Broken Empire A Reverse Harem High School Bully Romance - Callie Rose Page 0,13
of kindness.
But I couldn’t decide. So I just tucked it away in my heart for safekeeping.
Chapter 5
LEAH: Are you fucking serious? Adena????
ME: Please don’t make me regret telling you this.
LEAH: You think Adena tried to kill you??!?!
ME: You’re making me regret it.
LEAH: WTF???
ME: I don’t know. The guys think somebody fucked with my car. That the brakes didn’t fail by accident. I don’t know who else hates me as much as she does.
LEAH: Yeah… I mean, at one point, I would’ve said the Princes, but…
ME: It wasn’t them.
LEAH: And you’re sure about that?
Yes. I was.
I had offered up my trust to the Princes, and they had offered theirs back. The peace between us might still be tentative and new, but I had chosen to believe in it. The risk of trust was always the possibility of getting hurt, but after everything the four boys and I had gone through, that risk felt was beginning to feel worth it.
ME: 100%
LEAH: Okay. Damn. Adena really is a fucking psycho. Do you think she knew that could kill you??
ME: I dunno. We don’t even know if it was her. We only have a bunch of hunches and no actual evidence.
LEAH: Um, exhibit A. She’s a fucking psycho.
ME: Yeah.
LEAH: You doing okay?
ME: Yeah.
LEAH: …really?
ME: Yeah. Just bored. And sore.
LEAH: Okay… if you say so.
LEAH: Hey, I gotta go. We’re opening presents soon. Text you later. Merry Xmas!
ME: You too!
Tossing the phone down on the mattress beside me, I checked the time before the screen went black. It was just after nine a.m., and Philip had insisted that we all do our gift exchange by the tree in the massive living room. I was starting to really appreciate my grandpa—his careful way of speaking, his old-fashioned mannerisms, his sardonic humor—but sometimes I felt like he was trying so hard to make up for the mistakes he’d made with my mother that he forgot I wasn’t her.
I wasn’t the little girl who’d barreled down the stairs excitedly on Christmas morning. The one he’d spoiled and pampered and convinced Santa Claus was real.
But still, I could tell the holiday meant a lot to him, and I wanted to give him a little of that cheer.
It’d been a week since I’d left the hospital, and my bruises were slowly fading. The bandage on my head was gone, and the scrapes and marks on my temple looked less gruesome. My stitches itched sometimes, and my leg still pulsed with pain often, but I was feeling better.
Using my crutches, I hobbled out to the living room to find both of my grandparents already there, waiting for me. Jacqueline had been mostly civil to me since I’d come back to live under her roof, and she’d gone out of her way to make sure I received good care. But we still rarely talked or even looked at each other.
“Ah, Talia!”
Philip rose from the couch, meeting me when I was halfway across the room and escorting me to a large, plush chair before resuming his seat near Jacqueline. I’d ordered them both presents online—gift-wrap included—and I knew the gifts were lame as hell. But it hardly seemed to matter to Philip. He beamed like a little kid as he handed out presents for us each to open, and when he opened the set of fountain pens I’d gotten him, I thought he might strain a muscle in his face from smiling so hard.
He wanted this to be okay.
He wanted us all to be happy.
He wanted it so badly that his jovial voice filled in the gaps in the conversation that lingered between Jacqueline and me, and for a little while, I could almost pretend everything was okay.
I watched him hand her a small gift-wrapped box, his anxious gaze settling on her face as she opened it, and it struck me for the first time—he really does love her. Their relationship made no sense to me, and it was easy to assume that for a wealthy older couple, a marriage was more about preserving money and power than about love.
But I didn’t think that was the case here.
He loved her. And judging by the way I’d seen her treat him at the hospital, the tenderness and worry that’d crossed her features when she looked at him, she loved him too.
I caught myself wondering how he could possibly love someone like Jacqueline, someone capable of the coldness and cruelty I’d seen in her, then shook my head ruefully.