Kings of Linwood Academy - The Complete Box Set: A Dark High School Romance Series by Callie Rose (sight word books .TXT) 📕

and Hunter, and it’s the only thing that’s helped me keep my sanity sometimes. Mom still worries about me, but that’s different than the pitying looks strangers give me when they hear I had childhood cancer. She went through it all with me, so she’s allowed to worry.

A moment later, River shifts our positions so he can lean over and turn off the bedside lamp. I end up curled on my side, the little spoon to his bigger one, as his arm steals around my waist, his palm resting on my stomach and his breath stirring my hair.

We fall asleep like that, our bodies molded together, and it might be even better than everything else that came before.

18

I half expect things to feel awkward in the bright light of morning, but they really don’t.

River wakes up slowly and kisses me thoroughly, and then we take turns in the bathroom getting ready. He grabs us some breakfast from the kitchen, and I don’t see either of his parents. As far as I know, they have no idea I slept over last night, but that can’t possibly last. Not once Mr. Black realizes I’m no longer staying under his roof, and not after I tell Mom I moved out.

But it’s not really worth stressing about until it happens—there are bigger, more important things to be stressing out about right now.

River’s phone vibrates a moment before Dax and Chase pull up outside. The two of us slip into the back seat, and I can feel the twins’ gazes on me—Dax through the rearview and Chase over his shoulder. I wonder if they know what happened between me and River last night, if they can see it on my skin somehow. I don’t look any different, but I feel different, like the change between the two of us set off a change in me too.

Neither of the copper-haired boys comment on it though. Instead, Chase shakes his head.

“Samuel fucking Black, huh?”

“Yeah. Maybe so.”

God, it still feels so weird to talk about it out loud. It’s hard to wrap my head around the possibility that the man who hired my mom could be a killer. Hard to reconcile the powerful, controlled figure in the black ski mask with the man who smiles more than most situations call for.

“Linc’s gotta be losing his shit,” Chase mutters, still craning his neck to look at us in the back.

My body goes rigid with worry, and River’s hand finds mine, squeezing gently.

“He can handle it,” he tells Chase. There’s an admonishing note in his voice, and I can read between the lines pretty easily to pick up the subtext—don’t freak Harlow out.

The boy in the front seat flicks his gaze to me, and he nods vigorously. “Yeah. Yeah, of course he can. We just gotta find some evidence to prove it, and then we can finally go to the cops. Let that Dunagan guy take it from there.”

Yes, please. There’s nothing in the whole damn world I want more than to pass off the information clogging up my brain and heart to someone who knows what they’re doing. Who has the resources to investigate and the authority to arrest the true killer.

But I can’t do that until I know it won’t put my mom or any of us in worse danger.

Not until we have solid proof.

We meet Lincoln outside the front doors of Linwood, and it doesn’t look like he slept at all last night. He looks slightly disheveled, his hair unkempt and his eyes a little too bright, like he’s exhausted and wired at the same time.

I step into his embrace immediately, and he wraps his arms around me, his grip almost bruising. When he pulls back, his gaze darts from me to River. The gray-eyed boy nods slightly, and I have a feeling they just pulled a Dax and Chase and communicated some message without words. I also have a very strong feeling that message is about me.

Linc’s amber eyes focus on me again, and when he speaks, his voice is low, meant only for me.

“Did you go swimming, Harlow?”

I want to laugh at the fact that somehow that’s become our code word for whatever this thing developing between us all is, but I’m too nervous to even crack a smile. I know what he said, and I know what River said. But it’s still hard for me to wrap my mind around the fact that they could all really be okay with this. That it could really be possible.

“Yeah. Just… in the shallow end.”

He does smile at that, and some of the strain and exhaustion leaves his face for a moment. Then his grip tightens on me a little. “We still good, baby?”

“Yeah. Always.”

He nods in satisfaction, and we all turn to head through the front doors of the school.

In the afternoon, Mr. Arndt gives the class a pop quiz in Business and Economics, and—as he promised Mr. Osterhaut he would—he takes steps to ensure I can’t cheat. I have to leave my backpack and cellphone at my desk and go sit right up front where he can watch me. He even makes the two kids on either side of me move so there’ll be no chance I can cheat off of them.

The quiz isn’t actually all that hard, but I deliberately get a couple questions wrong. The last thing I want is to be accused of cheating when I just happened to know all the answers for once.

As soon as I finish filling out the last section, I drop my pencil and hold up both hands, fingers splayed like I’m being held up at gun-point. I keep them there until Mr. Arndt calls time at the end of class, and when he comes by to personally collect my quiz sheet, I think I see him fighting an amused smile.

Good. He used to like me pretty well, and I want him to like me again. I need all the allies I can get around this