Page 76 of Evil Queen

That made me happy to hear. “He’s been around for me ever since I was a little girl. I suffered abuse by my parents, and my grandma wanted to move me out of Postings, but she let me stay here with my foster mother because it was obvious how good he was for me. When he started dating Cherri, I was crushed.”

“I can’t even imagine how hard that must have been, but I need you to know exactly how hard that was for him too.”

“I know that his dad made him do most of it, but I’m not dumb. Cherri is beautiful, and I’m sure he enjoyed having her on his arm.”

Kyle bobbled his head. “I guess a little, but at the end of any day, he was always looking at you.”

That gave me a warm feeling in my stomach. I liked thinking that it wasn’t just a trip to paradise for Nathan when we weren’t together. I’d made a promise to myself not to look back on what happened before we got together, but it didn’t stop the insecurities from seeping in. Kyle, whether he was doing it on purpose or not, was helping to ease some of those insecurities.

We finished our finals and then met up with everyone outside of school. Everyone was really excited about spending some time together to celebrate, so we paired off to head to Colette’s family’s sushi restaurant to end the day. Brayden hadn’t disappeared during the day, which was good, and he joined us to celebrate the conclusion of the finals and officially being graduation-bound.

We were ushered to the back of the restaurant, where a private room had already been set up for us to sit in, complete with congratulatory balloons and a few bottles of wine to share amongst us. We placed different orders for a variety of sushi combinations to share, and the staff delivered a bunch of appetizers to the table for us to enjoy while we waited. Nathan popped open the first bottle of wine and poured everyone a glass.

“We’re gonna make it,” Nathan said with a sigh, lifting up his glass of wine. “Fucking toast to that shit.” Everyone lifted their glasses and clinked them together. “You guys, we have to have a massive graduation party. I know your parents are all throwing you your own graduation parties, and obviously, I’m gonna be there, but I want to throw a big, insane graduation party. I’m gonna spend, like, a hundred grand on it. I don’t care. The odds were stacked against us this year, and we still made it, and that’s a huge deal.”

“I certainly have a lot to celebrate,” Avery said. “Ali got a job in New Haven, and I got my official award letter for my full ride. I’m Yale-bound.”

“Officially,” I said. “I’m going to be heading up the new debt collection division of LCE, with the help of my grandmother, of course.”

“And I’m gonna be taking my position as president once I graduate,” Nathan said.

“Aw, I’m sure those adults are gonna love having two teenagers running things,” Alistair joked.

“Well, we decided that we are both going to get our degrees in business,” Nathan replied. “Nikki wants to get her master’s degree.”

“Hell yeah!” Colette said. “Well, I’ve kind of played close to the vest, but I’ve been accepted to Postings Proper University. I guess I’m gonna be sticking around here,” she said and looked over at Kyle. “I’ll even have a friend close at hand.”

“Your acceptance letter came in?” Brayden asked.

Kyle nodded. “It did.”

Brayden grinned. “I told you it would.”

A warm smile found Kyle’s face, and it gave me butterflies in my stomach. “You did, and you were right,” Kyle said. “Thank you.”

“I’ll be working with my dad,” Jaxon said simply. Everyone waited for him to say more, but he didn’t.

“You’ll have to excuse him. He’s not a man of many words,” Colette said, and everyone laughed.

His family owned a very successful real estate company. I couldn’t see Jaxon selling houses, but that didn’t mean that he couldn’t find a way to work it out.

“See? We all have post-grad plans, even though we were all hopeless in January. That’s impressive. We’re doing this party,” Nathan said. “Leave it up to me.” He looked over at Brayden with a smile. “You’re expected to come too. I know you’re not graduating, but if you hadn’t been there to keep us all sane, who knows what would have happened.”

None of us immediately responded to Nathan. Clearly, we all shared the same fear that Brayden was involved with Connor, but Avery smiled and said, “Of course, it wouldn’t be a party without our best friend there.”

Brayden smiled at everyone and nodded. “Oh, none of you have to worry. I’ll definitely be there.”

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