The Legend of the Eight: The Charmed (Book 4)

19: Late

NINETEEN: LATE
OCTOBER 18
CHLOE LAWSON

"I DON'T KNOW WHAT THE worst part is. That it happened or that they knew about it? They knew and they lied to everyone. How messed up is that?"

Across from Chloe, Wil sat on the floor with a trash bag in her lap, collecting every piece of garbage she could find while she rambled on about her parents. It was Saturday and everyone else was at the stadium for the semi-finals game—a game which Chloe and Wil chose to skip in lieu of recent events. Wil hadn't left the room much recently since finding out the truth about her family and though Chloe had planned to attend the game, her mind changed when she saw Xavier Fallon making out with Ava Parsons in the hall earlier.

It wasn't like he was cheating. They hadn't been a thing in weeks and even when they were, they never talked about it. They didn't define anything and they certainly never spoke about exclusivity. But there had been sex and intimacy was not something Chloe Lawson took lightly.

But why did she care so much? Xavier was a jerk. It wasn't a surprise that he'd lived up to the exact person everyone said he was. But for some reason, seeing Xavier with Ava got to her. It rubbed her wrong. It pissed her off. And the worst part was, it was Xavier—someone she didn't even want to be with in the first place.

"Maybe I'm fixating," said Chloe, self-diagnosing the problem. "That's what it's called, right? When you focus on something insignificant to distract yourself from what's really going on? Because I know this can't actually be about Xavier." She made a gagging sound. "Definitely not."

"—Every day of the last seventeen years has been lie after lie," Wil said, clearly having her own conversation without Chloe. "How do I even know what's the truth? Am I really a Diamond? And what about my name? How do I even know if that's my real name? What if something happened to the real Wilmarie Diamond died and they tried replacing me with my father's bastard child and hoped no one would notice?" She shook her head. "Well it worked! No one noticed!"

"I think it's because I've been thinking more about Jeremiah lately. The other night, I swore I heard his voice. Crazy, right? I've never even met the man but there was something about it, I just knew it was him. So to distract myself from my evil Dark father, I'm fixating on Xavier."

"And what do I even call her? I mean, I've called her Mom my whole life but if she's not my mom, what do I—According to the Royal Rules of Etiquette, I would have to address her as Her Majesty Queen Clarion. But my dad is still my dad so technically I'm still Royal. Right? I don't know. Kate would. Kate knows all about this stuff."

"And what about Levi?" Chloe said, sitting on her desk and picking through a mess of schoolwork, attempting to declutter it.

She'd already gone through her entire wardrobe and organized it by season, style, and color. Her shoes had been arranged and rearranged four times until she found a perfect system and her makeup had been meticulously ordered on her desk-turned-vanity. She was running out of things to organize. Wil hadn't done much in terms of organization but she had disposed of the empty liquor bottles she'd been stashing under her bed (Stoli vodka, of course) and transferred 128gb of photographs onto her MacBook which she then refiled by date, subject, and theme.

Chloe thumbed the corner of a graded Ancient Runes quiz while she thought. "I don't know. Maybe I'm making something out of nothing again but I think Levi likes me. Don't you? And I think I might like him too. I don't know. What's not to like? He's cute. He's funny. He's the Beast Tamer."

"I wonder if my dad knows I know. If someone told him. He hasn't been around lately. But I want him to talk to me, you know? To tell me what happened. Why they did what they did. I want him to tell me about her. I want to know about my mother."