High School Treachery | ✓

BONUS 1 | Blue Eyed Boy

B O N U S  1
Blue Eyed Boy

Jalen Uccello didn't chase.

He leisurely walked, no real destination in mind. Not enough care to add any effort.

Girls came and went in his world, and he took them as they came and watched disinterestedly as they left. It hadn't always been like that, but that had become his way of living after her.

Elena.

To even simply think of the name used to hurt him. Once upon a time, Jalen had thought he'd never withstand the thought of her face, her voice, her touch. And as time went on, and the pain continued to linger, Jalen was sure he'd never truly get over it.

Maybe he hadn't. Maybe that was his problem. Well, maybe it was one of his problems.

Jalen wasn't naive. Maybe stupid, but definitely not naive. He knew he was fucked up. He knew it. You couldn't live eighteen years in that mind and not at least be able to acknowledge it. He had just grown used to it, okay with it.

The one time he almost wasn't okay with it, the one time he almost didn't think of himself that way, was when he'd met Elena.

That was when he chased, and chased, and chased, until he'd finally made her his. But in the end, Elena's heart never truly belonged to him, and that cold, hard truth smacked him across the face the night of her senior prom.

Left empty inside, with nothing except the title of King and his right hand man David, Jalen vowed to play his role.

He kept his vow. And thus, began the time when Jalen didn't chase. He let things and people come to him, and he never felt the need to go after anything, because he didn't want anything. The one thing he wanted left him, so easily, too easily.

And then she came along, and suddenly, the urge to chase creeped up on Jalen.

It didn't happen right away. It almost didn't happen at all.

Lyndon Prince was just another girl to him—someone else to serve as entertainment and pass the time until he was sentenced to his imprisonment.

Or, in other words, forced to marry Cortney Rousso.

Jalen watched himself in the beginning. Truthfully, he knew she wasn't just any girl. She was Malia's cousin. And the same way that meant a lot to the students of Arlin that either envied or loved their queen, it meant something to Jalen, too. He knew getting too involved with Malia's cousin could cause issues, and if she wasn't fine with it, he'd have cut off all ties from the beginning.

But Malia never said a word about it. And any time Jalen subtly hinted at it, trying to gauge her reaction, she didn't so much as bat an eyelash.

Luckily, Jalen knew Malia pretty well, and he knew she wasn't as disinterested as she pretended. It was as if she knew that—whatever he'd do with Lyndon—he wouldn't intentionally hurt her because she was Malia's cousin, and that was enough reassurance for her.

Jalen would swear, until the day he died, that he didn't intentionally hurt her. He never intentionally hurt any of the girls he'd been with. They'd known what it was between them from the beginning, and if they didn't, Jalen quickly made it clear.