Page 8 of Cruel Elite (Princes of Ravenlake Academy 3)

Penny

What the actualfuckjust happened?

Two years.

Two entire years since Noah Boone has so much as breathed in my direction, and now he storms back into my life, pins me against a tree, and makes threats?

This has got to be a fever dream. Lord knows he still features in them from time to time no matter how hard I fight my subconscious on the matter.

Though, usually, he’s younger in my dreams. So am I.

The way we were back when things were different.

In those dreams, we’re young. Freshmen. I giggle and he wears a smile, and it’s always innocent. Just sitting together and talking. And laughing.

I shake my head in a desperate attempt to clear it. Now is not the time for this.

I left the main party because I needed a minute. A minute to slouch against a tree, stop sucking in my stomach, and, honestly, fix the permanent wedgie my silk thong causes.

Did Noah see me do that?

My face burns with the possibility, but it doesn’t matter. If Noah’s threat is to be taken seriously, he’s going to do a lot worse than tell people he saw me pull my panties out of my ass.

He’s played it cool the last few years, but I know what Noah and the Golden Boys are capable of.

Everybody does.

If you cross them, you die.

I kick the cup Noah slapped out of my hands into the bush. I told Anika to bring trash bags, but she spent the afternoon getting a spray tan no one would be able to see in the dark woods and forgot to do it. Classic.

Noah walked off in the opposite direction of the party, but I still catch myself looking for him as I pick my way back through the maze of branches and human bodies.

A couple that clearly started beneath a tree to the right of the path have gyrated their way off the blanket they laid out to the center of the path. I actually have to kick the guy in the ribs to get him to move.

He curses in frustration before he looks up at my face. I don’t know him, but he clearly knows me.

“Sorry,” he mutters, wrapping his hands around the girl’s back and sliding her back into the scarce coverage of the bush. Her shirt is gone and, even in the dark, I can see that her nipples are harder than diamonds.

It’s warm for January, but it’s notthatwarm.

“Put a fucking shirt on.” I cover the girl’s chest from my line of sight with my hand as I pass.

Yes, I’m being harsh, but I’m also giving her some good advice. Any guy who actually cared about her would not have her half-naked in the woods for the rest of the school to see. No dick is worth that.

I pass twenty feet from where the rest of the Golden Boys are sitting around a dying fire.

Finn and Lily are whispering to one another while Viktor tries to get the group going in a slurred drinking song.

Then, I see Caleb and his girlfriend.

I remember my mom pushing me to date him our first year at Ravenlake. “He’s a quarterback,” she’d said to me, raising her perfectly manicured blonde eyebrows at me like I was crazy. “You have to go out with him.”

It didn’t matter to my mom that I had no interest in Caleb.

Just like it hadn’t mattered to her that she had no interest in my birth dad.

His bank account and social status were what mattered. That’s the only stuff that ever matters to her.

---