Dukes of Ruin (Dark College Bully Romance): Royals of Forsyth University Book 4

In grade school, Nick took a liking to this girl in gym class.

He spent six weeks absolutely demolishing that bitch in dodgeball.

He’d follow her to lunch and steal her book bag, rifling through it right in front of her, like he had every right in the world. He’d drag her through the halls by her wrists, push her down when she struggled, rough her up for not being his in the very specific way he wanted. That’s the thing a lot of people don’t understand about Nick—that he’s just as exacting as Sy, if not more so. The more intense he feels about something, the fussier he gets about it.

The girl’s parents caused a huge stink—probably because their kid kept coming home all bruised up. Later on, I’d make him tell me about them. The marks. The purple and blue. The blood just underneath the skin. Even back then it excited me, the thought of Nick’s fingertips making impressions on a girl’s skin.

Poor girl never had a chance once Nick set his sights on her, but his parents got really aggressive about it and put him and Sy into a program for ‘troubled youth’.

I’d been there since third grade.

Tate came a year later.

That’s where it all started, the four of us instantly gravitating to one another. None of them were like me—there was nothing actually wrong with any of them on that deep, fundamental level. My brain has never been right, but theirs were fine. Sure, Sy got into a lot of fights, Tate had a problem with authority, and Nick only knew how to want someone homicidally, but none of those were the real problem. Sy’s problem is that he never knew when to stop hitting. Tate’s problem was that she didn’t understand why she was different yet. And Nick’s problem?

Nick’s problem was a deep, internal belief that he could bully someone into loving him back.

Christ, some things never change.

The air tastes like lightning and hurt, and Nick is the ozone. Vinny’s on the floor, clutching her cheek, eyes wide and wet with unshed tears.

Nick is just staring at her, still as stone. “I told you what would happen,” he says, voice quiet and terrible. “You made me do this.” More urgently, he asks, “Why do you always make me do this?”

She presses her wrist into her nose—a pathetic attempt at cloaking a sniffle. “Our deal is off.” She tries to make her voice all hard and sharp, but it cracks halfway through.

Nick looks away, and his cracks are visible. The subtle fall of his shoulders, the flex of his jaw, the way he makes himself so unbelievably still. “If that’s what it takes to keep you safe.”

Vinny scrambles to her feet and charges toward the door, almost knocking me over as she shoves me out of the way. Something angry flares in Nick’s eyes, but it shutters with the sound of the bathroom door slamming shut, rattling the walls.

Nick drops to the end of the bed and begins aggressively untying his shoelaces, attention a little too focused on the task. “She’ll try to run away, so we’ll have to stay with her. She’s not to be left alone here again.”

I fold my arms and watch him. “You’re never going to win her like that.”

His head snaps up, face contorted with rage. “I’ve already won her!” My feet take me back a step. Nick’s better than anyone else in this tower at keeping his cool, but his fists are flexing like he’s Sy all of a sudden.

“You did,” I agree, watching him wrestle out of his shirt. “You won her. But you never won her over.”

“Fuck winning her over,” he sneers, chucking his shirt across the room. “I’ve been letting her toy with me since she walked up those stairs. I’m not her lap-boy. I’m her Duke. I own her.” He jerks his chin toward the bathroom. “Let her win me over for once.”

My lips pull back into a bleak approximation of a smile. “If she did that, you’d lose interest. That’s why you have to chase the hard pussy. You don’t want a girl—you want a project.”

“What I want,” he replies, fists curling, “is a little goddamn appreciation.”

I give the jam a couple taps with my knuckle before turning away. “A bird is never going to appreciate its cage.”

I cross my arms, knee bouncing as I wait. The sound of my heel tapping against the floor must piss off the old guy sitting beside me, because he shoots me a glare before moving to the other side of the waiting room.

I don’t want to be here.

Taking out my phone, I shoot off a text to my father.

I don’t want to be here.

He doesn’t answer, but I’m not surprised. My family has a single rule that predicates all others: no scandals. It’s why my eldest uncle and his sons have law enforcement locked down, probably for generations. It’s why my father owns every ritzy hotel in the state. It’s why I’ve been shuffled around to clinic after clinic, seen by doctors who are paid to keep me calm and as normal as possible.

But fuck, I really don’t want to be here.

The dread builds in the pit of my chest like a fist around my lungs, and the longer I wait, the more restless I get, drumming a beat against the arm of the chair.

“Dr. Weatherby is ready to see you, Mr. Maddox.” I look over at the lady in blue. She’s behind a tall counter with a glass partition, nothing but a small slot open at the bottom. It always makes me want to duck my head down to make them deal with me. Are they afraid? Worried one of the clients is going to spread their crazy through the opening in the window? Terrified they’ll be infected with it?

The woman’s name is Doreen, and her smile never feels real. It’s tight, false. I can’t help but stare at her lips, how she paints them a shade between orange and red, making her smile seem even more false. Jokerish.

Staring at me expectantly, she adds, “You can head back to her office.”

I stand and shake my arms out, cracking my back from sitting on the uncomfortable chairs. Nothing about this place is welcoming. Not the seating or the paintings of wildflowers or Doreen. But if I can get through it, it buys me a solid couple weeks of my dad’s silence.

“Thanks, Doreen.” As I walk past her, I tap my marker against the flat surface of the countertop and she narrows her eyes at it. Make one little mural of a crucifix fucking a pussy on the lobby wall and everyone’s all suspicious.

Dr. Weatherby’s office is the third door down, and the door is standing open. She’s probably old enough to be my grandmother, but her shrewd eyes and ramrod posture are anything but maternal. The doctor sits in a gray chair, her back to a wall-sized window overlooking the city. I walk over to it and place my hand on the glass, peering down.

So many dangerous cliffs in Forsyth.

“Remy,” she says, standing and closing the door with a soft click. “How are you?”

“Outstanding,” I say, turning away from the window, from the cliff, orienting myself to the room. I drop to the couch, letting my body bounce on the soft cushions. This is the only comfortable seat in the place, I bet. Probably a trap. “I’m a Duke now.”

“Oh,” she says, looking at me over her glasses. She flips open her little notebook. “That’s a big role. Congratulations.”

I press my palm to my thigh, idly tracing the capped marker over the letters on my knuckles: D-U-K-E. Ever since last night, I’ve had these… flickers. Vinny’s red cheek. Her big, wet eyes sparkling like a galaxy. Sulfur and panic. She didn’t even look at me when I went to her this morning, climbing the staircase to her loft. She just kept glaring out of the dingy clock face as I worked her waistband down, counting the points on the star.

“How have things been going?” Her pen is poised over the paper, her eyes on me. “With school starting and all the changes a new semester brings, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear you’ve had some trouble adjusting.”

Dr. Weatherby asks the same questions, the same way, taking the same notes on the same blue pad every time I come. She tries to see me, but when I’m on the edge of that cliff, I’m invisible to everyone.

Except her.

“School is fine. Mostly art and the business admin class my father makes me take.” That’s the deal. I can be an art major as long as I minor in business. ‘Something to fall back on.’ “I like my philosophy class.”

She hums pensively. “And how have you been sleeping? New home, new room.” Again, I get one of those flickers, clenching my eyes against it. “Remy? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

She dips her chin, assessing me over the turquoise frame of her glasses. “You’re doing drugs again.”

“No, I’m not.”

I totally am.

She sighs, jotting in the notebook. “Stimulants don’t react well with your medication.” She pauses. “You are taking your medication, aren’t you? Your real medication.”

“Consistently?” I ask, flashing a winning smile.

She shakes her head. “Yes, consistently.”

“I skipped my meds for a few days,” I confess, tapping the marker on my knee. “It’s fine, except…” My eyes stray to the window, considering the drop. This building isn’t as high as the tower. I can see it in the distance, the clock frozen in time. I imagine Vinny is there right now behind the clouded glass, her stare piercing through the distance.

“Except?” she prods.

I rub my forehead. “I had a dream about the stars, and they said something.”

Dr. Weatherby uncrosses her legs, sitting straight. “We’ve discussed this already. The stars aren’t important. Have you drawn anything today?”

I look at her, eyes narrowing. “The stars are important. And don’t distract me. I’m confused, not stupid.”

“You know why we don’t talk about the stars,” she stresses, mouth pursing tightly. “You fixate, Remy. The stars are a metaphor for your dissociation. It’s not helpful to think of them.”

“Well, I disagree,” I say, pushing to my feet. Dr. Weatherby watches coolly as I march to the coat closet, yanking it open. “What’s this a metaphor for?”

Inside is a collection of items that have been collected from around her office. She puts them in here every time I visit and probably puts it all back once I leave.

Yellow coasters.

Yellow stationary.

Yellow pillows.

Among them is a painting of yellow flowers. It’s a terrible piece—the kind of bland, lifeless bullshit that’s probably churned out on a conveyor belt to be sold in bulk to healthcare facilities. And it’s not quite right. Not the right flower.

“But I don’t know why,” I mutter, curling my lip at the sight of it.

She clears her throat. “Close the door, Remy. We’re in the middle of a discussion.”

“I used to like yellow just fine,” I say, gesturing to the tableau. “Let’s talk about that.”

She crosses her legs again. “Sensory issues are—”

“It’s not the fucking color!” I explode, hurling my marker at the window. It clinks against the glass and tumbles to the floor. Growling in frustration, I snatch up the painting and march it over to her, slamming it on the table at her side. I jab a finger into a painted yellow flower. “Tell me why looking at this makes me want to throw up. Tell me why my Duchess is always in the stars!”

She gives me an infuriatingly patient look. “Remy, these things mean nothing. You’re abusing substances again. Have a seat and do your exercises.”

I deflate. For some reason, I’d had this notion that Dr. Weatherby would have the answers, but I can’t for the fucking life of me figure out why. These people never want to help. They just want me to be quiet and still—someone posed into an expression of normality, no matter how artificial. They want me to smile like Doreen.

I go back to the couch, pulling out my phone before landing heavily on the cushions. “The exercises never help.” Turning the phone over in my hands, I quietly confess, “Sometimes when I see yellow, I think about… Tate.” I don’t realize why I say it so quietly at first—soft, like a secret. It’s as if saying her name too loud will make something bad happen. I don’t remember much about two years ago. I just remember a long stretch of hospital rooms and needles, fluorescent lights and cold floors, hard beds and bland food.

Mostly, I remember Dr. Weatherby and her stern face—a lot like she looks right now. “Let’s start over, Remy. What have you drawn for me today?”

I raise my gaze to hers slowly. Something is occurring to me. It’s difficult when all I have to count on are vague impressions of things. Yellow is bad. The stars have taken something. Vinny is older than we know. Flowers bring decay. But there’s a reason I’ve always been so resistant about coming to see Dr. Weatherby, and it’s because my head throbs when I think of her, like something has slithered in through my ear and bored a hole into my brain.

“You never let me talk about Tate,” I realize. I’ve been seeing Dr. Weatherby since Tate died, and never once has she let me speak of her.

 She clicks her pen. “Because I don’t think it’s healthy for you to—”

“You don’t want me to.” I look down at my phone, thumbing through my contacts until I find the one labeled ‘Sarah’. Holding Dr. Weatherby’s stare, I hit the call button, raising the phone to my ear.

The doctor frowns. “Who are you calling?”

I don’t respond, waiting for an answer.

There’s a click, and then her voice. “Remy? Well, what a treat. I just got off the phone with Simon and—”

“I need to ask you something,” I say, cutting her off. Nick and Sy’s mom isn’t the kind of therapist I need, but I overheard something she said the other night at dinner, and it niggles at the back of my thoughts. “It’s about my therapist.”

Dr. Weatherby arches an eyebrow. “Who are you speaking to?”

Sarah answers, “Go on.”

“She says I shouldn’t think about stars or the yellow flowers,” I say, eyes accusing. “And I can’t talk about Tate. I can’t fucking talk about anything! That’s weird, right? You said at dinner… you told Sy he shouldn’t bottle it up. You said he should talk about her.”

There’s a moment of silence from Sarah’s end, but Dr. Weatherby fills it. “Remy, I’m the doctor who’s treating you. I’m the only one who understands your condition and medical history. Your father wouldn’t be happy to hear you’re not following my—”

“She’s never let me talk about it,” I tell Sarah, speaking over the doctor. “Even when I was at Saint Mary’s, she would…” I clutch my head, wincing at the memory.

“You’re with the same doctor you saw at Saint Mary’s?” Sarah asks. “Your father pays her?”

“Of course, he pays her. Probably a small fortune.” Quieter, I admit, “When I think about Saint Mary’s, it hurts.”

Dr. Weatherby’s eyes flash in alarm. “Mr. Maddox…”

Urgently, Sarah orders, “Leave. Get up and walk out that door, you hear me? You don’t have to stay if you’re uncomfortable.”

I don’t need to hear anymore.

“Remington!” Dr. Weatherby calls as I follow Sarah’s orders, only stopping to pick my marker up off the floor before wrenching the door open. “Remy, I’m calling your father!”

I run away from her words just as much as I’m running toward home. I don’t understand it—not completely—but I think I’m beginning to.

The flickers aren’t flickers. They aren’t metaphors or manifestations or hallucinations. They aren’t unhealthy fixations.

They’re memories.

When she shows up at midnight, as if I’ve summoned her with nothing but the power of thought, I’m in the middle of crushing up a pill. It annoys me at first, my attention being snatched away from the important things, and I whip the door open with an irritated grind of my teeth.

She’s clutching the kitten to her chest, brows pulled into an agitated frown. “I’m sleeping here tonight.”

I take a furtive glance over her shoulder, spotting Nick as he disappears into his own room. Reaching out, I touch her shoulder, urging her over the threshold. “I need you to come with me. I just need you to—in just a minute. Wait here. Right here…” I point to where she’s standing and then return to my drafting table, cutting the pill powder into a tidy line. Dipping down, I snort it in one clean pull. Bitter. I shudder as it trickles into the back of my throat. It’s faster this way, though. More potent.

I’m so close to remembering…

“Remy…” When I turn to Vinny, she’s looking between me and the bed, body rigid. “What are you doing?”

I follow her gaze to the bed—or, more accurately, the paper covering it. It’s not good—the flowers. They’re drawn messily, the yellow not quite right, but if I squint, it’s almost enough to bring back a flicker. “You need to come with me,” I tell her, hurdling forward to pry the kitten from her grasp. At the panicked glint in her eyes, I rush out, “He’s not a part of this; he’ll be okay. Sometimes I watch him chase the moon and I think he’ll probably outlive me.” I set him down on my workbench, ducking down to get a good look into his eyes. “The Archduke has a big soul.” Turning to her, I add, “You don’t give him enough credit.”

“Shit.” Vinny’s face falls. “You’re having another episode, aren’t you?”

“No.” I gesture, coaxing her out of the room. “It’ll only take a second.”

But the moment we move toward the door leading up to the belfry, she wrenches out of my grip. “Absolutely not!” She shakes her head, edging back, and there’s an explosion of alarm in her eyes that’s bright enough to make its own flicker in my mind. “We’re not going up there again. Not after—”

My hand shoots out, snatching her upper arm. “This isn’t like before.” When she struggles against my hold, I impatiently whisper, “Don’t you trust me?!”

She barks a disbelieving laugh. “No! Not even a little bit. Not even with my kitten. Not even with yourself!” She turns on her heel. “I’m waking Sy up before—”

I open the door and grab her from behind, clamping my palm over her mouth as I drag her up the stairs.

She fights against me, but I’m too tall, too big, my arms like steel around her torso. “Shh,” I tell her, and I might be bigger, but Vinny has a lot of fight in her. She thrashes and beats my forearm with her fists, feet kicking at the walls as I heave her higher and higher. Getting her up to the first room, the one with all the clock mechanics and the filing machine, is more work than I’m expecting. By the time I finally push through the door and slam it closed behind us, I’m actually a little out of breath.

She jerks her neck, freeing her mouth.

And then she clamps her teeth down on the soft tissue of my hand.

“Motherfuck!” I push her away, clenching my hand. Her wide, frightened eyes dart past me, back to the door, and it happens again. The flicker. “Vinny, would you listen? I’m not trying to hurt you!”

She backs away. “You’re having an episode, and you’re all hopped up on that shit Cash gave you. You’re not thinking straight!”

I follow her deeper into the room, palms up. “I’m not crazy. The stars are real. I just need to see the way they touch you—” I pause.

Okay, that’s not sounding less crazy.

Something flashes in her eyes and she yanks her hoodie up, hooking her thumb in the waist of her shorts. “You can just count the points, remember? Seven. You know it’s seven.”

“I don’t need to,” I insist, eyeing the ladder up to the belfry. “You’re here, I get that. I know this isn’t a dream. When I say the stars are real, I’m not talking about a thought or a fucking delusion.” I look her in the eyes, making sure she understands that I’m here. I’m lucid. “It’s a memory. It’s something my dad paid the doctors to make me forget, but I’m remembering now.”

If anything, she just looks even more discomfited. “That’s paranoia, Remy. You’re having some kind of reaction to the drugs. If you just let me wake Sy—”

“No!” The thought of him knowing about the stars makes me clutch at my hair, tugging hard at the roots. “Vinny, I need someone to listen—really listen—just for fucking once!” I hate the way she looks at me, all lost and pitying, as if she knows my mind is a salad of yellow and stars and red. “I won’t jump. I just have to see you up there. I can’t… I can’t tell you why, because I don’t know yet, and I know it sounds crazy, but it’s important. It’s everything.”

“Remy,” she breathes, staring back at me. “I don’t know how to help you.”

“You can help me like this,” I insist, holding out my hand. I’ll make her if I have to, and I can tell from the dismay in her eyes that she knows it. But it has to mean something that I’m giving her the chance to do it on her own—that I’m not Nicky. Right?

Her shoulders slump. And then she lets out this long sigh that straightens her spine. “You have to stay away from the ledge.”

“Yes!” I burst, wiggling my fingers. “I won’t fuck around, I promise.”

A hardness comes over her features. “And no fast moves or I’ll go get Sy and I’ll tell him everything.” Her eyes narrow. “All of it, Remy.”

If Sy knew about what happened before—about me almost jumping—about me almost ending up like Tate…

It’d fucking destroy him.

“Deal.” I nod encouragingly and she finally reaches out, slipping her hand into mine. I lead her to the ladder, but I don’t make her climb ahead of me. The hatch is too heavy for her, anyway. I brace my feet on the rungs and wrench it open, the rusty metal squealing in protest.

Up in the belfry, the air is crisp with the late September air, the coy tease of autumn looming in the clear night sky. The equinox is tomorrow night—twelve and twelve. Everything aligned. Harvest, death, rebirth. Fading yellow, orange and red.

When she slowly climbs out, I grab her hand, lifting her carefully around the enormous bell. She dusts a hand off on her thigh, but I don’t let the other one go, pulling her toward the glow of the city. The light pollution from the other corners of Forsyth drives me to the back side of the tower—the one that faces west. From here, someone could almost pretend the other kingdoms don’t exist.

That’s where I drag Vinny, ignoring her protests—the spark of dread in her eyes—as I position her where I want her, right against the backdrop of night.

Overhead, a blanket of stars dots the sky.

“Here,” I breathe, watching her glance nervously over her shoulder.

“W-what now?” she stammers, hands fisted in the pocket of her hoodie.

Now, I close my eyes and think of stars. Smoke. Black glass. Blonde hair. Red.

Yellow.

There’s something soft in the memory that I can’t quite put my finger on. It’s a sadness, or maybe a regret. I know that it hurts. I know that it fucking kills me. I know that I want to turn away from it, because that’s what I’ve been told to do—not to think of this place, this sadness, this horror, this pain.

I make myself face it, sinking into the tender places, forcing myself through the soreness of them.

And then I open my eyes.

A gust of air catches Vinny’s hair, whipping it around her head in cold tendrils of pale blue. Behind her, the stars are beckoning, their distant light freckling the space around her. She never opens her mouth, but I hear her scream. I’ve seen that mouth, those lips gaping in terror. I’ve seen the gentle curve of her cheek as it hollows. I’ve seen the emptiness of oblivion in her watery eyes. I have, I realize, seen her skin beneath this sky, a yellow flower tucked behind an ear.

And I’ve seen her fall.

It doesn’t slam into me like the wrecking ball I’d feared. The memory skulks toward me like a hidden thing that’s stepping shyly from the shadows. It doesn’t hurt me to know it. There’s no catastrophe here.

There’s only Vinny, looking at me curiously. “What?” she asks, fidgeting nervously.

I wonder how I must be looking at her, because when I step forward, it makes her flinch. “It’s not you,” I assure, cradling her face in my hands as I find what I’m looking for. Her eyes. Her cheeks. Her red lips. I rest my forehead against hers, so relieved that it brings a ghost of a smile. “It was never you.”

The kiss is feather light, my mouth grazing hers so gently that her small tremor is enough to threaten it. I realize now why Vinny was never quite right. The dreams. The stampede in my chest that first night, in the Hideaway’s basement. The way looking at her sometimes makes my temple throb with an urgency that galls me, as if I’ve forgotten to do something.

The memory unfurls like petals that are waking from a long slumber, and it’s not complete. The flickers still dance in and out, and I might not understand what I’m seeing, but I know who I’m seeing, and that’s…

The wrecking ball arrives on the crest of the kiss, slamming into me. I freeze, because the stars might have been sad, but the yellow…

“No.” I stumble back, eyes wide. A sea of swaying yellow stretches out in my mind, and it’s full of quiet, dead things. This is the source of the hurt. This is the flicker that carves a groan from my chest. This is the entropy and casual destruction I’ve been fearing all this time. “She was in the flowers,” I realize.

Vinny watches me, forehead creasing. “Who was… what?” But I can’t explain it to her. I can’t even explain it to myself. Somehow, I just know.

“Remy, wait!” Her panicked voice chases me back to the hatch, and then down the ladder.

I don’t know what it means.

But I know where to go.