13 months later …
“Catherine, I did not pay good money for that manicure for you to chew and pick it apart,” Catrina said sharply.
Catherine dropped her hands to her lap. “Sorry, Ma.”
Catrina eyed her daughter from the side, but quickly went back to paying attention to the road. “What is up with you this morning?”
“Nervous, I guess.”
“My God, why?”
Catherine made a noise under her breath, trying to sound dismissive.
She failed.
Miserably.
Catrina didn’t miss it. “Your friends are all still going to be there. It’s just tenth grade—you’re not actually going to a new, new school. It’s still the Academy. Bit of a shame you couldn’t have at least spent one year in high school with your brother at the same time, but it is what it is. I’m sure Michel might have made you more comfortable had he still been here.”
Except he wasn’t. Her brother had graduated at the end of the previous year. Michel was taking a year off before he headed to Detroit where he planned to live while he attended a university in Ann Arbor; he wanted to be a doctor.
Catherine almost found it ironic how two years after transferring into the Academy of Westforth, she was once again feeling like she had that first time around. Nervous, worried, and bothered. If she could just stay in ninth grade, where she was popular, then she wouldn’t have to prove her worth for a place at the table with the rest of the little trust fund bitches.
She had already done that for herself.
“Trust fund bitches?” Catrina asked.
Catherine made a face. “I said that out loud?”
“It was more like a mumble, but sì. That’s what you’re worried about, still being liked and popular?”
“It is high school, Ma. This isn’t like with you, or however you did your thing selling—”
“We don’t talk about that, Catherine.”
She rolled her eyes.
Sure.
They never talked about it, or mostly.
“Point is, high school is brutal. I feel like I’m starting over or something.”
“They’re just teenagers, like you. They’re not rabid or anything.”
Catherine begged to differ.
At least for some of the girls at the Academy.
And a few boys, too.
“You hold your own just fine,” Catrina said with a sly smile, “because you’re my daughter, Catherine. And for the record, you are also one of those little trust fund—”
“Are you going to call me a bitch?”
“Well, there is a reason why you go to that school, and it’s not because your father and I are poor, Catherine. You’re just as privileged and spoiled as any of them. You simply don’t show it off in the same way they do. So they wear diamonds and gold, and you wear flowers in your hair and prefer a Coachella style. Fact is, you still come from the same world they do, and you still dress up just the same in the end. Don’t put yourself on a pedestal; you’ll shatter the same way they would when you fall, sweetheart. And you will fall.” Then, Catrina barked out a laugh. “You should have heard your tone right then, though. Jesus, get ready to rip my throat out why don’t you? You’ll be fine, reginella.”
“Yeah, I know, Ma.”
Or, she hoped.
“But remember what I’ve always told you,” Catrina said as she pulled into the Academy’s drop-off lane for the upper grades. “Tell me what it is, Catherine.”
“I’m always a queen as long as I act like one.”
Catrina winked. “Precisely.”
“I’m being vain, aren’t I?”
“Be vain, Catherine. Absolutely. Care about how you appear to others, and what they see. But never ever bend or change who you are to suit what they want. Be vain, yes, care about your outer image and reputation, but do so because you are controlling what they see and think. Nothing else.”
Catherine nodded. “Okay.”
Catrina’s smile softened. “That, Catherine, is how I was so successful as a Queen Pin. No one was ever allowed to see me or think of me in any way but the ways I allowed them to see or think. No one knew the woman under her mask of makeup, designer dresses, and sky-high heels. They saw the Queen, she was who delivered. I made sure I always had that control—every single time.”
She wasn’t sure what shocked her more; that her mother had offered information about her past so freely, or that she smiled while she did it.
“Do you miss it?” Catherine dared to ask.
Catrina laughed, her smile melting into a smirk. “Oh, I’m still her. She’s still me. A queen never goes away—I’m just a bit different now, and my business has changed accordingly.”
Catherine felt a hell of a lot better as she stepped out of her mother’s Lexus, but she swore she felt eyes burning into her back as she walked into the school.
She didn’t turn to see who they belonged to, though.
Catherine closed her locker up just as Trisha slid in beside her.
“Okay, this sucks,” her friend said.
“What’s that?”
“We’ve had a locker next to one another for two years, and I’m three halls down now. This blows.”
Catherine shrugged. “Bring your stuff over to mine.”
Trisha’s nose scrunched up. “You’re kind of a mess, though.”
“Fuck you, too, then.”
“It’s true!”
Catherine laughed. “Yeah, I know.”
“You wanna come to my locker?”
“Ms. Katlin is a bitch about being late,” Catherine said of her homeroom teacher. “And this hall is way closer.”
She learned just how much of a bitch her homeroom teacher could be about being late that morning. One might think—given it was the first day of school and the tenth graders were still learning the upper Academy’s halls—that the teachers might be more sympathetic to those who couldn’t find their goddamn classrooms.
Not Ms. Katlin.
Catherine lost her first thirty minute break to detention.
On. The. First. Day.
“Well, boo you, whore,” Trisha said half-heartedly.
“Catherine!”
At the sound of her older cousin’s—Liliana—call of her name, Catherine turned in just enough time to brace herself for the impact of an unexpected embrace. Liliana had already been in the upper Academy for a whole year.
Stepping back, Liliana smiled widely. “I didn’t see you this morning. Why didn’t you ride with us?”
“Ma wanted to take me,” Catherine explained, “and talk the whole time.”
“Fun.”
Catherine lifted one shoulder. “It wasn’t so bad. Tomorrow, though?”
Liliana nodded. “For sure. I’ll get Ma to let my enf—”
Her cousin stopped just in time before she blurted out a word that was off-limits anywhere outside their homes and immediate family. Enforcer. A guard, her watcher, driver, or whatever else the guy needed to be. Catherine had an enforcer that occasionally followed her, and sometimes even drove her to things if something was going on, but that was about it.
Her father said things were quiet.
Things—just like that.
Their families didn’t need constant protection and surveillance when things were quiet. But sometimes, when stuff needed to be done, a random man would show up to pick Catherine up and take her to dinner, or a family function, because that was his job.
Whatever the hell he was told to do.
“Anyway,” Liliana said, shooting Trisha a look.
The girl wasn’t even paying attention, as her phone was in her hand and kept buzzing like crazy.
“We’ll get it figured out,” Catherine said.
“And a start of the school year party is happening at Dina Lavigne’s—you need to be there,” Liliana added.
“Who is—”
“Senior,” Trisha put in, never looking up from her phone. “Basically runs the upper Academy. She dated your brother for a while last year, actually. Should be fun.”
What?
“How do you know that?” Catherine asked.
Trisha shrugged. “I had friends here last year.”
“Michel didn’t have a girlfriend last year.”
Liliana laughed. “Yes, he did. A few, though I wouldn’t call any of them girlfriends. Girls he was fucking, maybe.”
“Yeah, that’s enough of that,” Catherine muttered, “don’t need or want to know.”
Trisha leaned in and fake-whispered, “He just didn’t bring them home, hello.”
Liliana snorted. “You don’t bring girls like that home to meet our families, anyway.”
Her cousin had a point.
A good one.
“Oh,” Trisha said.
“What?”
The girl nodded down the hall, and Catherine looked to see what was so important it needed to interrupt their chat. A pretty, tall blonde wearing the same uniform every other Academy girl wore strolled down the hall in heels and a smile. Flanked by two other girls, the three chatted until the two split away from the blonde and headed into a bathroom.
“That’s Dina,” Liliana said.
“Good to know,” Catherine replied.
The bell rang overhead, sending Liliana off with a wave over her shoulder and a promise to see Catherine later. She vaguely heard her cousin, as she was still watching Dina head around a corner at the other end of the hall—the same direction she had to go for English 10.
“Ready?” Trisha asked.
Catherine picked her messenger bag up from the floor. “Your next class is Biology, right?”
“Yep.”
“Same hall as my English 10?”
Trisha beamed. “Yep.”
They walked together, the topic changing to whether or not Catherine was going to take a Chemistry class during the second semester. Trisha didn’t seem to notice when Catherine stopped talking just as they turned the same corner where Dina had gone earlier.
Trisha kept chattering on.
Catherine was stuck staring at a familiar boy.
Although, to be fair, Cross Donati was not very boy-like anymore.
He stood, leaning against a row of lockers, a leather book bag sitting at his Doc Martens boots. The standard tie all male students were supposed to wear was loose around his neck, and the top two buttons on his dress shirt were undone. Even the sleeves of the dress shirt had been rolled up to his elbows. His hair, still black as sin, had been cropped short along the sides, while still leaving a bit at the top that looked like he had just dragged his fingers through it to keep it back in place.
For most of the previous year, Catherine had not seen or talked to Cross much at all after she broke it off with him. Occasionally, she would spy him in the parking lot when she had to meet up with her brother, but that was it. It certainly wasn’t a long enough glance to take in the changes that had clearly happened with him over the months.
Apparently, that year had been very good to Cross.
He was taller. Bigger. Wider in his shoulders, lazier in his grin, and still dark as night in his gaze. Gone was the pretty-boy she had known, and in his place was a young man. His jaw was stronger, and peppered with a light dusting of facial hair that said he probably hadn’t shaved in a couple of days.
Catherine tried to keep her focus on Trisha and whatever she was saying as they walked by, never mind not wanting to draw attention to herself. That was kind of hard to do when the pretty blonde, Queen Bee—Dina—from before was suddenly heading in Cross’s direction with a wide smile like they were friends of some sort.
Dina slid in beside Cross and grabbed something from inside his opened locker. He leaned in to say something to Dina, too low for Catherine to hear as they passed by, and his hand landed on her lower back at the same time.
Friends didn’t do that, did they?
Dina nodded to whatever Cross had said. Her laughter filled the emptying hallway.
He would be a year younger than Dina, Catherine realized, but she didn’t think it would matter to Cross. Not knowing him like she did.
If he wanted something—someone—he’d get it.
What was most shocking to Catherine, was not seeing Cross again, or even the fact he might have a girlfriend. She had known coming into the upper Academy that he still attended, and they would likely run into one another. He was a guy, so it was more likely than not that he would be with someone, too.
Those were not the shocking things at all.
What shocked her was how it made her feel.
Angry.
Bitter.
Confused.
Sad.
All at once.
Like a hurricane crashing through her heart.
No, Catherine didn’t expect to be jealous.
She didn’t have a reason to be, or a right. It had been her that broke it off with Cross a year before because she had been stupid, and thought it would please her disappointed parents. She wanted to do whatever she needed to do at that point to be their good girl—their perfect daughter. Her parents hadn’t made the demand that she cut off contact or break up with Cross; she had done that all on her own.
Catherine hadn’t realized how much it would hurt in her heart. How often she missed or thought of Cross, or how empty she often felt looking at her phone, waiting for something as stupid as a message. A message that wouldn’t ever come because of what she had done.
No, she shouldn’t be jealous.
A year had gone by.
She’d dated other boys.
She’d experienced a bit more.
She was not so naive or innocent.
It didn’t seem to matter.
She still felt it.
All of it.
“You’re staring,” Trisha said quietly.
Catherine’s head quickly swung back around, and she frowned. “Didn’t mean to.”
Except … she kind of had.
It was hard not to stare at Cross Donati.
Especially when he looked like that.
“This is your class, right?” Trisha asked.
Catherine looked at the number over the doorjamb, and the teacher’s name on the plaque. “Yep.”
“Message me after you’re out.”
“Okay.”
Catherine glanced over her shoulder just before entering the classroom, only to see her presence hadn’t been missed like she had hoped.
Cross stared straight at her.
Older. Different. Trouble.
The jealousy bled away for a moment.
The butterflies took over instead.
“You’re late.”
“Oh, you’re still doing that thing where you state the obvious, huh?”
Catherine glanced up at Cross’s voice, finding him in a stare down with the World History teacher. Although, to be fair, Cross looked bored as hell. The teacher, Miss Dykor, on the other hand, looked fit to throw a book at his head.
“I see you’re still as rude as ever,” the teacher muttered.
Cross smirked. “You said arrogant wrong.”
Three weeks into the school year, and classes should have been set for students that discovered they wanted to switch because something wasn’t working, or they were short on required credits. Yet, there Cross stood, five minutes after the bell had already rang, ready to come into the class.
World History was only one of two eleventh grade courses Catherine had opted into for her tenth grade term. Two of the tenth grade classes were not required credits, and didn’t offer credits toward graduation at all. She opted into the higher level courses because her ultimate goal was to attend a university—even if she didn’t know what she wanted to study yet—and she wanted as many higher level and college prep courses as she could get on her transcript.
“Why are you in my class again, Cross?” Miss Dykor asked.
Cross waved a white slip in his hand. “Transferred in.”
“Transfers are over by the end of the second week, you know this.”
“Can’t help what the school wants.”
With a huff, the teacher took the slip and looked it over. “Seriously? They transferred you from Outdoor Pursuits into here?”
Cross shrugged. “Coach doesn’t like tired athletes at practice day after day. I can’t help where they made me go. It was here or fucking Health Studies, and I don’t need a round of abstinence-only Sex Ed; it’s all trash and it’s too little too late, anyway.”
“Language in my class, and that’s quite enough.”
“I’m just saying.”
The teacher looked down at the slip again. “Let’s see if we have a better go at it this year than we did the last, Cross. Actually make an attempt to pass the class this time around, seeing as how you do need the credit from this course to graduate when you’re a senior next year. Start by spending more days in the class than you did skipping it like before, huh?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Take a seat. Page fifty-four in the textbook. Notes in a notebook or laptop only, stay off the internet, and keep your phone out of my sight.”
Cross grunted under his breath as he headed for the only open desk four seats ahead of Catherine. His gaze skipped over her, but just as fast as his dark eyes had found her sitting there, he dropped into the waiting chair and his back was turned.
Still, it hadn’t made much of a difference.
Catherine still felt like a sledgehammer and came along and slammed into her chest, taking away her ability to breathe.
Somehow, she had managed to avoid Cross, his group of friends, not to mention the revolving door of girls that seemed to flock to the bunch. Though, Dina seemed to be a constant for Cross, while he didn’t pay much attention to the other girls that followed behind her.
For three entire weeks, Catherine hadn’t had a single run in with any of them. Sure, she saw them in the halls, on the property outside, or in the parking lot, but that was it. Cross didn’t make much of an attempt to come Catherine’s way, and she gave him and his group a large berth of space when they were in the same general area. She even refused her cousin’s offer of going to the big party at Dina’s house.
She didn’t want to be put into an awkward situation.
She didn’t know how to feel with the relentlessly rotating emotions that charged through her system every time she was put in Cross Donati’s space. From jealously to attraction, to nostalgia, curiosity, sadness, bitterness, and back again. It never stopped, and it wouldn’t stop on just one emotion long enough for her to be able to deal with it.
Catherine hated this.
She hated it even more now that Cross was just a few seats ahead of her and would be for the next several months at least once a damn day.
Great.
Catherine’s daze was only interrupted by the screech of chairs and clang of desks. The rest of the students in the classroom moved their things to the person sitting next to them. A boy with a cute smile, sandy blond hair, and blue eyes pushed his desk next to Catherine’s.
“Say hello to your partners for the next month on this first project,” the teacher said.
Catherine turned to the guy. She only knew he was an eleventh grader, and played on the football team.
“Catherine, right?” he asked.
“Catherine is right.”
“Derik Jones.” He flashed her a smile. “Do you have any idea how we’re going to do this project?”
“I didn’t hear what we were supposed to do.”
Derik laughed loudly, drawing in the attention of several classmates.
Including Cross.
His familiar dark gaze narrowed, and Catherine had to glance away.
Jesus.
She was fucked.
“At least we’ll be screwed together,” Derik said.
More than he could possibly know …
“Do you think they’re dating, or nah?”
Catherine ignored Trisha’s question, instead taking a bite of her apple to fill her mouth. This way, she had a reason not to speak. Trisha didn’t really need her to, it seemed, as their other friends were more than happy to join in on the conversation.
“I mean, they’re around each other a lot, and I don’t have guy friends who put their arm around me, or whisper things in my ear like he does to her. I’ve got a boyfriend that does it, though.”
“She brought his blazer to him last week,” Kasey said.
“And wears it sometimes,” Natalie put in.
“She goes to the football games.”
“Means nothing,” Kasey dismissed. “She’s a cheerleader, anyway.”
Even the crunch of the apple in Catherine’s mouth couldn’t drown out the gossiping. Normally she would be the first to join in because what the hell else did their rich, spoiled asses have to do during lunch hour except talk about what was happening or going on in their school. It wasn’t like they were allowed to leave the property.
“Oh, and he rides home with her sometimes,” Trisha added.
“They’re a cute couple,” Natalie said, “if that’s what they are.”
“Definitely are,” Kasey replied as she applied a layer of pink gloss to her lips. “And yeah, he’s certainly cute.”
“Hella cute.”
“Would you all shut up?” Catherine barked.
All three of the girls’ heads snapped to the side, and they stared at Catherine at the very end of their line where they sat on the picnic table.
“Jesus, what crawled up your ass?” Trisha asked.
Catherine looked away to hide her frown. “Nothing, sorry. I’m just not in the mood to gossip today.”
“Well, I’m not in the mood to be around a bitch today,” Kasey said with a huff.
Unsurprisingly, Natalie agreed.
The two girls pushed off the table and headed back toward the school. The only one that stayed behind with Catherine was Trisha.
“Seriously, what’s up?” Trisha demanded.
Catherine’s gaze traveled to the item in question without her permission that the girls had been talking about.
Cross and Dina.
A few other students milled around the two.
“I don’t remember him caring so much about friends before,” Catherine said before she could think better of it. “He didn’t give a shit. If you know what I mean.”
Now, it seemed Cross had a whole flock of friends. So did she, of course, but he couldn’t be bothered with kids his own age before. Or, that’s what she thought.
“Oh,” Trisha said, “I get it now.”
“Get what?”
The girl nodded in Cross and Dina’s direction. “Him.”
“What about him?”
“Cross was like your first boyfriend, wasn’t he?”
Catherine took another bite of her apple.
She didn’t want to talk anymore.
Trisha didn’t care. “That kind of blows if you’re still into him, or whatever.”
“Not into him, Trisha,” Catherine mumbled around her bite.
“Good, because I think someone else has been looking your way for a couple of weeks now.”
Catherine flicked a stray wave of hair over her shoulder. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Uh, yes, you do. Derik, tall as hell, blond and blue-eyed, plays great defense, and took you to the movies last week.”
So yeah, that had happened.
Catherine still wasn’t sure if she liked Derik the way he seemed to like her. He was a lot like most guys were—physical, pushy, and way too freaking hands-on. Like just because he was a guy with a dick, and she was a girl with a vagina, that automatically meant the two needed to fuck. The more she backed away, the more he seemed to think she just needed more pressure applied. Sure, she’d done some things with a couple of guys she dated the previous year when she had felt comfortable enough to say yes, but it wasn’t very damn much.
Sex was still firmly off the table.
Derik certainly wasn’t going to be the guy who changed that decision. No matter how hard he tried.
“I mean, you are dating Derik, aren’t you?” Trisha asked.
Catherine sighed. “You could call it that.”
“Then don’t worry about you-know-who and whether or not they’re together. Not important.”
“I wasn’t worrying about it. You three just wouldn’t shut up, and I couldn’t not think about it.”
Lies.
All lies.
She’d been thinking about it too damn much.
Thankfully, Trisha’s phone buzzed with a text, taking her attention away from Catherine for the moment.
Catherine couldn’t help herself but check on the two across the lot. She found she was not alone in her staring this time around; Cross was looking in her direction, too. Unfortunately, his distraction didn’t seem to be missed.
Dina, chatting along, frowned when she realized Cross wasn’t paying attention to her. The girl followed his gaze to see he was staring at Catherine. Her brow furrowed, and then she said his name loud enough for Catherine to hear it fifty feet away.
Cross still didn’t respond. Dina gave him a shove on his shoulder. That finally got his attention, but it was too late.
Dina was already walking away, glaring at Catherine the whole time.
Wonderful.