“So you’re managing to get your revenge without them even retaliating because they agreed to it when you set the rules?” I grinned at the genius of that plan.
“Yep. And I made a list.” She popped a malteser between her lips and grabbed her school diary, flipping it over to the back page and raising a pen as she scored out ‘the fish stew’ and my gaze skimmed over the crimes she’d mapped out. “I’m not gonna stop until I’ve gotten even for every last thing on this list and then some,” she added fiercely.
The sex tape
The fish stew
The Unspeakables
The storm
The font
The bathtub
The ice
The gun
The clothes
The humiliation
The shower
The letters
THE VOW
“You’re an evil genius,” I teased, though I kinda meant it too. She’d been knocked down hard by that pack of assholes and instead of breaking or even bowing, she was starting her own private rebellion right under their noses. And I was her first recruit.
“I’ve barely even started,” she promised me and the passion in her voice made me want to do things I really shouldn’t have been considering.
“So what’s next?” I asked.
“The Unspeakables need to rise up,” she said determinedly. “I already started working on them but since the night of the break in, it’s been hard to get them thinking in the right way again. I can’t be seen talking to them either so getting in their ears about it is hard. But the Night Keepers have given me two hours of quiet study a night in the library and I see some of them there. They need to realise that all of them together are strong enough to stand against three monstrous boys. Once they do and they cast off the chains of that awful fucking title of Unspeakables they’ve been given, I think we stand a good shot of overthrowing the whole school. And then we’ll see how kingly those assholes are without their crowns.”
I snorted a laugh just as the timer on the oven sounded. “You don’t do things by halves, do you princess?”
“My father raised me to be a fighter,” she said, packing her diary back into her bag and giving me the chance to dispose of the melted, crushed, malteser fist I had going on.
I quickly washed the chocolate off of my hand and drew the pizza out of the oven, slicing it up before carrying the plate back over to her.
Tatum’s eyes widened and she moaned with desire as I set the plate of cheesy, doughy goodness down on the coffee table and I grinned like the cat who got the fucking cream. It was totally idiotic for me to be looking at her the way I was, but it was damn hard not to sometimes. Especially when we were alone like this.
“You’re determined to corrupt me tonight, Nash,” she commented as I lifted a slice of pizza from the plate and held it out to her.
“Only a little,” I joked, trying not to grin like an idiot at the sound of my name on her lips. I could almost pretend that we were just a girl and a guy when we were alone like this. Imagine that there weren’t solid walls between us that forbid us from being anything more. It was intoxicating and dangerous at once.
Instead of taking the food from my hand, she parted her lips and I instantly pressed the food into her mouth, my pulse racing as she closed her eyes and moaned in a way that really had to be sexual. My dick definitely thought it was. And the rest of me did too until I forced myself to look away.
We fell into silence as we demolished the pizza and I leaned back against the couch with a sigh of satisfaction, letting my gaze remain on the fire as it crackled.
“So…you can tell me to fuck off if you like,” Tatum began, inching closer to me until her knee pressed against my thigh and I was forced to look around at her. “But, do you wanna tell me why you hate Saint and his family so much?”
My heart leapt then pounded then shrivelled away into the deep darkness that had been left in the wake of what Saint’s family had done to mine.
I didn’t want to tell her. But I also hadn’t talked about it with anyone in a hell of a long time. And I felt like she would understand. At least in some part. She’d told me about losing her sister. She knew enough about pain, betrayal, heartache, grief…
“It’s not a pretty story,” I warned her.
“I promise you can trust me with it,” she breathed, reaching out to take my hand. And I let her. Because I already had a student locked up in my house with me alone at night and that went against so many rules that I couldn’t even count them. Holding her hand was the least of my problems.
I curled my fingers around her small hand and ran my thumb back and forth across her soft skin.
“When I was growing up, we never had much. My dad wasn’t around and my kid brother Michael didn’t remember him at all. To be honest, I don’t either really. I know he was tall and shouted a lot. And that my mom said good riddance to bad rubbish whenever his name was mentioned after he left. We had a small house but a nice one. Mom worked as a nurse and picked up extra shifts a lot so I used to have to help out with babysitting Michael pretty often…”
I frowned as I thought back over those happy days. I didn’t do it nearly enough. It was like my grief and anger coloured all of that black and made me forget. I kept the raw heartache close, but maybe I was losing some of what I’d had
