Broken Empire A Reverse Harem High School Bully Romance - Callie Rose Page 0,65

I realized quickly that this was far from the first time the two of them had come here. They both knew every hole backward and forward, and Cole whispered a few pointers in my ear as I lined up my shots.

Every time he touched me, or even got close to me, I could feel Penny’s gaze on us, and I wondered if she knew even a fraction of what had transpired between me and her brother.

Please God, I hope not. Let her just think I’m his friend from school and leave it at that.

Whatever she knew, or whatever she saw in our interactions, seemed to convince her that she could trust me though, because by the sixth hole, she was loudly directing my shots, seeming more intent on helping me win than on winning herself. The chatter from the car resumed, and as we made our way through the next several holes, I learned all about her latest project at school, the class guinea pig that was about to have babies, and a girl at school who had called her a mean name.

Cole tensed at that, his chest puffing up and straining the dark t-shirt he wore as his gaze darkened. The tattoos on his arms shifted as his muscles flexed.

He and the other Princes had ruthlessly bullied me for a semester and a half, but he obviously wasn’t okay with anyone going after his own sister.

It was hypocritical as fuck, but I found it hard to hold onto my anger when he pulled Penny into his side and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. She hugged him back, then squirmed against his hold to go after her ball.

As she lined up her shot, he shook his head, his gaze still trained on her.

“I fucking dread her going to high school.”

My gaze flicked to his, and I wondered if he’d been thinking anything along the same lines I had.

“Yeah. It can be brutal.”

“If anyone ever did to her even close to what we did to you…” His eyes hardened like twin pools of ice. “I’d kill them.”

There was a dark promise in his voice, and a hint of self-recrimination too.

I glanced over at the girl with the light brown hair. Her head jerked toward her shoulder twice, but she hardly seemed to notice it as she ran to take her next putt. Cole’s fear for her made perfect sense to me. Kids—people in general—could be horribly cruel, and the easiest thing for them to target was always what was “different”. Whatever that difference may be.

“At least she has you on her side,” I said, returning my gaze to Cole.

He nodded, but I could see the muscles in his jaw jump as he clenched his teeth together. Then his brows drew together, and he stepped forward, his large frame filling the bubble of my space as he brushed his knuckles down my cheek.

“So do you, Tal. Always.”

The promise lingered in his voice, and my breath caught as I tilted my face up toward his, like a flower trying to catch the sun’s rays.

“Your turn, Talia! I got a hole in four!”

Penny came bounding back to us, breathless with excitement, and I jumped back from Cole as if she’d caught us kissing. We hadn’t been. There’d been close to a foot of space between our bodies. But somehow what we’d been doing felt even more intimate.

“Thanks, Penny. What should I do for this one, do you think?”

I listened to her instructions as she guided me through the finer points of the course and its obstacles, and with her help, I managed to avoid the water trap and tie her score.

We played through the last several holes, and although my leg started to burn from being on my feet for so long, I tried not to let my limp become more noticeable. Cole’s observant eyes tracked my every movement though, and I knew he could tell I was flagging.

Without saying anything, he offered his arm up for me to hold onto, and I took it gratefully, trying not to notice how good the warm bands of his forearms felt under my fingertips or the way his ginger and pine scent clung to his skin.

Even as my energy waned, Penny seemed to get more and more excited, and by the time we returned our clubs and headed back toward the car, she was practically bouncing on her feet. The small tics I’d noticed earlier had become more pronounced too, and when