Page 138 of Underground Prince

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My plan came to me during happy hour.

Well, it wasn’t instantaneous or anything like a light bulb electrifying my synapses. It was more a slow burn since Kai left and I’d been on my own for a few hours, cross-legged on the couch, muttering and musing.

Goal: get Trace to Williamsburg.

But he’d lost a fight with Theo for that privilege. Saxon standards were pretty clear—live by the family, die by the rules. It was unlikely I could get him where I wanted without some kind of lure, something so luscious and irresistible he’d break the familial chains and come bearing down on his little brother.

My ideas were meant to be smart. Profound. Yet all I could come up with were bursts of activities grade school kids would do a better job thinking up. It wasn’t because of lack of intelligence. It was more the difficulty of directing a person’s choices without having them clue in that there was a puppeteer in their midst.

Think, Letty, think.

What if it were Cassie? What would I do, destroy, get to, for her to end up okay in the end? If I could change it, what would I have done for her?

The answer came upon my shoulders with the clang of an anvil, sending me into a dead stop of thought, the sheer force of it shooting iron in my veins.

“You’re shwasted, buddy. Get in the back so you can start your sleep-off immediately,” Cassie said, pinching my cheek as Noah balanced half my body weight on his.

“Or hangover.” Noah grunted.

“Ow,” I said, attempting to extricate from his arms by simply walking away.

“Oh no you don’t.” He wrapped his hands around my midsection and backtracked, both of us stumbling to the car. I had a momentous event where my heel sank into his foot.

“Fu—ow!”

“I said it first,” I muttered, my chin dropping to my neck. He could ragdoll me the rest of the way as punishment for pinching my vodka hose and refusing me any more.

Cassie opened the back door for me. “I’m sorry to say, I think you lost a few brain cells tonight.”

“Not so many that I couldn’t text you and ruin your date,” I sang.

“That wasn’t even English. You’re lucky I translate Letty. Let me help,” she said when Noah heaved against my deadweight and all but pushed my butt into the vehicle.

“No—I wanna ride in the front.”

“Seriously?” Cassie balanced an elbow on the open car door to speak to me. “You’ll puke.”

“It’s you that has to sit here,” I said, persisting. “You have to take the back seat. You have to.”

“Why?”

“You just do.” I peeled out of the car, legs more gummy than bone. Once I balanced, I pulled her in, my hands tangling her long brunette strands, her periwinkle eyes hidden against my neck. “I love you,” I said, more than once. “Please get in the back seat…”

Oh…

I bowed, forearms digging hard into my stomach, but it did nothing to stanch the agony.

Oh, I wish…

I’d do it.

I would switch places. In a second, I’d put myself in the passenger seat and her in the back so she could live.

And when it came to Theo? The roiling pit of sorrow, the absolute will to cheat death, was as clear as the night I reached out to Cassie and missed.

My phone buzzed, jolting me out of the excruciating fugue. I slipped it out of my bag.

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