May your arrow fly to the ends of the earth,
May it taste all the colours of the sky.
May it lead you to your wildest adventures.
And may it always point you home.
“It’s beautiful,” I breathed. “Who made it?”
“The quote is by Cedric Forsythe, the founder of the school. The arrows have been added for years by students who graduate from Everlake. It’s a tradition.”
“I love it,” I whispered, curling closer to him as the cool air swirled around us.
Silence fell between us and it became heavy as both of us were too stubborn to break it.
I sighed eventually, prodding him. “So? Are you going to explain yourself?”
He kicked the floor again so we swung faster in the hammock, refusing to look at me.
When he didn’t speak, I used his chest to push myself up, a huff of annoyance leaving me. “Forget it.”
He dragged me back down, forcing me under his arm again as he refused to let me leave. “Here’s the truth then, but remember what I said about that. It’s going to change everything.”
“Show me the slaughter house, Kyan,” I insisted and he caught my chin, angling my face up to look at him so I couldn’t escape the sincerity in his gaze as he spoke his next words.
“Deepthroat used to be one of the popular girls. She hung out with Pearl and Georgie and the rest of the mindless rich girls who think their shit don’t stink. She had a thing for me, always did. She used to run around after me at parties, always getting too handsy even when I told her point blank I wasn’t interested. Then one night she slipped something in my drink. I was fucked already, but I’m never too wasted to know what I’m putting my dick in.”
My heart stopped working as his words fell over me like a ton of bricks. She roofied him??
He took a breath as he went on, releasing his grip on my chin, but I kept looking up at him all the same. “She managed to get me back to her room and Blake and Saint didn’t know where I was. I never hang around parties all that long, so they probably thought I’d gone off to seek a fight. But not this night. I have no fucking memory of lying down on her bed, but if you haven’t noticed, I have a truckload of willpower, so when my brain kicked back into gear for half a second, I focused on what the fuck was happening.”
“What was happening?” I whispered, knowing I wouldn’t like the next words that came out of his mouth.
“She had my jeans pulled down and my boxers too,” he gritted out. “Her hand was wrapped around my fucking cock as she opened her mouth to suck me off. I wasn’t even hard, I was practically in a coma.”
“Fuck, what?” I gasped, my mind spinning as I dropped eye contact with him, going from shocked to furious in half a second. That bitch, that fucking bitch!
Kyan grabbed my chin again, making me look at him. “I managed to get her off of me and pull up my fucking boxers, but she kept trying to seduce me, combing her fingers through my hair as I tried to hold onto the inch of clarity I had left in my brain. I was going to pass out, I could feel it. I was about a minute away from losing all fucking consciousness, but I couldn’t let that whore do whatever she was gonna do to me. I tried to get up but she straddled me and all I could smell was her expensive perfume and the scent of strawberry daiquiris on her breath.” His upper lip curled back and a tear slipped from my eye. I was so angry, I was shaking and Kyan held me closer as he felt my reaction. “I managed to shove her off of me, I think I slammed her into the wall but I dunno if I just want to think I did or if that’s a real memory. Either way, I made it to my feet, ripped open her door and stumbled away before she could drag me back inside. Thankfully, I made it back to The Temple before I passed out for good.”
Darkness ebbed and flowed through my veins as I hungered for the end of this story.
“The next day, I told Blake and Saint what had happened and Saint was ready to get her ass expelled and the cops hauling her off to juvie. But I didn’t want that. I wanted her here where I could torture her daily. So we went to her room and frightened the hell out of her, cast her into the Unspeakables and have put in place very careful plans to ruin her reputation and her life the moment she graduates.”
“Like what?” I asked, a sick satisfaction filling me at the idea.
“Like us anonymously buying up half the shares in her family’s company so before she tries to step in as Little Miss CEO after graduation, we can sell them to her competitors and rip out her future from under her feet. We’ve planned out a bunch of shit to systematically destroy her life after she leaves this place. Within a year she’ll be broke, homeless, have her reputation in tatters, and if I get my way, her family will disown her too.”
I rested my hand on Kyan’s pounding heart, leaning up to press a kiss to his cheek as another fat tear rolled down my skin to collect in my hair.
“Don’t cry,
