Page 6 of Gilded Fake

Rylan’s face goes ashen, and he turns to the headmaster. “He’s setting me up! You heard him. He probably put a gun in my locker!”

“Mr. Woods, we are going to need you to open your locker for us,” the Headmaster says, almost out of earshot now.

“I don’t have anything,” Rylan insists. “If there’s anything in there, it’s not mine. He planted it! This is illegal search and seizure!”

He keeps yelling as they haul him toward the office.

“You okay?” Harper asks.

“Me?” I say, turning back to my locker and starting over on the combination. “Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?”

She gives me a look. “I mean, he was your boyfriend.”

“He was,” I agree. “A long time ago. I hope he goes to jail. Then he’ll know what it’s like to have no choices in life.”

“Damn.”

“Besides, I’m with Maverick now,” I point out. “I’m over it.”

“Sounds like it,” Harper mutters, side-eyeing the massive Starbucks cup in my locker filled with some kind of Frappuccino and heaped to the domed lid with whipped cream and chocolate shavings. I glance around, taking it out carefully, like it might explode. It’s still frozen, so someone must have just put it there. Lots of girls from cheer and dance have my combination, since we used to keep our stuff in each other’s lockers all the time. For a second, my heart swells at the possibility that one of my sisters wants to make amends.

More likely they’re trying to poison me.

I hand it to Harper, thinking I’ll toss it on my way to class, and grab my books. But when I turn back, I see the name scrawled on the side of the cup.

“Queen Gloria the Wicked.”

My stupid heart does something stupid in my chest, but before I can even turn around, strong fingers grip my hip, solid pecs bump against my shoulder blades, and he leans down and murmurs, “And your teeth are perfect, so drink it.”

He gives my hip a quick squeeze, and then he’s walking away, and Dixie’s screeching at him, demanding to know what he said, and my head is spinning so hard I have to steady myself against my locker. I close my eyes, taking a few deep breaths to keep the stampeding animal in my chest from tearing through my sternum, leaving my ribs shattered and twisted like the bars of a cage as it breaks into the world and lays waste to everything standing in my way, everything stopping me from going to him and throwing myself on the floor at his feet and begging like the whore I’m not allowed to call myself anymore.

I can still feel the answering need of his animal, the heat of his body where it made contact with mine flowing down me to my toes, dripping like warm honey over my skin, spreading in the wet heat pulsing between my thighs. The last time his chest pressed against my back, skin to skin, he was inside me. I shiver at the memory.

Maybe, if yesterday hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t think he was tricking me too.

Maybe, if he hadn’t walked away like it was nothing after he brought me back to life; if he hadn’t left me to curl in a ball on the floor of the locker room and sob; if he wasn’t linking the fingers that just touched me with Dixie’s… Maybe then I would tattoo his fingerprints onto my hip where he squeezed, the way he tattooed my fingernail marks onto his arms.

I don’t need tattoos to remind me. His touch is burned into my skin like he’s burned into my memory, a curse I can’t shake, the way a brush of his fingers lights my body on fire and incinerates everything I still fake, turns the façade to ash, leaves me bare and raw as a heart.

The sound of Harper clearing her throat brings me back to reality, and I open my eyes to see my only friend watching me with a brow quirked. “You want to tell me what that was about?”

“No,” I say, taking the drink from her and sucking down a few gulps of cold, sweet, chocolate cookie heaven. I can tell it’s not skim, not decaf, not sugar-free syrup. It’s like drinking a milkshake for breakfast. My mother would have a fit.

I take another drink, avoiding Harper’s narrowed eyes.

“So, you and Colt are fucking, and you don’t want to tell me about it?” she says. “That’s disappointing. With all that big dick energy, I would have thought he was worth at least a mention.”

“Shut up,” I hiss, widening my eyes at her and cutting my gaze to the buzzing hallway.

“Does he lay there and make you do all the work?” she asks, smirking. “Because I could kind of see him as a lazy lay too. Just please don’t tell me he can’t find the clit. It’ll break my heart a little.”

“Stop talking,” I say, grabbing her elbow and dragging her down the hall.

She laughs her ass off all the way to the bathroom.

A couple girls give us dirty looks from their spot at the sink. “Dykes,” mutters one of my former teammates from dance.

“If you’re jealous, just say that,” Harper says. “It’s not your fault your boyfriend doesn’t know how to eat pussy, and you wish you could get someone who does.”

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