I cut her off.
“Tomorrow,” I say, and my voice is deadly serious.
Lizzie pauses as Myron pushes off the wall to come stand beside her, taking her elbow in a possessive manner.
“I’m going with her. But I won’t leave my best friend exposed. Also, I’m tired of being kept on a leash. I know you have special little rules to live by to make yourself feel better, and Tristan might find them cute, but to be quite frank, I don’t give a fuck. You can thank me later—I left the queen bee and her bitch for you to squash.”
Myron drags Lizzie toward the door and then pauses, glancing back at us.
I have a feeling I know what he’s going to say before he says it.
“Don’t come after her. I’m serious as a heart attack. I will fuck you up.”
“I won’t,” I promise, and I mean that.
I don’t need to go after Lizzie.
I have Tristan, the only thing she’s ever wanted. There’s nothing more to be done. But frankly, I’d rather not see her ever again.
Myron steers her out the door, and I wonder if he’ll relentlessly pursue her the way she did Tristan, drive her up the wall with his crazy. I hate to say it, but … I almost hope so? Is that bad karma?
“I didn’t want you to hit her or anything and get punched,” Miranda starts, trying way too hard to explain herself. I stop her by giving her a kiss on the cheek, grabbing her hand and pulling her to the high table for breakfast.
It takes me a minute to fully realize what Myron just said.
“Wait. Where are Abigail and Valentina?”
Abigail and Valentina do not come back to the academy after that day.
I don’t even have enough time to figure out what happened to them before Valentine’s Day rolls around. The boys do the rose thing like usual, but they also give me a necklace, one that I’m sure is obscenely expensive. I’d have turned it down if it didn’t come with its own story.
“It’s called the Idol’s Eye,” Creed tells me, and I notice that the center of the round necklace is a jewel that’s the same color as his eyes. It’s surrounded by small, clear diamonds and hanging on a delicate chain. “It’s been owned by presidents and princes, and it once disappeared for over three hundred years.”
“Bullshit,” I whisper, but you know me, I’m a history buff and I’m intrigued as hell. “He’s lying.” I look up and find Zack shaking his head.
“Not this time. The diamond is really that old. The last time it was ever in the public eye was in the eighties. It went missing after that. If you look it up online, it’s treated like an unsolvable mystery. The only thing that really happened is that the Infinity Club got ahold of it.”
“How did you guys get it?” I ask as Windsor takes the chain and unhooks it, carefully putting it around my neck and teasing my skin with his fingers as he hooks the clasp. He leans down to whisper against my ear.
“We won it in a bet, what else?” He stands up then as I finger the jewel and look between Zayd and Tristan. It’s been weeks since that horrible day in his apartment, when I found Lizzie in a blue bathrobe, and I swear, it’s like now that we’ve all been unlocked to each other, there’s an accelerant in the air.
Every day that passes, I want them more.
Every day that passes, I know that choosing just one of them would kill me.
I’m not going to be able to choose, am I? I think as we head outside to the garden party, and take up residence in one of the alcoves behind the hedges. Zack and Zayd fetch us all refreshments, and we stay there in the warm evening air until it gets dark and all the torches are lit.
Soft music filters over to us from the courtyard, and I experiment with what it’s like to kiss one boy after the other, a single kiss on the lips as a Valentine’s Day present. And when I say single kiss, I do mean like tongue and everything.
It’s exhilarating, to be quite honest. Makes me feel greedy, wanting them all like that. And yet, at the same time, I’m not ashamed by it either.
Not one bit.
“He did, what?” I’m sitting at the harp in the music room, my fingers poised over the strings as Tristan, Zack, and Creed stand in a half-circle around me. I feel so queasy, I might have to excuse myself to the bathroom.
“He beat the shit out of them both,” Creed says, his face tight. “And I don’t mean he just hit them. When he said he liked blood, he meant it. They both ended up with broken bones. That, and he burned Valentina’s summer home to the ground. That was her grandmother’s place, with all her happy memories. Like, her parents are pieces of shit, and no amount of money will ever get back what he just destroyed in that fire.”
“He got Abigail’s place in Cruz Bay, too,” Tristan says, looking at me like he’s actually taking some of this blame on himself. “Nobody died, but Abigail was at home resting up her broken leg. She’s got burns all across the calf.”
“Jesus. Myron is that crazy?” I choke out, dropping my hands to my lap. I wanted revenge, but not like that. That’s too much, too far.
“They all are,” Zack says, exhaling. “That’s why we’re so afraid. You’re surprised by this, but we’re not. Myron isn’t an outlier, Marnye. He’s the norm.”
“What do we do about him?” I whisper, because I’m horrified. I can’t imagine just leaving someone like Myron Talbot to walk the earth uninhibited. When they said Tristan was the one keeping him in line, they meant it, didn’t they?
“Do about him?” Creed asks, shaking his head and shrugging his shoulders. “Honestly, nothing.”
“He considered letting him do his thing as us paying our debt toward Lizzie’s broken bet,” Tristan says, and then I feel almost guilty, like if I’d let him and Lizzie … None of this would’ve happened. Is it terrible that I still wouldn’t take it back?
“They’ll both be okay though, right?” I ask, wondering why I care so much about two girls who literally pushed and held my head underwater, and then trapped me in my room while their mistress tried to brand my flesh like a cow.
“Unfortunately,” Creed murmurs, and I give him a look as Zack sighs.
“They’ll be okay. They’re relatively minor injuries, but that’s not the point. What Myron did to them is likely what the Club is going to try to do to you.”
I stand up from my stool, but I’m not sure what to say or do.
Even if I leave Burberry Prep, that doesn’t mean I’ll be safe. It just means I’ll be away from the guys.
“Does anyone want to have another sleepover?” I ask, because I’ll admit it: I’m scared shitless.
For the rest of the year, I end up sleeping in one room or another with all five boyfriends by my side.
When Spring Break rolls around, I take a brief trip with the guys up to see the Bornstead U campus. It’s literally everything I thought it would be and more. Standing there in the cool mountain air and watching the university come alive in the morning made it all seem more real somehow.
That’s going to be my life.
One day, I’m going to be a student there.
My joy only lasts so long as it takes us to get back to Cruz Bay where Dad is waiting.
Since I last saw him, everything has gone to shit.
I stop in the doorway and look at the skinny man in the wheelchair that used to be my father. It takes everything I have inside of me to put on a smile and walk in there, kneel down by his side and give him a cheek on the kiss.
Later, when he’s gone to bed and I have a moment to talk with his nurse, I learn the truth.
Charlie Reed is under hospice care now.
As in … he’s basically waiting around to die.
I spend the next few hours in the bathroom, trying to stay quiet as I alternate between throwing up and sobbing. By the time morning rolls around, I’m exhausted, but I make Dad his coffee and watch action movies with him until he decides it’s time for an afternoon nap.
Then I call Isabella.
Surprisingly, she shows up at the house in a fancy red sportscar that no fifteen year old needs.
“He’s really dying, huh?” she asks, glaring at me suspiciously as I sit on the grass on a plaid blanket and toy with the idea of calling the boys or maybe Miranda. They’re all around, and now I know why. Two reasons really. One, because they don’t want me to end up like Abigail and Valentina. And two, because of … well, exactly this.
“I guess so,” I say, because I still can’t make myself say it. I look up, at Isabella’s strangely familiar face and try not to freak her out by smiling too much when she grudgingly sits down beside me. “What made you change your mind and come over here?” I ask.
She looks away from me sharply, picking at the grass near the edge of the blanket with freshly manicured nails.
“I saw what happened to Abigail Fanning, and I … I don’t want that to be me.” Isabella turns to look at me with this sharp fear in her eyes that makes her look less like Harper and more like a terrified kid in need of guidance. “Everyone wants in the Infinity Club. It’s like … you’re nobody and nothing if you’re not a member.” She looks down at her shoe, a red-bottomed Louboutin she’s casually rubbing around in the grass even though it costs a fortune. “Dad wants me to join, but … I don’t know if I will, at least not yet.”
I nod, and we sit there in silence again together for a while.
“Why did you tell me that Tristan was screwing Lizzie, when he wasn’t?”
Isabella shrugs and keeps her gaze focused on anything and everything but me.
“You love him. I wanted to hurt you. I … don’t want to be a Reed. I’m a Carmichael, Marnye. I’m a fucking Carmichael, and I always will be. I don’t care who my biological father really is.”
“So you took your anger out on me?” I raise an eyebrow and Isabella shrugs, pushing up to her feet and brushing grass from her bare legs.