EVIL QUEEN - Rebel Hart Page 0,85
elated. All it took was for Deon to spend one day teaching him how to play. Then he wouldn’t put a basketball down.”
“It’s so weird. I doubt many people even know how much he loves basketball,” Kyle said.
“I was just thinking about that recently. There are all these things about Nathan that got pushed beneath the surface and hidden because of his dad and the pressure of The Royal Court. He loves the outdoors, he’s really into classical music, and he hates technology. His computer is as old as dirt. Every time his dad forced him to get a new phone, he complained to me for hours about it.”
Kyle started to laugh. “Yeah. I had to have a whole tutorial to show him how to use his phone.” He smiled at me after that. “I’m happy he has you, Nikki. I mean, I know he says it, but he’s, like, always loved you. When we first met, I told him that I thought you were cute, and he flipped his shit. He told me to stay away from you. And you could do anything, literally anything, and he’d get excited about it. After everything that you’ve ever done for as long as I’ve known you that’s even been mildly impressive, Nathan would call me to talk to me about how cool you were. He really, really loves you, Nikki.”
That made me happy to hear. “He’s been around for me ever since I was a little girl. I suffered abuse by my parents, and my grandma wanted to move me out of Postings, but she let me stay here with my foster mother because it was obvious how good he was for me. When he started dating Cherri, I was crushed.”
“I can’t even imagine how hard that must have been, but I need you to know exactly how hard that was for him too.”
“I know that his dad made him do most of it, but I’m not dumb. Cherri is beautiful, and I’m sure he enjoyed having her on his arm.”
Kyle bobbled his head. “I guess a little, but at the end of any day, he was always looking at you.”
That gave me a warm feeling in my stomach. I liked thinking that it wasn’t just a trip to paradise for Nathan when we weren’t together. I’d made a promise to myself not to look back on what happened before we got together, but it didn’t stop the insecurities from seeping in. Kyle, whether he was doing it on purpose or not, was helping to ease some of those insecurities.
We finished our finals and then met up with everyone outside of school. Everyone was really excited about spending some time together to celebrate, so we paired off to head to Colette’s family’s sushi restaurant to end the day. Brayden hadn’t disappeared during the day, which was good, and he joined us to celebrate the conclusion of the finals and officially being graduation-bound.
We were ushered to the back of the restaurant, where a private room had already been set up for us to sit in, complete with congratulatory balloons and a few bottles of wine to share amongst us. We placed different orders for a variety of sushi combinations to share, and the staff delivered a bunch of appetizers to the table for us to enjoy while we waited. Nathan popped open the first bottle of wine and poured everyone a glass.
“We’re gonna make it,” Nathan said with a sigh, lifting up his glass of wine. “Fucking toast to that shit.” Everyone lifted their glasses and clinked them together. “You guys, we have to have a massive graduation party. I know your parents are all throwing you your own graduation parties, and obviously, I’m gonna be there, but I want to throw a big, insane graduation party. I’m gonna spend, like, a hundred grand on it. I don’t care. The odds were stacked against us this year, and we still made it, and that’s a huge deal.”
“I certainly have a lot to celebrate,” Avery said. “Ali got a job in New Haven, and I got my official award letter for my full ride. I’m Yale-bound.”
“Officially,” I said. “I’m going to be heading up the new debt collection division of LCE, with the help of my grandmother, of course.”
“And I’m gonna be taking my position as president once I graduate,” Nathan said.
“Aw, I’m sure those adults are gonna love having two teenagers running things,” Alistair joked.
“Well, we decided that we are both going