“Bitch,” he growled, gripping himself as he tried to stand to his full height. There was a feral rage lingering in those pale blue eyes of his. Shit! He was going to kill me.
I took another step back as he righted himself, pain obviously overtaking him as he tried to take a step toward me.
“Don’t think this is over, Noelle. Don’t think that you can get away with doing something like this without facing my wrath.” Fear rooted me in place, but as I continued to stare at him, something else started to replace that fear.
Something that gave me the strength to finally speak.
“Don’t fuck with me, Royal. You may think that I’m just some spoiled little princess, but I’m tougher than you think, and I’m not afraid of you.”
A scary smile formed on his face as he slid against the brick wall slowly getting closer to me. “You aren’t right now, but then again I haven’t done anything to hurt you yet.” Air filtered into my lungs. I was done with this conversation. If I didn’t leave now, he would get his hands on me and the whole point I had just proven would be pointless.
“Try to hurt me. Do it. I’ll fight you tooth and nail, Royal. Unlike everyone, else I believe there is something halfway decent in that cold heart of yours.”
I skirted away from him and his coldness, running with all my might toward the locker rooms. I might have looked and sounded like a warrior, but I was scared as fuck of Royal and the repercussions that would follow from what I had done.
Chapter Seven
-Royal
Three long days and a bag of frozen peas later and I was finally getting past what Noelle had done. My ego wasn’t bruised but my balls were, and that was enough to piss me the fuck off for an eternity.
I was livid at first; you didn’t touch someone without the intention of having the same come back upon you. I wouldn’t lift a hand to her beautiful skin, but I would retaliate in some form to get even with her. The nerve it took to knee me in the balls had to be immense. Somewhere in something that I said to her must have caused a switch to flip inside of her, pissing her right the fuck off. That was fine though, because if Noelle wanted a war, she was going to get one. I was darker. Meaner. Far worse than she could ever imagine.
If she wanted to see me in my most ruthless form, then she was going to get her wish.
“Royal. I need you to come into my study, please?” Mark asked but more so ordered right before he headed out of the kitchen. His voice startled me because he had been in the kitchen preparing his food without a single word said to me. Then suddenly he wanted me to listen to him. Yeah I didn’t know how I felt about that.
Still I scarfed the rest of my cereal down and placed the bowl in the kitchen sink. Before I got here, I considered this place to be a shit fucking hole, but now, now I was starting to wonder if this place was really all that bad. It seemed more like a lap of luxury, like a vacation that I never received growing up.
I marched up the stairs and toward the study stopping right before I hit the top of the landing. I could hear hushed voices down the hall.
“You need to stay away from that boy, Noelle.” A bubble of laughter filled my throat, threatening to escape. That boy. Like I was some bad habit or something.
“He’s my stepbrother, how can I stay away from him? We have almost every class together, and if we aren’t sharing classes he lives here, or have you forgotten that?” Noelle’s voice sounded broken and deflated. Was I really being that big of an asshole? If you ask me, it’s her that’s being the asshole.
“You need to stay focused on your grades, on your studies, and whomever Mark and I see fit for you to date. Do you understand me?” There was moment of silence. I was praying Noelle would say no and shove the words back at her mom with force, but instead I heard nothing. There were no further words said between them.
Was Noelle drowning in misery, just like I had been for the better part of my life? Maybe I misjudged her? Maybe she wasn’t some spoiled princess like I assumed she was? Perhaps, we were more alike than I realized.
Viviana, Noelle’s mother was the woman my father married after leaving my mother, and she was a total bitch. Thus more, it turned out she even treated her own daughter like scum of the earth.
I wasn’t going to hide from either of them anymore, so I continued my walk to the study, passing Viviana as I walked down the hall.
“Royal,” she said my name like it took her effort to do so. I wondered if there was more that she wanted to say but stopped herself.
“Bitch.” I tilted my head at her, signifying that I didn’t give a shit what her name was.
I would call her whatever the hell I wanted, when I wanted.