Page 120 of Wicked Games (Fallen Royals 2)

“Nope, you asked.” She backs out of his driveway with a shit-eating grin. “He does this thing where he kind of rotates—”

“Riley!” I yell, finally laughing. “I really, really don’t want to hear about your sex life. Not the details, anyway.”

She shrugs. “Okay, okay.”

“I’m glad you’re happy, though.”

She goes quiet.

I tilt my head. “You are happy, though, aren’t you?”

“We’re not talking about me, we’re talking about you.”

“Hmm.” I don’t trust her glossed-over non-answer, but I let it go. I tip my head back and close my eyes. We had mind-numbing sex. Multiple times. One of us woke up in the middle of the night and the other just knew. We needed each other.

Hands reaching toward each other in the darkness.

Our faces so close we shared breath.

“Earth to Margo,” Riley says. “Where’d you go?”

“I want to remember what happened to me,” I whisper, my gaze on the houses flashing past us.

Riley knows the bare bones of the situation. More than that, I guess. But since she didn’t come in until after I’d been gone a while, no one was talking about it. I don’t think anyone in our class actually knows the real story except Caleb. And a piece of my mind I can’t access.

I want to know why he hated me, and how he was able to stop.

She glances over. We’re almost at my house, and she instinctively slows.

“What do you want to do?”

I inhale. “My old house brought back memories last time.”

She makes a quick turn. “Roger that.”

I left Caleb eating breakfast with Eli. There’s no way—hopefully—he’ll pack up his stuff and go to his house. Why would he?

Besides, I don’t think he’d mind us breaking and entering…

All too soon, she pulls in the driveway and shuts off the car. “Now what?”

“Now we hope the place doesn’t have an alarm.”

Her jaw drops. “You want to go in.”

“You didn’t have a problem with it when it was Caleb’s uncle’s house…” I get out of the car. Either she’ll come or she won’t.

But Riley is faithful, and a second later her car door creaks open, too.

“This way.” I lead her down the driveway, to the door in the gate. I’ve done this too many times recently for it to be shocking, but I still get flickers of a younger me running past us. It’s chilling.

Riley’s head swings around, trying to take everything in. It’s a bit overgrown, but winter is upon us. No one cares about landscaping in November.

I point to the guest house. “I grew up there.”

“Literally in Caleb’s backyard,” she says.

I nod.

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