EVIL VILLAIN (The Royal Court #3) - Rebel Hart Page 0,37
phone from me and pointed it out at the pool. “Mission accepted.”
I dragged my legs out of the pool and stood up, grabbing one of the towels off a nearby lounge chair to dry off as I walked, and made my way into the house. There were a dozen bathrooms inside, but the closest one was just on the other side of the kitchen. I walked through to get to the bathroom and noticed Brayden sitting at the kitchen island. He had a plate of food, and it was only then that I realized he’d gone in claiming to be going to the bathroom, but never came back out.
“Hey,” I said.
Brayden looked up. “H-hey.”
Instead of continuing on to the bathroom, I slid down onto one of the stools across from him. “You doing okay?”
He nodded. “Yeah, I’m okay. Just needed a few minutes. I feel… bad, out there.”
“I know what you mean,” I said. “I was the biggest bitch in the world to these people, and it doesn’t feel fair that now I get to just have a pool party with them and have fun.”
Brayden popped a chip from his plate into his mouth. “Exactly.”
“We miss you out there, though. We’re supposed to be spending time together, all of us. We’ve all done shit wrong. I think we’ve committed ourselves to just pretending none of that shit ever happened. Looking forward, you know?”
“Yeah.” Something else hung on the end of Brayden’s voice. He kept shifting his eyes up to me, then away again, before finally bringing them up to land on me. “Hey… can I ask you a question? More of a favor?”
“Of course. Anything,” I replied.
“Can you not tell Nathan about…” His voice trailed off and his gaze slipped from mine. “The, uh, the kiss?”
“Oh.” I furrowed my brow, but nodded regardless. “Yeah. It’s not really my place to talk about.”
He lifted his brown eyes back to me. “Cool. Thanks.”
“Since we’re on the topic though, and I can use the fact that I have no fucking clue how to define my friendship with you as an excuse, can I ask. What’s up with you two? You and Kyle, I mean?”
Brayden got fidgety again immediately. “Um.”
“I mean, I don’t want to overstep, but you two seem so perfect for each other. And you know we’d all accept you, right? If you guys want to be more than—”
“We’re just friends,” Brayden said suddenly, and there was a shake in his voice that broke my heart. “He’s… Kyle is… I mean he…” He stammered a few more times trying to form a sentence, but then eventually just dropped it. “Yeah. We’re just friends.”
I got the sense that Brayden was very uncomfortable with the topic, and whether it was because he didn’t understand his own feelings, or was afraid of how others might take it, I wasn’t sure. “Okay. I’ll leave it there then.”
“Don’t tell him that I said that,” Brayden said. “The friends thing.”
Poor guy. He was in a house of mirrors and couldn’t get out. I knew that feeling all too well. “Let’s just say anything you and I discuss stays between us.”
He offered me a little smile then. “Thanks, Cherri.”
“Yeah,” and I stood up. “Well, I actually do have to pee, so I’m gonna go do that, but you should come back out. I want all my friends out there. Gus deserves to see the excellent people I get to call friends. Every single one of you.”
“I’ll go back out. I promise,” he replied.
“Cool.”
I turned to walk away, but then Brayden cleared his throat. “Hey, Cherri?”
“Yeah?” I looked back over my shoulder.
“Tomorrow, can we try again to find Connor using the driving blindfold method?” he asked.
At that question, I turned back around. “Listen, Brayden. We can find another way to do this. There’s no guarantee that we’d even figure anything out that way, and I’m not gonna fuck you up more in the brain for that. I appreciate that you’re willing, but we’ll do it another way.”
He shook his head, and I saw some determination flash into his eyes. “No! I want to do it. After we talked about it, I realized that Connor must have known… everything. He knew exactly what to tell me and he used me to hurt the one person who has always been there for me. Then he used me to hurt all of you guys. I don’t want him to get away with that. I want to fight back.”