Defiant Princess (Boys of Oak Park Prep #2) - Callie Rose Page 0,34

but I had to fight back the panic that kept rising up my throat.

Footsteps crossed slowly back to the living room, and when Cole sank onto the couch, I almost let out a yelp. Luckily, the furniture was good quality and sturdy, so his added weight didn’t make the frame press any harder on me than it already was.

The video on my phone was still recording, capturing an expanse of floor and part of Cole’s leg. He was right above me, his feet so close I could’ve reached out and touched them, and I heard him drag in several rough, uneven breaths.

I knew that sound too.

Against my will, pity and understanding rose up in my chest, making the already compressed cavity feel even tighter. I could guess exactly what Cole was feeling right now, and a stupid part of me wanted to comfort him, even though I should feel nothing but hate for him. Even though maybe I should be rejoicing in his pain.

“Fuck,” he muttered, and in that single utterance, I heard more emotion than he usually let slip in a dozen words.

I squeezed my eyes shut, sure my heart was pounding so hard he’d hear it any minute.

Before I could do anything stupid, before I could give myself away, his phone chimed. He shifted slightly on the couch, and a second later, his voice came again.

“Yeah?”

And just like that, the old Cole was back. His voice was neutral, strong, in control. I could relate to that too—pulling a veil over the hurt, hiding it away—and I hated that I had this in common with the black-haired boy.

“Yeah. It was just my dad. I can meet you. Give me twenty minutes.”

He was already standing as he spoke, and less than a minute later, he flipped the light off and left the large apartment.

I hit the button on my phone to stop recording, but I didn’t move. I stayed under the couch for almost twenty minutes, giving Cole time to get wherever he was going—hopefully somewhere far, far away from Clarendon Hall.

When I finally scraped my way out from under the couch, my entire body felt like it’d been compressed. The bruises on my sides were matched by new aches on my front and back, and now that my chest wasn’t so constricted, my heart picked up the pace like a runaway train.

I pried the door open a quarter of an inch, and when I saw the hall was empty, I ran for it.

Fuck subtlety. When I reached the ground floor, I darted out the front doors and sprinted back to Prentice Hall.

I was gasping for air when I finally got back to my room, and I pulled the little black notebook out of my back pocket, flipping to the section on Cole Mercer.

As I wrote father is abusive, a wet droplet spattered onto the page.

I hadn’t even realized I was crying.

Chapter 9

Went to rehab at age fourteen.

Father is abusive.

I flipped pages of the little black notebook back and forth, reading those two lines over and over again. It’d taken me hours after I got back to my dorm the night before to get my heart rate back under control, and I’d kept glancing out the window, expecting to see the Princes storming across the lawn to demand their secrets back.

But they hadn’t.

As far as I knew, they didn’t have any idea I’d even been up in their rooms.

Bright midday sunlight glanced off the pages of the book as I read. I’d decided to skip lunch. I wasn’t sure I could meet Cole or Elijah’s eyes without giving away what I knew, and until I was sure I could keep my expression neutral, I didn’t want to face them.

Went to rehab at age fourteen.

Father is abusive.

These were exactly the kinds of secrets I had come back to Oak Park to dig up. The kind that could be used to inflict deep, lasting pain—that could damage not just Cole and Elijah, but their whole families.

I’d found the buried skeletons. And not only did I know about them, I had proof.

So why did I feel a little sick as I flipped through the notebook? Why did my stomach turn as I thought about the evidence I’d collected on my phone, now safely stored on the tiny flash drive I kept enfolded between the pages?

Had either of those boys ever felt like this as they’d plotted and carried out their plan to force me out of Oak Park? Like they were killing a