Total pages in book: 168
Estimated words: 164910 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 825(@200wpm)___ 660(@250wpm)___ 550(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 164910 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 825(@200wpm)___ 660(@250wpm)___ 550(@300wpm)
And Nero didn’t outlive his teacher for long, either.
“I never thought your father would be the easier one to make suffer,” I taunt.
His eyes dance. “But, Dallas…” he whispers. “Nero’s father wasn’t around to stop him.”
My lungs constrict, insufficient air pouring in. Nero’s father died when he was a child, and he murdered his mother. Callum’s mother died when he was a child, and…
I force down the lump in my throat. He has plans that don’t just include me.
Callum leaves, his crew disappearing with him, and I grab my coffee cup, dumping the liquor in my trash can.
I am going to need a clear head.
Let’s see what you’ve learned, Callum Ames.
2
Callum
My collar sticks to my neck, my tie growing tighter. I want to loosen it, unbutton the top button, but they’ll think I’m irritable because of him instead of the heat.
It’s too damn hot. I could’ve just waited for fall. Spent some much-deserved time abroad after what I put myself through the past four years, but I’ve done my time, waiting to face him again.
Besides…if half the town isn’t gone already, they will be soon. The mayor’s already taken off for his summerhouse in Maine, and the police will be rotating their vacations as well. It’s perfect. All those empty St. Carmen mansions…It’ll be too much for those Swamp Rats to resist. It always is.
I don’t care how organized they’ve gotten, paving their dirt roads, building a school, and positioning themselves into careers. They’re still Tryst Six. Orphans of Axel and Trysta Jaeger.
Criminals. Troublemakers.
“He seems more controlled than I remember,” Milo muses.
He meets my eyes from where he sits across from me in the town car, and I take in the scar Clay Collins left on his face in high school. A lot longer and thicker than the one I got that same night.
I never told my friends about my past with Dallas, but during that summer in high school—for one month—I didn’t work hard to hide that I was spending time with him, either. I knew where I was going all those nights and that one rainy afternoon, and no one was stopping me.
The great thing about rich friends, though, is that they owe you silence if they expect it for themselves.
Jerome sighs next to him. “No, he just grew wiser. A man knows there’s a time and place for indulgences. You’ll find out someday.”
Milo chuckles. “Fuck you.”
Jerome Watson is more than a decade older than us, but he still has no wife and no kids, so he fits in with the bachelors.
All of us sit in the back seats, Vincent and I with our backs to the driver, who guides the car smoothly through town, away from the school and up to Fox Hill. It’s almost one in the morning, but we’re far from late.
Turning my eyes out the window, I curl my fingers into my pants leg, feeling my heart beat against my chest.
My hands hum and haven’t stopped since I touched him. I can still feel my fingers locking around his wrists, remembering a time when it was the other way around.
I close my eyes for a moment. Then two. Milo is right. Dallas Jaeger was never a slave to his temper like his brother Iron.
But I could feel his pulse through his skin. He might be able to hide his feelings on the outside but not on the inside.
Obviously, he’s not stupid. Not only can I get him fired now, but he doesn’t want to make the same mistakes as his brother. He’ll pick his moment and make it worth it.
Five years ago, he tied me up into one knot after another, and a year later pulverized any last shred of self-respect I had, and it’s going to feel good, getting him out of my system.
Fuck, it’s going to feel really good. I lick my lips, the ridge of his ear still there in my mind, against my mouth.
“How the hell did he get a job teaching at our alma mater?” Milo shifts uncomfortably, looking between Jerome and me. “As if the board didn’t know those fucking Jaegers are sloppy, poor trash whose sense of culture revolves around beer can pyramids.”
“Because they’ve been playing chess while we’ve been playing checkers,” I reply, finally looking straight at my friend. “Father Bill baptized Dallas.”
His gaze falters, everyone in the car well aware that Father Bill is the priest at Marymount Academy and has been for thirty-five years.
“He baptized all of them,” I continue. “And Krisjen sits on the city council these days. And Trace’s storehouse supplies liquor to Fox Hill, which shares many of the same board members as Marymount.”
The fucking list goes on. Marymount hired Dallas to teach the philosophy course a year ago, and they could’ve had anyone. A doctorate, a tenured professor slowing down for a few years, or someone with more experience, at least. But no, the job went to someone with only a bachelor’s degree whose priorities consist of fucking, breathing, and eating, in that order.