Broken Empire A Reverse Harem High School Bully Romance - Callie Rose Page 0,79
better.
And Finn was right. She’d done it to herself.
“So, that’s it then?” I asked, looking around at the guys. “We’re done? For tonight, at least?”
“Not quite.” Mason’s green eyes glittered as he met my gaze, and a small smile curved his lips. “There’s something we still need to do.”
My brows pulled together. “What?”
We hadn’t exactly gotten revenge on Preston—although the fact that he’d gotten his ass kicked by first Cole and then Mason came pretty close. And besides, he was in the video too, standing there like an idiot while his girlfriend went nuts and confessed to fucking a teacher, trying to kill a girl, and sleeping her way into an Ivy League school.
“You’ll see.”
Mason stood up from the couch, draping his tux jacket over his shoulder with one hand before extending his other down to me. I accepted it and let him draw me to my feet as the others rose too.
When we left Clarendon Hall, I expected him to turn right to head toward the Wastelands, thinking they’d drop me back off at my dorm—but instead, the four boys led me back across the quad toward the gymnasium.
A few stragglers in prom dresses and tuxes were walking toward the parking lot, but I had a feeling pretty much everyone had left already, heading to after-parties off campus.
“Um, guys?” I laughed softly. “I think prom is over. And I don’t care that we missed most of it—it was still the best prom ever, as far as I’m concerned.”
Mason just shook his head, not answering with words.
I didn’t put up any resistance as we reached the large building, curious as to what on earth we were doing here. A kid pushed the door open and stepped out just as we were arriving, and I saw Cole press what looked like several bills into his hand before the guy slipped away into the night.
We headed through the door he had opened for us and into the large space. The lights were off, so the room was lit only by the glow of the exit signs. The elaborate decorations were still up—a crew would probably come by early tomorrow to take everything down and turn the space back into a regular gymnasium—but it was quiet and empty.
“Yeah, we definitely missed it.” I kept my voice hushed, but it still seemed to fill the large room.
“Aw, c’mon now, where’s your imagination, Legs?”
Finn nudged my shoulder just as Elijah and Cole went to two tables off to the side of the dance floor and turned on the electric lanterns that’d been set on the linen tablecloths. I recognized them as the same ones the guys used to light the clearing in the woods when they’d hosted their illicit fight club bouts off campus.
Except, unlike when they’d been used in the woods, these lanterns had mini disco balls rigged to dangle in front of them. As they caught the harsh light from the lanterns, the silver globes refracted it into pretty white sparks that danced over the floor and tables.
I huffed a surprised, disbelieving laugh, glancing over to see Mason turn on a third lantern.
They didn’t light the whole space, but they provided enough illumination to give our corner of the gymnasium a soft, sparkling glow.
Then Mason propped up his phone against the abandoned centerpiece in the middle of the table, pressing the button on the side to raise the volume before hitting “play”.
Quiet music began to pour out from the speakers of the phone—not nearly as loud as the thumping bass that’d filled the room earlier in the evening, but loud enough for me to recognize the song.
It was the one he’d sent me before my audition for the Pacific Contemporary Ballet.
The one he’d said made him think of me.
He draped his tux jacket over the back of a chair and turned to me, and even in the dim light, the beautiful green of his irises made my breath catch. His lips quirked up on one side as he held his hand out, palm up.
“May I have this dance, Princess?”
I bit my lip, a rush of emotions filling me so suddenly it almost made my legs weak.
They had done this for me.
I’d been only too happy to sacrifice my senior prom if it meant taking Adena down—but the Princes hadn’t been satisfied with that.
So they’d given it back to me.
It was tiny and makeshift, poorly lit, with a bad sound system.