Page 26 of Evil Villain (The Royal Court)

“Wow,” I said. “I guess I’ve been so apologetic this whole time that I didn’t realize the good it did. I’m glad. I’m angry at myself for being such a fucking brat and hurting you guys.” I looked at Nikita. “Or in your case, getting my ass handed to me.” Everyone laughed. “But I’m glad that it made us all stronger.” I lifted my wine glass. “To aging like ten fucking years in six months.”

“Here here!” Colette said, and she, Avery, and Nikita lifted their glasses to meet mine. “Oh! Cherri! Did you see how Nikita looked at prom?”

My eyes widened as I remembered the shimmery ensemble with the first time I’d ever seen Nikita’s hair down or her wearing makeup. “Yes! Oh my god, you were smokin’!”

Nikita smiled. “Thanks.”

“I’m serious, I even told Sicily how amazing you looked, you can ask him. I was seriously like, I’m so angry at them, but damn she looks good. You all did, but Nikita was like…” I whistled. “How did that happen? One of you did it?”

“Well, we convinced her to get dressed up, but you’ll never guess who picked it out,” Avery said.

I tilted my head. “Not Nathan?”

Nikita nearly choked on her drink. “God no. I’ve spent the last six months making his wardrobe less douchey.”

“Jaxon,” Colette said proudly.

“No way.”

She nodded. “Yup. Avery and I kept picking out these poofy dresses, and they looked good on her too, but fortunately Nikita dragged Jaxon along—It was back when we were still navigating our new friendship—and he picked it out. The only thing we added was the headband.”

“I’m impressed,” I said. “Didn’t know he had it in him.”

Colette shrugged. “That’s generally true of Jaxon.”

“Well, you would know. You two are like the real deal now,” I said. “I will never forgive myself for missing that.”

“You know, it occurs to me that we’ve never really talked about it,” Avery said. “Howdidit happen?”

My eyes widened. “Wait. You don’t know?”

“I know a little bit, but not the full story,” Nikita said. “She’s right, it was just a thing one day.”

We paused the story for a minute while our food was delivered, then Colette perched one of her maki rolls between her chopsticks as she started to speak. “I guess it mostly started during winter break.”

“Bullshit,” I said immediately.

“Yeah. Cherri and I saw you with hickies back in like October,” Avery said.

“Okay,” Colette whined before popping her sushi roll in her mouth. She chewed and swallowed then wrinkled her nose. “I’m telling the story of how we got toofficial.”

I held my hands up in retreat. “Fine. Sorry.”

“You’re right, we would like makeout and stuff before winter break,” Colette explained, “but that was actually really rare, and usually we would just sort of trip and fall into it.”

“He would trip and his lips would fall onto your neck?” Nikita said.

Colette chuckled. “Damn near. Literally, it was like we would get together to study in a perfectly public place and it would just happen. I swear to god, the first time we kissed I asked to borrow a ruler he had, he reached across the table to hand me the ruler and he kissed me. I was confused, but not unhappy. Then there was this other time we were standing by my locker and I leaned past him to reach into my locker and I brushed a little too close to him, all of a sudden we were kissing. I don’t even know how we got there. He says I started it.”

“That’s amazing,” Avery said. “I love the idea that you’re just all of a sudden like kissing and have no idea how you got there.”

“Then,” Colette said with overdramatic pronunciation, “It all started around winter break. Those couple of weeks after Deon went missing were so tense and I just couldn’t sleep well. I was texting Jaxon and mentioned that I couldn’t sleep, and eventually he came over and we would just talk, and I was finally able to get some sleep. It was much, but enough. We didn’t do anything over winter break. No kissing or sex, just spent a ton of time together and slept a lot.”

“That’s what he told me too, so I can confirm,” Nikita said.

“That’s so cute,” Avery said.

“He was so worried about you,” Nikita said. “I’ve never seen him like that before.”

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