Page 24 of Cruel Elite (Princes of Ravenlake Academy 3)

She lowers her chin and pinches her brows together. “But if something was wrong, you’d talk to me about it?”

“Probably not,” I answer. “But like I said, nothing is wrong.”

Before she can try to psychoanalyze me with her alcohol-soaked morning brain, I give her a brusque wave and shuffle down the hallway to my room.

A minute ago, a quick jerk off to a set of porn star tits would have solved all of my problems.

Now, the thought is depressing.

I hesitate at the stair landing, debating heading up the stairs to my room.

Before I can overthink it too much, I take the other option and head downstairs.

The basement used to be where I hung out the most.

But I haven’t spent much time down here the last couple years. I moved all of my gaming gear up to my room and placed storage boxes of old clothes, CDs, and baseball cards where the TV used to sit.

Part of it is because I got a car.

As soon as all us Golden Boys were mobile, we didn’t want to sneak weed in our parents’ basements or try to get to second base with a girl while people walked across the floor upstairs. We moved to backseats and abandoned boat docks and dark park benches.

Now, Finn’s house is the spot. His dad is dead, and he’s in NYC with Lily, so he gave Caleb the key to keep watch over the place.

My basement full of childhood memorabilia and a lumpy pull-out couch doesn’t exactly compete with a full mansion for us to do whatever the fuck we want in.

I walk past the boxes, the now-empty safe, and the dusty couch to a door on the back wall.

No one but me ever went into this little room.

It was more private. Off-limits to everyone else. A place I could guarantee no one would bother me.

When I flip on the light, the bulb flickers to full brightness. My body shifts into autopilot.

Without thinking, my left hand reaches out to grab the guitar hanging from a hook on the wall.

I throw the strap around my neck.

Tuning it feels like second nature. My ear remembers what my mind has forgotten.

My fingers stumble over the notes at first, but the movements come back to me faster than I would have guessed after so long.

“Music is an instinct,” Dad had said years ago when he was first teaching me to play. “If you have it, you can feel it in your bones. Like a part of you.”

I never knew what he meant until I learned to play more than a few nursery rhymes and “Smoke on the Water.”

As soon as I could read music and play the songs I liked, the music that meant something to me, I was drawn to my guitar. It felt like a missing limb, like a part of my body I’d lost at birth, but found years later.

I couldn’t imagine my life without it.

Back then, I didn’t have much of an imagination. I never could have guessed how many things I’d have to live my life without one day.

10

Penny

I’m in the woods again, the trees pressing in all around me.

As I walk, branches become lower and closer until they are scraping at my skin with every step.

---