I needed them to love me, but Ihatedthem.
And that dichotomy was ripping me in two.
I didn’t know the shadowy beginnings of the Horsemen, how or why the boys I knew becameHorsemen. There were all kinds of stories floating around Crowne Point, most of them tinged with supernatural horror.
Some people actually believed they sold their souls to the devil.
So a normal person would be scared.
A normal person wouldn’t elbow the Horseman at her back. “No one will talk to me with you lurking like a six-foot shadow.”
“So this is what you want, princess?” Lock asked. “To be sold to men who don’t deserve you?”
“Depends.” I spun to Lock. “Are you planning on scaring away every person who looks at me?”
“You can do better than these guys, princess. A fucking corpse could do better than these guys.”
I stifled my laugh in my teacup. Not a second later, I frowned.
What is this?
I stood on my tiptoes to glare into his eyes. “Why are you being nice to me?”
He bent down, black hair shadowing his icy-blue eyes, tugging the silver piercing in his bottom lip with his teeth.
“Princess,” Lock said. “You’ve got a visitor.”
I blinked as he leaned back against the wall, a slight smile on his lips.
I turned around, finding that one man had finally made his way to me: Nathan Cartwright. Nathan had gone to the same boarding school as me before I transferred to Crowne Point High, but a few years before, so we’d not really hung in the same circles.
Nathan was a boring social climber.
In any other scenario, I wouldn’t have given him a second look, but my mother’s glassy eyes were still stuck in my mind.
“Did I just see Gemma Crowne laugh?” he asked, eyeing Lock at my back.
“Uh…” I arched a brow. “I laugh.”
“You’re usually pretty uptight at these things.”
Was this motherfucker really trying tonegme?
I stayed silent, and Nathan continued. “Anyway, I wasn’t sure I’d see you here today, what with the news.” There was something tucked under his arm.
“News?” I asked, playing dumb.
The drink in Nathan’s hand shook as he stared at Lock at my back.
“Have you not seen?” Nathan pulled out a magazine from under his arm—themagazine.
There it is.
Even the Horsemen couldn’t deter the temptation to shove my shame in my face.
I eyed the glossy paper.
“What an interesting thing to bring to tea,” I said at last, then lifted my eyes to his slowly. “You must have been as bored as I am with the company.”Choke, bitch.
