Broken Kingdom (Royal Hearts Academy #4)(2)

I’m expecting them to decline, but my dad must garner a lot more respect and pull than I thought because they concede.

“Five minutes,” one of them grunts as they head for the door.

Gripping the short, sparse strands of hair from his balding head, my father blanches. “You’re in deep fucking shit, Oak.”

Oh, I’m aware.

“I know.” I wince. This is bad. Real fucking bad. “How much shit?”

He starts ticking things off with his fingers. “Well, for starters, they seized over a pound of cocaine and heroin from the trunk of your car.” He glares at me. “Your blood alcohol level came back a 0.08%. Which is over the—”

“Legal limit,” I finish for him.

Because when I fuck up…I really give it my all.

Quite frankly, I’m surprised it wasn’t higher.

“They also found trace amounts of cannabis and cocaine in your system.”

No surprise there.

“I was trying to sober u—”

“Well, that didn’t fucking work,” he screams, his eyes flashing with rage.

“I’m sorry.”

However, my apology has nothing to do with me doing drugs.

It’s because I know he finally knows the truth.

There’s so much pain etched in his face—so much disappointment lingering—it hurts to look at him.

He averts his gaze, as if he can’t bear to look at me, either. “At least now I know why you moved out so abruptly.”

Yeah, because I couldn’t face myself in the mirror anymore.

Which means I definitely couldn’t face him.

“Dad—”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he barks, gripping the back of the chair so tight his knuckles turn white. “I need to tell you something.” His expression goes from angry to forlorn. “Something very serious.”

Given the laundry list of shitty things I’ve done tonight—and the fact that the girl I love is still in surgery—I’m pretty sure whatever he has to tell me can’t be any more serious than that.

“What?”

Reaching over, he squeezes my shoulder. “During your seizure, you swerved into the opposite lane and crashed into another car.”

Evidently, I was wrong before…it can get more serious.

Way more serious.

I don’t have a great relationship with God, but I say a silent prayer anyway.

Two of them.

One for Bianca to pull through her surgery with flying colors…and the second for whoever was in the other vehicle.

Putting more pressure on my shoulder, he looks down at the floor. “Hayley was driving the other car.”

My brain fills with confusion. “Hayley…my ex-girlfriend Hayley?”

He gives me a solemn nod. “Yes.”

I rub the knot forming in my chest. My horrible list of fuck-ups are piling up by the minute.

“I hope she wasn’t hurt.”

“Oak,” he says softly, almost like it pains him to say the next words. “She didn’t make it.”

My stomach lurches and the room tilts.

Sure, I’m a fuck-up—the biggest one I’ve ever known—but I’m not a…

Holy fucking shit.

This can’t be happening.

“She died?” My shout rings in my ears, crashing over the room like a tsunami. “I killed her?”

I peer up at my dad, begging, pleading with him to take the words back.

But he can’t.

Because I killed her.

My vision blurs and I take a breath, trying to steady myself.

It doesn’t work.

Because there’s no getting away from this.

No taking back what I did.

Guilt—the kind there’s not enough remorse for—fills my chest.

“I’m sorry,” my dad whispers, wrapping his arms around me.

I don’t understand why he’s apologizing to me.

This is all my fault.

“I kil—”

The lights above me flicker and an all-too-familiar fuzzy, buzzing sound fills my ears.





“He has epilepsy,” my father barks as footsteps stampede into the room. “Take these goddamn handcuffs off him.”

I blink up at the ceiling, a wave of exhaustion rushing through me.

There are so many things I want to say—and even more I want to apologize for—but I can’t.

Because no amount of repentance will ever be enough.

I just want to close my eyes…sleep for eternity.

Maybe when I wake up this will all just be a dream.

Or a beautiful nightmare.

Fuck. I want to see her, so fucking bad.

Tell her the words I should have spoken before it was too late, and I fucked everything up.

Tell her it was real between us.

“It’s against protocol,” some man states.

“Fuck your protocol.” My dad rubs my head, just like he used to after I’d seize back when I was a kid. “You’re okay. You just had another seizure.”

It’s funny because, despite his small stature, my father is a shark inside the courtroom—a monster who will literally ruin your life with a simple closing statement—but deep down he’s got a heart as big as the ocean.