Page 58 of Royal
“This was actually the other thing that fed into my decision to go home last night. I don’t know if it’s something major or just a mistake or whatever, but it threw me a bit.” She pauses, staring down at her food.
Beckham reaches across the table and grabs her hand in his. “Hey.” He squeezes gently to get her attention. “Do you have it with you?”
“No. But I took a photo before I left the house.” She shoots Beckham a grateful smile before she squeezes his hand back and releases it. Shifting to one butt cheek, she reaches back and draws her phone from her pocket. Once she has it open, she taps the screen a few times before sliding it over to us. We both peer down at the picture.
I can feel the uneasiness rolling off Beckham as he clears his throat. “Cum sluts. Wow. Who the hell wrote this?”
“I don’t know.” Echo stares at us with lost eyes. “It showed up stuck to my back while I was in my English class last night.”
I side-eye Beckham, and he gives me a subtle shake of his head. Wasn’t him. I know it wasn’t me. And it’s not Royal’s distinctive handwriting either. My jaw tightens. This makes no fucking sense. She’s oblivious to our relationship with Royal, so I can’t just say that… nor has she said she thought it was him, so I really don’t want to put that idea in her head. But if it wasn’t one of us… what the fuck?
Pushing the phone back toward her, I let out a hard exhale. “I don’t like that. But I don’t know what to tell you to do about it.”
“Actually, lemme see the phone again, CJ.” Beckham holds out his hand, and she drops it into his palm willingly. He opens her contacts and begins to type Beckham into the space for his name until I nudge him with my knee. He huffs out a low laugh, then mutters, “Damn autocorrect thinks it knows my name.” He carefully deletes the last few letters, then finishes typing in both Benneti and his number before sliding the phone back to her. “There. Now you can call me if”—he shrugs, throwing up one hand—“I dunno, something comes up.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it. I guess I’ll have to pay better attention to who I’m coming into contact with. It was just weird, that’s all. I don’t really know anyone except the girls at the house and you guys.”
And Royal. “For sure.” I press my lips together, not liking this development at all. “And frankly, if it were just a fluke that you ended up with it, that’s a pretty heinous thing to write and then carelessly leave around to randomly get stuck on someone. I’m sorry, I don’t know what to make of it. Are you having trouble with any of the girls at TZE?”
She shrugs. “I mean, nothing major. A bunch of them were pissy about the cage girl thing, but is that really something to attack me over?”
I give a half-hearted chuckle. “To a few of them it might be. Still weird that it showed up in your English class if you didn’t see any of them right there.”
“Yeah.” She groans raggedly, and the sound is so damn sad I want to scoop her up and hold her.
Beckham runs his hands over his face. “I hate to say it or give you anything else to worry about… but it seems like it has to have been purposely done.”
“I agree. And I’m trying not to panic or let it scare me, but it feels like I’ve got a lot of stuff piling up on me all of a sudden.” Echo exhales unsteadily through pursed lips as her gaze moves again to the window, her hand fidgeting with the straw in her melting milkshake. “Anyway, thanks for offering an ear. I feel like every time I see one of you, I’m in crisis mode or something. It’s crap. I hate it.” Clearly flustered—whether by her outburst or just the circumstances, I don’t know—Echo shakes her head. Then, noting our empty plates, she glances at the time on her phone. “Anyway, I don’t want to keep you guys.”
“It’s fine.” Beckham tilts his head, studying her. If I’m not mistaken, this close contact with her is really doing it for him. A moment later, he finishes with, “If you have anything else you want to talk about, we can hang out a little longer.”
She hesitates, her body going stiff for a split second as she looks down at her unfinished burger. She shared both why she wasn’t in school all day as well as that atrocity of a note with us. But she hasn’t said a damn word about Royal, even though we both know he must have fucked with her earlier. And that’s information she’s keeping tightly secured in that head of hers.
Disappointment floods me when she shakes her head. “No, that’s okay. We can go. It’ll probably take me forever to get to sleep tonight anyway.”
Beckham makes a slightly strangled noise at the back of his throat that she doesn’t seem to notice, but I sure as hell do, so I reach over and put my hand on his thigh. I press my lips together. “Yeah. That makes sense. We’ll just get the check, then we can go.”
Ten minutes after settling the bill with JoAnna, we pull up to TZE, and Beckham climbs from the truck to help Echo down. She gives me an awkward little wave. “Thank you.”
I nod, glad to have found her to be semi-stable after whatever went down with Royal, but also wondering if she’s simply a good actress—one of those people who can compartmentalize their problems so well that other people have no idea when they’re going through something. The difference is—wedoknow. I feel like we’re on the verge of her trusting us enough to talk about something like that. And I’m getting closer to her with every interaction. “Legacy, you lock up tight tonight, okay? Remember we’re here if you need us.”
She draws in a quick breath and nods.
My gaze shifts to Beckham, who is giving me the eye roll of all eye rolls. I guess I’ve officially become his fucked-up version of a cockblocker.
TWENTY-EIGHT
ROYAL
I’ve putthis off for too long. So, with anxiety filling me, I plug the external hard drive that I’d used to grab information off the Franks’ computer into the USB-C port on mine. I wait for what feels like forever for the files to transfer, all while gnawing a hole in the side of my cheek. I have no idea if this is what I was supposed to do, if I understood the Sin Keeper’s clue correctly, or if I’m way off base. It’d been clear as fucking mud.
Clicking on the drive, I begin looking through the files and realize this is way more complicated than I thought.The truth you seek is yours to find. Home is where the hard drive hides.Fuck. Seriously. What the hell am I looking for? I exhale hard, the air blasting from between my lips as I stare at the screen full of documents. This is going to take forever, but I see no other way to make sure I’m not missing something except to meticulously comb through each folder and look at all the files they contain. There’s something here the Sin Keeper meant for me to see, but this isnothappening today. I slam my laptop shut and take off for my weekly Thursday afternoon run.
Up ahead on the trail, I spot Theo. Way back when I first started running cross-country for my high school as a freshman, Theo was one of the college students who came back to help with our training every summer before our season started.
When I first enrolled at Kingston University last year, there was a local running club I got involved with, but I’m not much for running in big groups. Even on the team in high school, I’d mostly run on my own… until Echo joined the team, anyway.
I couldn’t believe it when I showed up to run with the group that first day, and there was Theo. We ended up veering off on a different trail to get away from all the chatter so we could catch up. Eventually, we began meeting weekly instead of participating in the club, and the rest is history.
