Page 9 of Wicked Waters

I dimly became aware of the sound of wooden boards creaking under his feet, but I barely paid attention. His mouth returned to my ear. “I’m not good enough for you, but I’m good enough to kiss? Good enough for a quick and dirty fuck out here where no one else ever has to find out?” He clamped down on my ear with his teeth. “I don’t fucking think so.”

Then he ripped me away from him, and I found myself falling, a scream tearing from my throat as I hit the water of the lake and went under.

5

ROMAN

Ileft Quinn without a backwards look, scooping up her hoodie as I went. Her shouts rang in my ears, but I didn’t stop other than to grab my small pile of clothes where I’d left them. Quickly tugging on tracksuit bottoms and my own hoodie, then shoving my feet into my trainers, I jogged back to the school building and made my way to my room.

Tristan looked up from his laptop when I entered, his eyes narrowing. “You look suspiciously happy.”

“I don’t know what you mean. I’m off to have a shower.”

Once I’d washed the lake water off, I headed back into the room to change into my normal uniform. Tristan was sitting on the side of his bed, holding up Quinn’s hoodie.

“Care to explain this?”

“Not really, no.” Opening the wardrobe, I pulled out my clothes, hiding my smirk.

From behind me, he cleared his throat pointedly. “Okay. Want to tell me how you now have two phones when you had one this morning? And why you’re suddenly in possession of a pair of rose-gold headphones?”

“Who doesn’t have two phones these days? And I liked the colour, so what?” I shifted so he could see my face, and he rolled his eyes at me.

“Nice try.”

Moving to stand in front of the mirror, I began pulling on my clothes and made sure I kept my voice casual. “I saw Quinn.”

“Uh-huh.” He eyed my reflection in the mirror. “In that case, I don’t even want to know. Plausible deniability and all that. But you can’t keep her phone.”

“Watch me.”

“Ro. You can’t.”

“You know what your problem is?” Shrugging on my blazer, I turned to face him. “You have too much of a conscience.”

“Maybe if you listened to yours, you wouldn’t get into so much trouble.” He flashed me a grin, and I knew he wasn’t really annoyed at me. Head boy or not, he was my friend, and he was on my side. Except, he continued. “I’m serious. You can’t keep this. I’ll make sure it gets back to her without implicating either of us, okay?”

“You’re such a good boy, Tris. Want some help polishing that halo?” I stepped over to his bed and ruffled his hair, which made him glare at me, shoving my hand away and smoothing his hair back down. With a sigh, I held up my hands. “Fine, get it back to her if it’ll stop you whining about it.” The truth was, I hadn’t even noticed her phone was in the hoodie when I’d first taken it. If you thought about it, I’d actually done her a favour by saving it from being drowned in the lake when I’d thrown her in.

“My influence spreads far and wide. I got Hatherley Hall’s resident bad boy to do my bidding.” Climbing to his feet, he pulled on his own blazer and then grabbed his bag. “They don’t call me the king of the school for nothing.”

Swiping my own bag from the floor, I followed him out of the room just as the bell rang for breakfast. “Literally no one calls you the king of the school.”

“Everyone does.”

“They don’t.”

We continued arguing all the way down to the dining hall, where Tristan strolled to the front of the line with his head boy privileges, and I had to join the back of the queue with the other students. In front of me, two girls were talking in hushed voices. I wasn’t paying attention until one of them mentioned Quinn’s name.

“…and she only had a sports bra and leggings on. She was completely soaked, and I heard from Harriet that her lips were blue with the cold.”

I had a sudden twinge of something that felt a lot like guilt, but I pushed it aside. Quinn deserved it.

“…yes, but did you actually see her? I did. Ugh, I wish I had her body. There’s no way I’d look anywhere near that good if I’d fallen in the lake.”

“Yeah, she’s so pretty. I’d look like a drowned rat if it had been me. How did she even manage to fall in the lake, anyway?”

“I don’t know.”

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