Savage Royals (Boys of Oak Park Prep #1) - Callie Rose Page 0,90
contain behind a glass case or a frame.
His chest rose and fell beneath my palm, and I felt the moment when his restraint snapped, a half-second before his lips sealed over mine.
I was breathing hard when I pulled back, and I glanced at the other three, who’d gathered around close in the darkness. The bottle was gone from Mason’s hand, and I wondered if he’d thrown it in the ocean.
When I turned toward him, the look on his face almost made me stop.
His expression was neutral, but every muscle in his face was taut, and I couldn’t tell what he was thinking.
I hesitated two steps away from him, frozen in place.
But just when I was about to back away, his hand whipped out and caught my wrist, tugging me forward and closing the gap between us.
When his lips crashed into mine, I kissed him with every last bit of anger left inside me, and he kissed me like he might never get the chance again. It felt raw and real and messy, full of words neither of us was brave enough to say yet. My fingernails dug into his back, as if even though my heart and mind craved him, they still wanted to hurt him too.
We walked the fine line between love and hate… and with a start, I realized which side I was falling toward.
Chapter 26
Ugh. No more tequila. No more whiskey. No more vodka.
I rolled over in bed, tugging a pillow over my face to block out the light. Shit. Finn hadn’t remembered to make me drink lots of water at the end of the night, and I swore I could still feel the alcohol burning through my veins.
I’d been wrong—Mason hadn’t brought the bottle into the ocean. The gleam I thought I’d seen must’ve been something else. Which meant after we walked back onto shore, half a bottle was still waiting for us, and we’d finished the whole fucking thing.
That would be the last time I drank tequila in a while.
Damn, I’m running out of good options. Maybe I’ll have to start drinking wine spritzers or something.
Then again, maybe I should stop actively looking for new boozes to drink. With at least two alcoholics in the family, I knew I was playing with fire every time I picked up a bottle, and I was well versed in every single excuse there was about why “this time will be different” or “it doesn’t own me”.
I wouldn’t be like my dad.
Or my grandparents.
Or… my mother.
I was crossing off people like I crossed off types of alcohol, and I felt like I’d run out of good role models. Did I know a single adult whose life I wished I could have? So many of them seemed so miserable, locked into a path that didn’t seem to bring them any joy.
Still, hangover or no, my seventeenth birthday had been my best one yet.
I ditched my first few classes of the day—because fuck Jacqueline—but made it to lunch and all my classes afterward.
Unfortunately, that night turned out to be the last chance for fun before finals came barreling around the corner. For the next two weeks, schoolwork took over my life as I crammed hard for my exams. Whatever my grandparents might think, I was serious about getting a good education, and I knew it could be the key to opening doors for me later. I just didn’t think school and dance should be mutually exclusive.
I called Leah every day to see if she wanted to meet up and study, but she made excuses at first and then stopped answering my calls.
One thing screaming into the ocean had made me realize was that out of all the people I’d met in California, she was the one who’d offered the most and taken the least—who’d been my best supporter when I’d needed it. I felt shitty that the price of ending the war with the Princes had been the slow death of my friendship with her. It was supposed to be “ho’s before bros”, right?
So I’d resolved to fix it somehow, although I wasn’t quite sure how yet. Ditching the Princes didn’t feel like an option anymore, not because I was afraid of what they’d do, but because…
Well, reasons I couldn’t quite let myself think about.
Reasons that made my heart beat too hard and too fast.
Spring semester finals were even harder than the fall exams had been, but I scraped by in all my classes, even Chemistry.