Devils' Day Party: A High School Bully Romance - C.M. Stunich Page 0,161

a sip of his tea and then pauses to glance down the hallway, like he expects one of my moms to appear. Mama Jane very well might, and her initial reaction to finding out that Calix and I slept together was not good, despite her sex positive beliefs. She doesn't like him; he bullies her little girl. Jane thinks I deserve better.

I agree.

But the Knight Crew deserves a chance to prove themselves. I'm laying everything out on the table here, spilling every grain of truth that I have, and seeing what they'll do with it.

“He's had to change his number a dozen times,” Barron says, shrugging his broad shoulders. “And move dorm rooms after she picked the lock and snuck in one night.”

“I woke up with her naked in my bed,” Calix grinds out, his own jaw clenched as Raz remains uncharacteristically silent. “She won't leave me alone.”

“Why?” I ask, trying to understand Erina's motivations. They must be strong ones, if she was willing to kill Calix for his feelings towards me. I mean, likely she has barely concealed trauma, like all the rest of the students at Crescent Prep, but there has to be some specific reason she'd target Calix. “Did you fuck her and leave her sad and lonely, too?” Shit. I shouldn’t have said that, especially not after what he told me at the hotel. Old habits die hard, it seems, even for me.

“I never touched her,” Calix snaps, running his fingers through his ebony hair in a rare moment of frustration. He turns his raven-dark eyes on me, searching my face as I stand there with incense smoke curling around me. “Boys are more often monsters, yes, but you attend Crescent Prep with us. You know as well as I do that girls can be cruel.”

“You've never done anything to her?” I ask skeptically, raising an eyebrow and then moving back to my seat. My feet bump into Calix's as I settle in and our eyes meet. “No bullying? No tricks? No teasing?”

“She hangs out with us, doesn't she? I've tried to handle her as best I can.” His voice is smooth, capable of devilish machinations I could only dream of. He'd make an excellent politician. No, no, he'd make an excellent prince. “We were friends when we were kids, but it's not her that I want.”

“No?” I ask as Calix finishes his tea and sets his cup on his saucer with a clink.

“No.”

Just that one word.

My heart is thundering as he closes his eyes in thought for a moment.

“Who told you that gay shit about me and Calix?” Raz asks, clearly still stuck on the previous subject.

“Pearl.” I reach for the teapot at the same time as Barron and our fingers tangle, eyes locking as electricity shoots up my arm. It turns to goose bumps as it sizzles through me and Barron makes a half-bow, offering up the teapot to me first. “She said that she's the reason you two attend Crescent Prep, that she told her parents you were a couple.”

“She did,” Calix replies easily, looking at me with a slight tilt to his head, like I've managed to surprise him. “And did she tell you about my brother?”

“That your parents stole the baby she had with him, yeah,” I add, wondering how I might be able to help with that situation at some point in the future. I mean, I know it's not my business, but Pearl deserves to be reunited with her baby, if that's what she wants.

Which is why I can't let her die.

Not tonight, or any other …

There might also be something else that I have to do, something that I don't want to think about, not right now. I'll try a few more things, and then … we'll see. Because my actions, they don't just affect me. There's a whole web of humanity attached to each and every one of us, if only we could see its thin, fragile strands. I can't let the world sink with me, living on repeat. I shove the ugly feeling down again, determined to ignore it.

“Weird that they sent them to the same school, huh? Considering they were so worried about the gay thing,” Barron adds, shoving a whole shortbread cookie in his mouth. “That's how little attention our parents pay, that they didn't even know they were shipping their delinquent faggots to the same school.”

“Call me a faggot again,” Raz snarls, shoving up from his seat and turning his red-eyed glare on