Prologue

PROLOGUE

QUINN

S taring at myself in the mirror, I rolled the waistband of my skirt higher. It wasn't regulation, but screw the rules and regulations.I ripped the hair tie from my hair, shaking it free, then stalked out of the toilets into the school corridor, all the way to the end, past the classroom where I should have been sitting in a biology lesson, and pushed open the heavy doors leading to the grounds of Hatherley Hall.

Freedom. I took a deep breath, filling my lungs with fresh air.

"I wasn't expecting to find one of the elite out here. Shouldn't you be in a lesson right now?" The voice came from my left. Fifteen-year-old Roman Cavendish. Tall and lean, with inky-black hair and the most gorgeously tanned skin, leaning casually against the honey-coloured Cotswold stone wall without a care in the world. He cocked a brow at me, and I blinked, realising he'd addressed me directly and I'd let the silence stretch for far too long. Wow. I hadn't known he could talk. I mean, obviously, he could talk, but I'd never heard him speak. Roman Cavendish was a bit of an enigma. I knew nothing about him, other than the fact he mostly kept to himself, and he'd developed a bit of a reputation as someone who didn't take any shit from people. He'd beaten up Charles Pennington for calling him a dirty little orphan, even though he had parents somewhere overseas, and people whispered about him behind his back. Wild rumours that I doubted had any truth to them. Kids could be cruel, and in a place like this, a boarding school where we couldn't escape each other, gossip was practically our lifeblood.

"Shouldn't you be in a lesson?" I countered, returning his raised brow with my own.

"Yep." He shrugged, flashing me a small grin, his messy hair falling into his eyes.

"I…um…I had to get away, you know?" I mumbled, caught off guard by the way the smile had transformed his entire face. "Sometimes I feel…it feels like I can't breathe."

His smile disappeared as he studied me intently. After a minute where I held my breath, wondering what was going through his mind, he held out his hand. "Come with me."

Something deep inside me told me I could trust him, and I placed my hand in his. He startled for a moment, staring down at our hands with his brows pulled together, before he shook his head with a small laugh and entwined our fingers. His warm palm was a reassuring touch against my own as he led me around the side of the school and pulled me into the tree line that marked the beginning of the wooded boundary area running all the way down the left side of the school buildings and beyond. He cut through the undergrowth, ducking under the overhanging tree branches, and we eventually broke through the line of trees on the other side. A gasp fell from my lips as a lake appeared in front of us, still and glimmering in the weak sunlight that filtered through the clouds.

"Where is this?" My voice came out as a whisper. There was a large lake on the school grounds, used for various water sports. But this one was different. Smaller, clearer than the murky waters of the other, with a tangle of reeds and more trees at the far side, ducks swimming lazily in the distance, and close to where we were standing, a tiny pebbly beach that sloped down into the water next to a little wooden jetty, where a rowboat was tied, bobbing up and down.

"I don't know who it belongs to or what it's used for, but I've never seen anyone else here before. I don't think it's part of the school." He hesitated for a moment. "I…I come here when I need to get away. I like to be close to the water." His soft confession was accompanied by a squeeze of my hand before he let me go. Taking a seat on the soft grass next to the pebbled beach, we sat in silence for a while, the quiet only broken by the sound of the birds in the trees and ducks creating ripples in the still water. I glanced over at the boy by my side. The boy who was labelled as a troublemaker. The boy I'd never spoken to before today. The boy who had always intrigued me. He was so still, reclining back on his elbows with his face tipped to the sky and his eyes closed, long black lashes sweeping down. There was still an undercurrent of tension that seemed to radiate from his body, but this was the most peaceful I'd ever seen him. A soft breeze ruffled my hair, and I let my whole body relax. It felt like we were in a different world out here. Away from the drama of school and the pressures that sometimes felt like they were drowning me—for a moment, everything else disappeared, and it was just us.

Eventually, though, I knew we'd have to get back before I missed English lit as well as biology. My moment of rebellion had passed, and the need to get back to being the good girl, the perfect student, overwhelmed me.

Pulling my hair back into a smooth ponytail, I blew out a shaky breath.

"Thank you for bringing me here."

Roman's eyes blinked open, and he turned to face me, his deep blue eyes meeting mine. "Come back whenever." He gave me another small smile, and my stomach flipped. But I pushed that feeling aside because nothing good could come of being interested in the bad boy of Hatherley Hall.

Over the next few months, I continued to meet up with Roman, snatching moments whenever I could sneak away—normally during our lunch break, although I still cut the occasional class if everything got on top of me. My parents would have flipped if they'd known—he was very much the opposite of the kind of boy they'd want me to be friends with, despite his family name. In fact, they didn't want me to be friends with any boy, let alone one who had a reputation as the bad boy of Hatherley Hall.

The problem with that was that Roman was…different. He was easily as rich as the other kids who attended our school, yet he didn't have the same air of entitlement and arrogance that most of the others did. The others I spent most of my time with. Not only that, but he also didn't expect me to act a certain way—he accepted me just as I was, whatever my mood happened to be, and that was something I hadn't experienced with any of my friends other than Aria Harper, a girl I'd been getting to know recently. As we'd spent more time together, he'd begun to open up to me, telling me about his life being transferred between schools until he'd arrived here the previous year, how he didn't really know his parents since they'd lived overseas for most of his life while he'd been left in England, and how when he acted out, it was the only time he really felt anything. With every layer that I uncovered, it became more and more clear to me that my feelings for him were starting to grow beyond friendship.

"What's up?" Roman tilted his head as he studied me, his long legs stretched out in front of him, his shoes idly making circles in the dirt. I shifted on the log we were sitting on at the lakeside. How could I tell him? Should I tell him? Screw it. I was going to tell him. It was the last day of term, and my parents were taking me to Greece the following day. This would most likely be my final chance to speak to him face to face until the new school year.

"I…I was wondering." This was too hard to say. What if he rejected me?

No, I had to do it. Swallowing hard, I tried again. "I was wondering what…what it would be like to kiss you." As I whispered the words, I lowered my eyes, my cheeks hot and flushed. It felt so good to finally say the words, but I couldn't bear it if he didn't feel the same.

He stilled next to me, and my breath caught in my throat. Then he reached over and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, his finger brushing down the side of my face. "Me too," he breathed, and then his lips were on mine, so soft and sure. We explored one another's mouths with slow kisses that filled my stomach with butterflies.

Eventually, he pulled away, clearing his throat, a slight flush on his high cheekbones. "You should probably know…I've been wanting to do that ever since the first time I brought you here."

"You have?" I stared at him, and he nodded, his lips curving upwards. I returned his smile. "Me too. I wish…I wish we hadn't waited until the end of term. Now I have to get through a whole summer without you. What if you forget about me or find another girl?"

Shooting me a grin, he pulled me into a hug, placing a kiss to the top of my head. "Not likely. We can text each other, anyway, then pick up where we left off next term."

I wished with all my heart that those words had been true.