Page 156 of Depraved Boys

Someone moved and jostled my body, and all the while, Leopold’s hand remained in mine, rooting me to reality.

“Willow?” asked a strange man.

My throat was so swollen, I couldn’t even reply. I couldn’t even breathe. My heartbeat sped up, the force of its contractions making my limbs twitch.

“Willow?” Leopold’s voice broke.

His hand slipped from mine, and a tube went into my mouth and down my throat. I sucked in a breath of clean air and fell unconscious.

The next time I awoke, it was in a hospital room in a row of beds.

“Willow Evergreen?” A doctor stood over me and said a bunch of sentences my mind couldn’t parse. I caught the words, poisoned, charcoal, ECG, and toxicology. Everything else faded into a blur, and I closed my eyes to stop him from talking.

The next time I awoke, it was in a different room, and all three of the kings sat at my bedside. I blinked and let my gaze wander to Leopold, who sat the closest. His blond hair hung over his face, and dark circles ringed his eyes. Warmth filled my heart. Sometimes it was hard to believe that the boy I saw as a sexy bonus to my relationship with Sebastian had stepped up and become such a reliable boyfriend.

Next to him sat Prakash, who stared directly at me. When I blinked, he tilted his head to the side and blinked back, reminding me of a curious cat. Every instinct told me that he was a sensitive, caring guy, who had probably rescued me on the night of Ashley’s initiation, but I still hadn’t finished decoding Corrine’s diary.

At the far end, Sebastian hunched over his lap and rested his head in his hands. Pain pierced my heart, and I squeezed my eyes shut. He had been protecting Miss Claymore all this time, not knowing I’d seen the woman twice a week for private tutoring, drank cups of tea she had prepared, and eaten countless numbers of her ginger mints.

I’d been such a fool to think she would help me out of guilt for Corrine’s suicide. She had just wanted to get rid of a rival.

“Willow?” asked Prakash. “Are you awake?”

I opened my eyes to find all three boys staring at me. “Why didn’t you say something about Miss Claymore?”

Sebastian’s eyes were red-rimmed. He turned his gaze to the jug of water on the over bed table. “I believed in her good heart and didn’t think her capable of hurting you.”

“But she hurt you,” I whispered.

A muscle in his jaw flexed. “What I did to her was unforgivable.”

“But she was an adult, and you were a grieving child.”

“Age isn’t an excuser of cruelty.” He swallowed. “What I did was completely premeditated, and she resisted me the entire year until I took her back to the cabin and told her I’d built it in her honor. S-she’d been a virgin.”

I turned my head away from his sad, green eyes and blew out a long breath. No wonder the woman had become obsessed. “She tried to kill me again.”

“I know.”

The hospital kept me for another day, as the toxicology report was inconclusive. A combination of antidepressants, paracetamol, and beta-blockers was found in my blood, but I’d only ever taken paracetamol and hadn’t taken any since waking up in that cave.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have any of Miss Claymore’s ginger mints to hand over to the doctors for testing, and they didn’t believe that I would be able to eat large quantities of those candies without tasting the bitter drugs. My mind briefly wandered to the box of Chinese herbs in my room, but I dismissed the possibility. I’d stopped taking them the day I’d started throwing up.

The boys helped me settle into my house, filled the refrigerator with groceries, and promised to return for the weekend. There was no sign of Ashley anywhere in the village of Cummersdale. Uncle Trevor hadn’t heard from her. Neither had two of her friends who had knocked on the door when they’d spotted the lights in my window.

On my first night back, I lay on my sprung mattress, entertaining a swirl of worries. If I didn’t find a job or a company to sponsor my studies, I wouldn’t be able to pay the bills, and then I really would have to sell the house. And what would I do to get the police to take the two latest murder attempts seriously? I was beginning to wonder if everyone thought I had some form of Munchausen syndrome.

The letterbox rattled.

My eyes snapped open, and a breath caught in the back of my throat. Heart rattling against my chest, I crept out of bed, through my bedroom, and out into the hallway. I crouched at the top of the stairs and waited.

Through the stained glass windows, I caught sight of a man standing at the door, peering inside through the letterbox. A moment later, he straightened, revealing a tall, broad-shouldered figure backlit against the street light.

“Pssst, psst!” he made the kind of noise people used when trying to catch a cat’s attention.

I bit down hard on my bottom lip. Was he a burglar, casing the house for occupants, or something else? The man fiddled with the front door, which was locked and bolted shut.

“Shit,” he hissed and walked away.