Page 72 of Scarred Crown

“Truth or dare?” My heart is in my throat, and no matter what she picks, I’ve got a question. The next minute could change my life forever.

“Dare,” she whispers, and she runs her fingers through my hair.

I kiss her forehead, and then I frame her face to make sure she understands how much I mean what I’m about to say. “Marry me. Tonight.”

Nick

Fourteen years ago

I tap my pen against my debate notebook and check the clock above the club supervisor, Ms. Kurusanather, again.

Julia is late—what else is new?

Since the semester started, Ms. Kurusanather has been picking our partners, and today is the first day we can select our own debate teammate. Normally, the rigid control over who we associate with pisses me off, but I’ve been grateful to avoid Julia. The teacher, like most people at school, assumes we’re still best friends. As a result, we haven’t been paired together at all.

Ms. Kurusanather crosses her arms at the front while she drones on about today’s debate topic. Assisted suicide, which isn’t legal in Bellerive. Could she have found a more depressing one? We’ve already done the death penalty this semester, and it was such a joy to realize all the people who’ve been put to death around the world who turned out to be innocent later. That’s my theory on assisted suicide too—what if a cure for whatever ails a person is just around the corner?

Here’s hoping I get the side I want to argue on the coin flip.

Julia texted me earlier about being a team, and I sidestepped the question by changing the subject to something else.

When it comes to Julia, I have to keep my options open.

Although I’ve tried to put what happened or is currently happening between her and Alex behind me, I can’t find the ease we once had around each other. We don’t fit anymore. The few times I’ve let circumstances align for us to be alone, our conversations have been stilted. A casual brush of the hand is fraught with tension, at least on my side.

I shouldn’t want more with Jules, but I do. Nothing turns off that impulse yet. It’s not that I haven’t tried. I don’t want to feel this way about her.

Vicky and I are still together, and when I’m not absorbed in royal business, I spend a stupid amount of time with guys from the soccer team—or football team—if you’re Alex and arguing semantics. He and I have only drifted further apart, but Brice and I have formed a twosome against him. Lose one brother, gain another. Always a bright side, right?

Alex and I don’t talk if I can avoid it. I don’t want to know anything about what’s happening between him and Julia. He knows I know, but neither of us has mentioned that night. When he makes comments about her now, I don’t correct him. What can I say? Stay away from her? She made her choice.

The ever-present ache in my chest spreads, crawling underneath my skin like a disease, poisoning everything. The unanswered questions fester inside me.

Are they still a thing? How long have they been together? Are they fucking? Does she love him?

The last one is the most improbable. Julia in love with Alex? Come on. No way. But it’s also the question that’s wedged under my skin, a sliver on the brink of infection.

For the first time in our friendship, those sorts of questions are knives to my own heart. I can’t ask them, and I don’t want her to realize I saw them because she still hasn’t told me.

She doesn’t question me about Vicky either. Subjects that were never off-limits are now ones we tiptoe around like landmines. She’s slipping through my fingers, and I don’t know how we claw our way back to each other.

The worst part is that I’m not even sure I want to.

She didn’t tell me.

She still hasn’t told me.

Alex.

Of all the people in the world, she went for him. The realization burns through me.

We’re drifting away from each other, but she’s letting it happen too. The bullshit excuses I come up with not to spend time with her go unchallenged.

The teacher stops talking, and Julia still hasn’t appeared. Releasing a sigh of annoyance, I scan the room for the next best person to partner with. If she can’t be bothered to turn up on time, I’m not waiting around for her.

Becca is smart, and she’s hot.

“Bex,” I call to the East Asian girl in the corner with her two friends. They can’t form a threesome, anyway, so one of them needs to leave. Or I join them for a foursome. The thought makes me smile. “Partners?”