Page 10 of Midnight Curfew

Releasing me, he walks around my desk, sliding one hand into his pocket as he leaves.

But before he goes, I call out, “Nero might’ve ordered Seneca to commit suicide,” I warn him, “but it took a lot for him to die.”

Callum turns his head over his shoulder, and déjà vu slams me in the chest, making me falter.

Instead of countering with another threat, he simply smiles. Big. White teeth flashing like a joyful kid in a candy store.

And Nero didn’t outlive his teacher for long, either.

“I never thought your father would be the easier one to make suffer,” I taunt.

His eyes dance. “But, Dallas…” he whispers. “Nero’s father wasn’t around to stop him.”

My lungs constrict, insufficient air pouring in. Nero’s father died when he was a child, and he murdered his mother. Callum’s mother died when he was a child, and…

I force down the lump in my throat. He has plans that don’t just include me.

Callum leaves, his crew disappearing with him, and I grab my coffee cup, dumping the liquor in my trash can.

I am going to need a clear head.

Let’s see what you’ve learned, Callum Ames.

2

Callum

My collar sticks to my neck, my tie growing tighter. I want to loosen it, unbutton the top button, but they’ll think I’m irritable because of him instead of the heat.

It’s too damn hot. I could’ve just waited for fall. Spent some much-deserved time abroad after what I put myself through the past four years, but I’ve done my time, waiting to face him again.

Besides…if half the town isn’t gone already, they will be soon. The mayor’s already taken off for his summerhouse in Maine, and the police will be rotating their vacations as well. It’s perfect. All those empty St. Carmen mansions…It’ll be too much for those Swamp Rats to resist. It always is.

I don’t care how organized they’ve gotten, paving their dirt roads, building a school, and positioning themselves into careers. They’re still Tryst Six. Orphans of Axel and Trysta Jaeger.

Criminals. Troublemakers.

“He seems more controlled than I remember,” Milo muses.

He meets my eyes from where he sits across from me in the town car, and I take in the scar Clay Collins left on his face in high school. A lot longer and thicker than the one I got that same night.

I never told my friends about my past with Dallas, but during that summer in high school—for one month—I didn’t work hard to hide that I was spending time with him, either. I knew where I was going all those nights and that one rainy afternoon, and no one was stopping me.

The great thing about rich friends, though, is that they owe you silence if they expect it for themselves.

Jerome sighs next to him. “No, he just grew wiser. A man knows there’s a time and place for indulgences. You’ll find out someday.”

Milo chuckles. “Fuck you.”

Jerome Watson is more than a decade older than us, but he still has no wife and no kids, so he fits in with the bachelors.

All of us sit in the back seats, Vincent and I with our backs to the driver, who guides the car smoothly through town, away from the school and up to Fox Hill. It’s almost one in the morning, but we’re far from late.

Turning my eyes out the window, I curl my fingers into my pants leg, feeling my heart beat against my chest.

My hands hum and haven’t stopped since I touched him. I can still feel my fingers locking around his wrists, remembering a time when it was the other way around.

I close my eyes for a moment. Then two. Milo is right. Dallas Jaeger was never a slave to his temper like his brother Iron.