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

“Oh. Thanks.” She smirks. “My mom was furious when I got it, but whatever. Fuck that bitch.”

Jesus. At some point, I’d really like to meet a teenager from Fox Hill who likes their parents. Maybe it makes me a huge nerd, but my mom is one of my best friends, and I don’t give a fuck who knows it.

Bypassing her statement entirely, I glance at Lincoln, who nods. No point beating around the bush, I guess.

“Did you know Iris Lepiane?” I ask, shifting my focus back to the girl.

She blinks. I have a feeling if she made a list of the top thousand things she thought I might say, that question would’ve been somewhere around nine hundred ninety-nine.

“Yeah. I did. So?” Her gaze darts around our little group again, really taking us in this time.

“I need to ask you a question about her. Can we go somewhere quieter and talk for a second?”

The girl’s eyebrows pop up. She looks torn between telling us to fuck off and satisfying her curiosity by finding out what we want. Curiosity wins, and she shrugs lazily. “Sure. Whatever. Anna’s parents aren’t home, so we’ve got free run of the house. As long as all the bedrooms haven’t been taken already.”

A few have, but we find an empty room on the second floor. Whoever Anna is, I’m guessing this room belongs to her little sister. It’s pink, with pictures of ponies everywhere.

We’re all still in our swimsuits. I wasn’t gonna risk letting the girl with the tattoo—Summer—get antsy and ditch us while we changed. I purposefully avoid sitting on the furniture, not wanting to leave a wet ass print in this poor little kid’s room, but Summer sprawls across the bedspread, looking like a fucking swimsuit model just waiting for the ocean spray to crash over her.

Now that she’s decided to play along, the annoyed look has left her face, and she’s staring at the twins again like she wants to eat them.

I’m trying to talk myself out of crawling onto the bed and smacking the crap out of her when Dax and Chase save me the trouble. Leaving River next to Lincoln, they cross the room at the same time, coming to stand on either side of me, so close that the bare skin of their arms brushes mine. They glance down at me, and I swear I see laughter dancing in Chase’s blue-green eyes.

When I glance back at Summer, the annoyed expression is back on her face, and I like this look so much better.

“What do you want to ask me about?” She sits up a little, seeming more anxious to get this moving along now that she knows she won’t be getting a twin sandwich.

That’s right, bitch. My sandwich.

Making sure not to let my thoughts show on my face, I take a step forward. “Someone told us that you knew Iris, and that you might’ve introduced her to an… an older man she was seeing. Is that true?”

She looks amused, a satisfied smirk playing across her lips. “Yeah. Probably.”

“What do you mean, probably?” Lincoln asks, his voice hard.

“I mean, I taught her my technique. I didn’t know she snagged a man though. Good for her.”

“What technique?”

Summer sighs, sitting up and swinging her legs off the bed. She leans back on her hands, eyeing the four boys before looking at me.

“Well, you seem like you’re doing okay. But in general, high school boys tend to be a bit of a letdown. I prefer older guys. They know what the fuck they’re doing in bed, plus they’ve got money to actually give you presents and stuff. Cartier jewelry,” she adds with a heavy inflection, as if I’m supposed to be impressed by this.

“So what’s your technique?” I ask.

“Well, if you want to land a big fish, you have to go where the big fish are.” She bats her eyelashes, and I decide I like this girl even less than I liked Iris. “My parents get about a billion invitations to black tie galas and fundraisers and stuff. They can only go to so many though—my mom doesn’t even like them, and my dad is so tightfisted he doesn’t like giving his money to anybody. So I take their invitations and go instead.”

So she can go trolling for rich older men. Ugh. Gross.

“And you taught this ‘trick’ to Iris?”

“Yeah.” She gives a satisfied smile. “I took her with me once. Said she was my plus-one.”

“What was the event? A gala? A fundraiser?”

Summer waves a hand airily, as if that little detail doesn’t matter one bit. I guess, for her purposes, it doesn’t.

“I don’t know. Some fundraiser.” She makes a little scoffing sound. “I can’t believe that bitch got a hookup and didn’t tell me.”

I want to ask if she knows Iris is dead, because she sure isn’t acting like it. But she must—it was all over the news. I guess her attention span just isn’t long enough for her to still be in mourning.

“Do you remember what it was for?” I press, taking another step forward. “When was it?”

She rolls her eyes in irritation, but purses her lips as she thinks about it. “In the spring. I dunno, it was a fundraiser for a politician. Halloway or something.”

My skin prickles all over, like a ghost just walked through me. It takes all my effort to keep my voice steady as I force words past my lips.

“Hollowell? Alexander Hollowell?”

“Oh, yeah.” She nods. “That was it, I think. She must’ve given her number to somebody there that night. I can’t believe she didn’t tell me, that bitch.”

“She never… told you anything about him? Never talked about a guy she was seeing?”

“Oh, she talked about Trent all the time.” Summer makes a face. “And I sort of got the sense she had another guy on the hook, but I thought it was someone else from Linwood.”

“Do they usually have photographers at those sorts of things?” River asks softly.

Summer tosses him a look like he’s some