment passes before Windsor very carefully and purposefully puts the knife back on the table and spins to face her with a huge smile on his princely face. There’s a darkness flitting behind his gaze that I don’t miss though. Like I said, Windsor York is dangerous. As much as I like him, I’m going to have to keep an eye on him, too.
“Just splendid, bloody fantastic. These folks were just explaining to us how lovely the scrambled eggs are.”
“Of course they were,” Ms. Felton says with a tired sounding sigh. “Alright, anyone who’s not eating at the big table needs to find a seat elsewhere.” Just then our waiter appears and starts laying out the dishes we ordered. Creed is the first to sit back down, slumping into his chair like a boneless doll. A sexy, muscular doll with ice-blue eyes who just asked me to be his girlfriend, but … still.
We all take our seats as Harper leans in and hisses at me.
“You are so fucking dead, Working Girl,” she snaps, eyes blazing.
“Harper du Pont,” Ms. Felton warns, and Harper turns to go, only to trip on Wind’s outstretched leg. She goes down hard, tumbling right off the dais and onto the floor where her jaw hits with a resounding crack and a lot of blood. “Oh my God!” Ms. Felton is there an instant, helping Harper up along with Becky’s assistance.
It all seems like an accident, so nobody gets in trouble, but I meet Windsor’s eyes from across the table and I know. That was no accident at all.
Right now, all I can do is eat my French toast, but later, we’re going to have to have a talk.
No, not just us: everyone.
Because if they’re going to play my game, they need to know my rules.Drama and gossip. That’s what makes up the entirety of my first day back. I’ve never been the subject of so much hate and so much awe at the same time. Pair that with Lizzie’s arrival on campus—she’s practically a legend here already—and the disruption in the usual social hierarchy, and it’s virtual chaos.
We have another small stand-off at the Gallery, but this time, Harper and her people get there first and quite literally barricade the door, so we can’t get in. After the confrontation in The Mess, the staff is watching us, so we end up sitting in the front row of the chapel instead, colored light filtering in the stained-glass windows and bathing the crowd in brilliant reds, yellows, and oranges.
By the time it’s all over, I’m collapsing on my bed and covering my head with a pillow. I’m so tired that I fall right asleep and don’t wake up until it’s time for class the next morning, bolting out of bed with a start to run a brush through my hair, fix my makeup, and take off down the hall to homeroom.
Miranda and Tristan are waiting to escort me, and we meet up with Zayd and Windsor on the way. Creed and Zack are in a different homeroom together, while Lizzie and Andrew are in another.
“Have you given much thought to what my brother said yesterday?” Miranda whispers as we leave Tower One and head toward our statistics classroom, the boys trailing slightly behind us. She sounds half eager and half nervous to hear my answer.
My cheeks flush, but I shrug my shoulders. Between my new schedule yesterday, and all of this drama with the Plebs and the, uh, ex-Bluebloods, I didn’t have a ton of time to think about what Creed did or didn’t ask. He said he was thinking about how to ask me to be his girlfriend. He didn’t actually ask.
