Page 34 of Vicious Desire (Fallen Royals 4)

There’s an echo of yeses.

Riley grits her teeth, rubbing her toe into the dirt.

Challenge accepted, she seems to say.

All I can hear is my things crashing to the ground.

My resolve hardens.

Caleb was right—I shouldn’t be wasting time going after her brother. He’s a grade-A dick, and they haven’t been the closest. Her parents… they’ll get what’s coming to them on their own. Karma is a bitch that way.

But Riley?

Her future is mine.

She looks up and meets my glare head-on. Time slows down.

I’m surprised at the ache in my chest. I almost rub my skin, but it’s phantom pain. Nothing else. She broke my heart, and I thought I was okay. But it’s worse looking at her. Knowing what she did.

Coach claps her hands, and the girls she named line up. It goes around the field and then up, alongside the track, down and into the woods. The tough part.

I hop up and down, getting my blood moving, and Coach stops in front of me.

“Go out fast. If more than ten girls finish ahead of you, you’re done.” She eyes me. “And maybe Phil will take you for football.”

I grimace. Now that I know Riley’s on this team, I’m even more eager to stay.

Dad is going to kill me when he finds out what sort of job I got. He’ll assume I’m on the same path as Phil Marzden, and I won’t leave Emery-Rose. What had he said about Coach once? Some guys live a pipe-dream in high school, and it shatters when they leave. They’ll do anything to hold on to it.

That won’t be me. And I don’t think it’s Coach, either. He’s happy yelling at teenagers all day. My guess is that it was the fear talking for Dad. His father was a lawyer, and his father before that.

There are no black sheep in the Black family.

Except… me?

The whistle blows, and I’m left unprepared.

The girls take off. I bolt after them, surprised at the early speed, and start the timer on my watch. I know what pace to hit for each quarter mile, and it only takes a hundred yards or so to settle into a good stride.

My pace is quicker than most of the twenty-odd girls I’m running with. I dodge around them, ignoring their huffs. I love running. Not Theo’s sadistic kind, where he runs like he’s trying to get the hell out of Dodge, but the kind that gives your muscles that floating feeling.

I glide over the worn-grass path.

Riley and Skylar are ahead of me, but they won’t be for long.

We follow the track where the football team is warming up, and some of them whistle. Coach Marzden’s yelling drifts toward us.

And then we’re past, flying down a hill and plunging into the forest. It’s cool here, a good drop in temperature, and I speed up. I overtake Skylar, and then it’s just Riley ahead of me.

I should’ve known she would excel at this sport.

She liked running—and clearly still does. She mentioned that in the past, but it wasn’t until the tail end of our relationship last year that she actually went out and ran. The smile on her face when she got back…

I shake my head sharply.

Don’t think about that.

Riley is so close, the sweat on the back of her neck is revealed with every step. Her hair swings like a pendulum.

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