Broken Empire A Reverse Harem High School Bully Romance - Callie Rose Page 0,47
school buildings on campus, so I tugged him toward the Wastelands, flipping my backpack around and yanking out my key card when we reached it. I’d started carrying my own bag again—something the guys only allowed because I’d told them it was good strength building for my recovery.
Walking had become a lot easier, but I still got twinges of pain in my ankle, and I wasn’t used to walking this fast. A sharp pain shot up my leg as we headed toward the stairs, making my steps falter, and Mason finally dug his heels in, stopping our forward progress.
“Elevator,” he muttered.
It wasn’t worth arguing with him, so I diverted our course to the elevator. By the time we reached my floor, I wasn’t pulling him along anymore, he was walking beside me—but the heaviness of his footsteps hadn’t eased up.
I opened the door to my little apartment, and as soon as we were both inside, he stalked into the living room, throwing down his bag and glaring out the window with his hands in his pockets like he wished he could teleport back to Craydon and punch Preston a dozen more times.
For a moment, silence filled the small space as I dropped my backpack and leaned against the door, staring at him with my arms crossed.
What the hell was that about?
It wasn’t like he didn’t have reasons to want to hit Preston. All the Princes did, and if it came down to it, I’d be fifth in line behind them. Same with Adena.
But they’d all held back for weeks as we tried to find some connection between Adena and her posse and my car crash—and some better weapon to use against them than brute force or violence. Because as satisfying as those might feel, they wouldn’t actually accomplish much.
I had thought Mason understood that.
But clearly not.
“So.” I didn’t move away from the door, and I pitched my voice just loud enough to be heard across the room. “You wanna tell me what happened?”
He ran a hand through his brown hair, still staring out the window. “It doesn’t fucking matter.”
“Obviously it does, because you went after Preston West on school grounds, during school hours. I don’t get how everything works in this place, but I know there are some things even you guys can’t just get away with. That’s why you do your fight club off campus on the weekends. So what made you do it?”
Mason spun to face me, the movement so sudden it made me jerk in surprise. If I’d thought the walk back to my place had calmed him down, I’d been dead wrong. He seemed more angry now than he had back at Craydon, and I could almost see the bolts of electric energy zapping from his body.
“Ten. Weeks.” He moved toward me, bearing down on me like a boulder rolling down a hill. “That’s how fucking long it’s been since your wreck, Princess. Ten goddamn weeks. And what? What have we done about it? What do we know? Nothing!”
“Are you talking about Adena?” I pressed away from the door, straightening to meet him as he reached me. “You’re right. We don’t know. So maybe it wasn’t her. She hasn’t tried anything else since—”
“It fucking was her! I know it!”
He spun, pounding both fists against the breakfast bar that separated the open kitchen from the living room. Everything on the counter jumped from the force of his blow, and I winced. He was so pissed off he was liable to hurt himself.
“Mason!” I grabbed his arm, spinning him back around, trying to get him to focus back on me. “What the fuck happened? What did Preston do to piss you off? Did he say something? Did he admit they did it?”
His eyes narrowed, and for a second, he hardly looked like himself. Maybe he would’ve said the same thing about me, because he was looking at me like he didn’t even know me. He shook his head, his lip curling slightly as he stalked slowly toward me.
“Jesus, Tal. You don’t get it, do you? Sometimes you don’t get proof. Sometimes the bad guys don’t fucking confess and ask for penance. Sometimes you just. Fucking. Know!”
The way he was looking at me turned my stomach.
It reminded me too much of the way he’d looked at me during my first semester at this school. As if he’d known, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I had wronged him somehow. As if I’d deserved whatever was coming to me.