Page 26 of Kings & Chaos

“Probably just because he’s been obsessed with you forever,” she said. The image on my phone screen wobbled as she flopped back on her bed.

I did the same on the sofa in my room, and it was almost like being in high school again, the two of us talking for hours, in person and on the phone, each of us sprawled across our beds. “What? That isnottrue.”

She took a deep breath, like she was bracing herself to tell it to me straight. “Neo has had his eye on you for ages. All the Kings have.”

“I seriously don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Itoldyou,” she said. “All those times I told you they were looking at you? That they werestaring?”

“Yeah, but that was… that was just dumb teenage girl stuff.” I couldn’t count the number of times Mara had said some hot guy was staring at me, only for me to turn and find him gazing adoringly at his gorgeous girlfriend.

Men of all ages stared at Emma. I was the invisible one in the corner with a book.

“It wasn’t,” she said. “I’m telling you, they were always watching you, especially Neo.”

“I don’t think so.” I mean, yeah, every now and then Neo — and Rock and Oscar — looked at me. We were part of the same Mafia family. We grew up together, watching each other morph from gangly little kids to awkward tweens to cocky adolescents.

Well, cocky for them. Awkward for me.

But that didn’t mean they’dhad their eyes on me, whateverthatmeant.

“Listen, you can believe it or not, but it’s true, and I tried to tell you. Do you think…” She shook her head, like she didn’t want to continue.

“What?” I prompted.

“Do you think you didn’t notice because of Emma?“ she asked. “Because of the way you saw her?”

I sat up. “What do you mean?”

Her eyes filled with sympathy. “Come on, Willa. You always thought Emma was the sun, moon, and stars, and because you saw her that way, you assumed everyone else did.”

I immediately rejected the idea. Emma had been popular. Girls had wanted to be her best friend. Boys had wanted to fuck her.

Everyone had loved Emma.

Hadn’t they?

“She was popular,” I said. “Youknowthat.”

“Sure. She was popular. She was tight with the other ‘It’ girls. She always had a hot guy falling all over himself to be with her. I’m just saying that you were her little sister, and you were quieter than Emma, more… closed off. I just think you underestimate yourself because you compare yourself to Emma, and I think you always have. Hot guys stared at you too. You were just too busy reading or daydreaming or whatever to notice. But if you had noticed, you would have seen the Kings watching you even before they were the Kings, and you would have seen that Neo was obsessed with you.”

“But… why?” I asked. “I mean, assuming I believe you — and I’m not saying I do — why would they be watching me? Why would Neo be…obsessedwith me?”

I could hardly use the word in the same sentence as Neo, because obsession went both ways and I did not want to think about the possibility that Neo and I had been on a collision course all these years and I’d been too dumb or blind to see it.

“Because you’re amazing?” Mara said.

“Right.” Mara was my best friend. She was supposed to tell me this shit when I was in crisis. “Anyway, it doesn’t really matter. I need to focus on finding out what happened to Emma. I don’t need the complication of fucking Neo.”

Everything was all mixed up, my feelings about Neo and the other Kings tied up in the mystery of what had happened to Emma even though the two things had nothing to do with each other.

“I think you should trust yourself,” Mara said. “Trust your instincts. They’re not going to steer you wrong, with Neo or anything else.”

“We’ll see.” I was ready to move onto safer ground. “Your turn. What’s new in the city?”

She shrugged, and I knew her well enough to spot the way her eyes darted away from her phone. Mara was a terrible liar, and she knew it, so she tried to avoid it even though her expressions always gave her away anyway.

“Just, you know, school, homework, the usual,” she said.

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