Forever Golden: Dark High School Bully Romance (Kings of Cypress Prep Book 3) by Rachel Jonas (beach books TXT) 📕

she knows about Casey, we’re free to go to Dr. Pryor. We can tell her about the video without Parker being able to retaliate.”

Southside’s still quiet, but her softening expression gives me a small flare of hope. Maybe she’s coming around.

“I thought you only told a handful of people,” she says. “So… how’d your dad find out?”

“That’s the same thing I’ve been wondering. My first thought was that Casey may have let something slip to someone other than Parker, and it somehow circled back to Vin. That seems like too big a coincidence, though. He definitely knows shit he shouldn’t, but—”

“The phones.”

I glance toward Southside when she sort of mumbles that to herself, slipping into a thought she has yet to share aloud.

“Meaning?”

“It’s something Hunter said the last time I visited. He told me not to trust the phones and I… I hadn’t put two and two together at the time, but it’s the only thing that makes sense. It would explain how your dad knows about you and Casey. It would explain how he got that picture I only shared with Ricky. I…”

She falls silent, staring at the floor as the weight of this revelation hits her. Hits us both.

Would Vin really go that far? Tracking phone calls and text messages?

No sooner than I ask myself that question, I’m reminded of all the other shady shit he’s done lately, and it isn’t hard to believe. The bastard’s more than capable, even if the bigger question still remains in play—why?

What does he stand to gain by keeping tabs on us? Or what does he stand to lose if he doesn’t and something slips past him?

My mind’s already made up; I’m confronting his ass. He knows I’ve seen Pandora’s post, knows I’m aware that he’s had words with Southside tonight, so he’s likely expecting it. I won’t reveal all my cards, but he needs to know whose side I’m on.

Hers.

It’ll always be hers.

I glance at Southside’s hands again and they’re trembling a little more than before. It’s the only sign she’s not as tough as that look on her face suggests. When I lace her fingers with mine, her watery stare shifts toward me.

“He… threatened me.”

Those words are like a bullet, breaking skin, ripping straight through my heart.

“And as bad as I know you want to give him shit about it, West… you can’t,” she adds.

My glare hardens. “He can’t keep doing this shit. If I don’t make it dead-ass clear to him that—”

“He said he’d hurt Scar.”

Those words cut off my train of thought, taking whatever I was going to say right out of my head. When she said he threatened her, I assumed that meant he’d try to get her kicked out of school or some shit like that.

“His exact words were that he’d have her taken from me,” Southside explains, meeting my gaze with desperation in her eyes. “But West… he made it abundantly clear how easy it would be to make her disappear—make us both disappear—if I don’t cooperate,” she adds in that same shaken tone.

“Cooperate?”

“Yes.” There’s tangible fear in her eyes and I don’t miss it.

“What the hell does that even mean?”

Trying not to go off the rails, I breathe through another of those long pauses when she takes forever to answer.

“West, honestly, I shouldn’t even be telling you this much. If he finds out—”

“I’d never do anything to put you or Scar in danger,” I cut in. “Whatever you don’t want him to know, he won’t know. You have my word on that.”

She studies me a moment. That’s when a tear finally slips down her cheek, making it impossible to not feel the weight of what she has yet to say.

“I told you some of it, the part about him wanting you as far away from me as possible, but he was more specific than that,” she finally admits. “His instructions were to not only break your heart. He said to break you.”

I’m stunned, but probably shouldn’t be, considering we’re talking about Vin. Pushing a hand through my hair I try to wrap my head around this shit.

I can tell you what I do know—it’s the last fucking straw.

It’s not just that he’d try to force Southside out of my life, but that he’d threaten endangerment of hers and Scar’s to get it done. I’ve never been one of Vin’s biggest fans, but this more than solidifies the fact that I hate that asshole.

With every-fucking-thing in me.

“I didn’t just pack my bags because I’m scared shitless,” she confesses. “It was also because leaving would be easier than hurting you, making you hate me.”

It feels like there’s a knife twisting in my chest. It’s one thing to know my father’s a grade-A deadbeat when it comes to being any kind of father to us, but it’s something altogether different knowing he’d actively try to destroy my life, knowing he’d physically harm someone.

“I only have two months to make a clean break,” she adds, raising my heartrate even more.

I’m seeing red, fighting the urge to spiral into a full rage. “Is that everything?”

“The important parts, but there was just something about the whole thing that made me certain his threats were anything but empty. Especially the part about making me and Scar disappear. He hinted at there being people interested in bidding on us and, I have to be honest, West, the only thing I could think about was all these missing girls. What if he’s involved with that?” she asks. “I’m probably not supposed to know anything about this, but when I was with Ricky earlier at the diner, he said something—a word that stuck out to me.”

“What was it?”

She fidgets a little, like she’d rather not say.

“He mentioned hearing the term ‘cargo’ being tossed around. What if that’s code for the girls they’ve been moving in and out of Cypress Pointe? What if that’s what he plans to do to Scar? To me?”

I grab hold of her when her voice shakes.

“That won’t happen.”

“But how do