The Prom Queen's Sinner: Thornwood Small Town Forbidden Romance Book One

by J. E. Bradley

  “I’m not hurting anymore,” Jade says, offering me a flash of her teeth. “The beauty of a painstakingly thorough revenge plan is that during its creation, you don’t have time to feel emotion. You focus on executing what must be done. Let the journey take you where it will.”

  I’m only mildly aware that behind me, Savannah’s dad is still regathering himself.

  “And you-you're okay with this?” I round on him. Lost in complete disbelief. “This is your daughter we’re talking about.”

  “I don’t have a daughter anymore,” he grumbles through a bruised ego. “My daughter died when she started fucking a man whose reputation in this town is just as damned as she is now. I gave her everything, the ungrateful slut.”

  I’m unable to comprehend a person, no less a father’s, ability to completely lack care for his daughter’s life. I’m not sure what he thinks Jade has planned, but I doubt it involves anything of the surviving kind.

  “That’s right,” Jade agrees. “A filthy little slut. Isn’t that right, Wyatt? You know all about how much of a whore she is. Would you like to tell Amir exactly what it is you did to his daughter? How you utterly destroyed her?”

  I take a step toward her, but she points the gun at Savannah, and I freeze.

  “Everything that we’ve done was consensual. We didn’t mean anyone harm,” I say, trying to level everyone.

  “Oh, you did though,” Jade disagrees openly, and I wish she would point that gun anywhere but at Savannah’s awkwardly crumpled body. “Amir came to me a while back, suspicious about where his daughter was going. He hired a private investigator who I know very well. Lucky me. This person informed me of where exactly Savannah was going all those emotional nights when no one else seemed to understand her.”

  “And then you decided you’d take over the case yourself?” I wonder, confused as to why she even cares this much.

  “Oh sweetie, I was already stalking you at that point. Getting the information from the PI who helped me get in contact with Amir was just a happy accident. And how lucky I was for that…” she looks up at Savannah’s father, who gives her a wry, but appreciative smile. Are they fucking?

  “Stalking?” I repeat, stunned. My hands flex, itching to smash both their faces in.

  “You’re an easy man to want,” she shrugs. “I don’t blame her, really. It’s just that I hate to see people with the things I’ve already claimed as mine.”

  “Get on with it,” Amir snaps.

  “Shut up,” Jade responds, devoid of any inflection. “I’m just getting to the good stuff.”

  “We won’t tell anyone this happened...just let us go,” Savannah pipes in, but Jade raises her hand to smack her with the gun. I jump forward and block the hit, but Jade retaliates by backhanding my cheek.

  “Fuck,” I spit out blood onto the floor.

  “Behave or I'll blow her kneecaps out,” she tells me carelessly, and then begins to pace. “So, there I am. I have information about Savannah, know that her dad is feeling extremely betrayed and disgusted, and then there’s Derrick. Handsome Derrick, just like his daddy. Amir and I know the truth, but your son is there...sitting in the dark.”

  The silence between her explanation is grueling, and I’m unable to truly focus on what she says.

  “When I suggested that Derrick steal Savannah’s phone, I gave him the passcode so he could see just what was happening behind closed doors. What you don’t know is that Derrick wants a little revenge of his own,” she tells us conspiratorially. She takes out her phone and sends a short text before pointing the gun at me again, her expression far too calm.

  It’s only moments before there is a knock at the front door, and Derrick’s form appears before us. I nearly sink to my knees, pain spreading through my body. This is out of control. Guilt saturates every part of me. Derrick shouldn’t be here. Savannah shouldn’t be here. All of it, every last fucked up log thrown on the fire has now created an inferno. Now, here is Jade to burn us all to the ground. She’s the karma I always knew deep down that would come.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask, but he doesn’t look at me. He looks at Jade.

  “I came for what you talked about before,” he says, looking at the floor then back up, an immature mess. “You know. When you were talking about what I was owed.”

  “What he’s owed?” Amir states thickly. “We should be done with this already.”

  Jade rolls her eyes and faces him.

  “Remember I told you your cut is coming. But we have others who need to tie up their own loose ends first,” she says, attempting to soothe him.

  Jade flicks her gaze back to Savannah, and then to Derrick.

  “It must have been hard, not knowing why your girlfriend was pulling away from you. Meanwhile, she was fucking your dad behind your back.” Jade’s words are crawling with antagonism. Still, the reality is horrendous. The crushing weight of the guilt is enough to bury a man. Every time she moves, I try to think through ways I could grab the gun and shoot her. But with Amir at my back and now Derrick standing beside her, I’m growing restless. I don’t know how I can stop it.

  “It wasn’t like that,” I snap.

  “Save it,” she hisses. “You’re so predictable. Like I said, I’ve known men like you. Many men. In fact, it’s pathetic. The way you all moan and groan at the end? Do you want to know why I singled you out? Because you think you’re too good for everyone else, yet you’re a sorry excuse of a man. You all like the idea of deflowering the naive little princess and won’t stop until you do.”

  Something about the way she says that she’s known others like me makes me think that this isn’t the first time she’s stalked someone.

  “I warned you what would happen. I told you, but you didn’t listen. Like all the others, you didn’t take my warning seriously. Now you and your little fuck toy are going to hell....but first…” Jade beckons Derrick, and he steps forward, forced courage on his face. “Come on, then. You want to make them pay, don’t you? Take what you deserve.”

  Derrick steps forward and continues to ignore me.

  “Why do you have a gun?” he asks.

  “So they don’t move,” Jade explains sharply.

  He blows out a breath and steps forward, kneeling before Savannah. I try to step in between them again, but Jade fires a shot into the ground by my leg. Everyone jumps. Savannah’s hand is over her mouth as she stares in horror up at me. Tears leak along the edges of her eyes, and I know she’s telling me to stop. To not fight it. To let it go.

  But I can’t.

  Savannah

  Derrick crouches down in front of me and I turn my face away from him, my body shocked, ears echoing the gunshot that Jade had just ejected so close to Wyatt. I’m unable to put myself together enough to think rationally. All I can think about is Wyatt, and how it is my fault that we’re here. If I could have been happy with Derrick...if I could have just been a normal girl...if I could have just shut up and silenced my longing for one more year, we would not be here.

  I pushed Wyatt into this, and now we’re going to die for our choices.

  “Why, Savannah?” Derrick asks me, his voice low and hateful.

  “Are you joking?” I sniff and prop myself more upright. “You want to go into this now?”

  Derrick shuts his eyes for a second before standing again and clearing his throat.

  “No, you’re right. I don’t need to know why. All I need to know is that you fucked my dad. You chose him over me,” he says, fumbling with the zipper of his pants. He glances over his shoulder, blond hair flopping over his eyes as he glares at his dad. “I hope this is burned into your memory you sick fuck.”

  Wyatt lunges forward but my dad grapples him from behind. They struggle for a moment and then suddenly, I see blood dripping from Wyatt’s side. A flash of metal comes slicing out of his now bloodied shirt, and there in my dad’s hand is a knife, wet with Wyatt’s blood. Wyatt stumbles but grits his teeth as he grows even more enraged that he can
do nothing but watch.

  “Wyatt!” I scream, tears running hot down my cheeks, filling up my mouth, dripping off my chin.

  “Come here, Sav,” Derrick says, and he pulls me to my knees as I look from the gun, to Jade, to Wyatt, to his gash, to my father, to the knife, then back up at Derrick. I’m wrought with disbelief, tugged under a slapping wave of both nausea and numbness. His fingers press hard into my upper arms, and then he grips my face with one hand while using his other to grab his dick out of his pants.

  “Fuck you!” I shriek, and fight against him, placing my hands on his upper thighs and pushing back. But he is too strong. He jabs his erect cock across and near my face, poking around trying to find my mouth. The tip slides sickeningly wet juices across my face, and we struggle like this for a few moments before Jade intervenes.

  “Suck your ex-boyfriend's cock or I swear I’ll put a round into your lover,” she says against my ear, warning me. The severe lack of emotion in her voice is chilling, and goosebumps roll down my spine, and the sickness I keep feeling rises in my throat. I look up at Derrick, pleading, trying to get him to see reason. But no one here in this room can see reason. They’re all stuck in their miseries. Their own flawed obsessions.

  “Do it!” Jade yells.

  It kills me to relinquish the fight. To allow him to place the bulk of his penis between my lips and force his way into my mouth. I don’t move. I don’t try to make it good for him. I just look at him with an open mouth, hating them all. Hating every person who’s claimed a part of me that they have no right to. I feel like with every wicked thrust, every gag, every terrible moment of it, that I am becoming stone. When I taste the salty goop on my tongue, I vomit onto his shoes, the vomit clearing out the revolting taste of his semen.

  “Alright, you can go. You’ve gotten your reward for helping,” Jade says and waves him away. All of them ignoring what had just occurred. Derrick’s brows are knit with the recent pleasurable sensations of his orgasm, but also a sudden fervency.

  “You aren’t going to hurt her, though, right? I don’t care what you do to him,” he tosses at Wyatt. “But Savannah will come around.”

  “Listen,” she starts and wanders toward him, her black braid swaying on her shoulder, brushing against her badge. “Her punishment is not your concern. You need to go now. You got what you were promised. Now her dad will take what he was promised.”

  Derrick reassembles his pants and zips up, glancing down with a disgruntled look at his shoes. It doesn’t matter that he’s forced his penis down my throat. What matters is that his shoes are now dirty, and he can remember the horrors of this day every time he sees them.

  “He deserves whatever you’re going to do to him.” Derrick still doesn’t look at his dad, but instead reaches for me. “She’s just made a dumb decision. I can forgive her.”

  “Derrick. You’re a good kid. I’d hate it if someone found out about how you raped Savannah and then felt her up at the Halloween party,” Jade says, and I blink a few times, trying to latch onto what she’s saying.

  Does she have footage of these things? Does she have footage of everything? My mind is racing, and I feel for the phone, still tucked into the back of my jeans. If I could just get one second, I could call someone.

  “I promise...Wyatt and I will leave. No one will ever know, Dad. You don’t ever have to think about me again. And Derrick...you have to understand that I wanted something different. You kept going when I said I wanted you to stop. You were cheating on me. The only reason you ever wanted me as your girlfriend was because of the status it gave you,” I say, wiping my mouth again and again on my sleeve. “And Jade, we’ll forget all about this. We’ll pretend like it never happened. You don’t have to go to prison for murder.”

  “Murder?” Derrick snaps.

  “Not her murder,” Jade smiles, her lips creeping up into near curls at the edges of her pink lips, the taut skin of her face too tight for anything other than looking like a crazed lunatic. “Darling, you’re going to work as a prostitute in Dubai. Your dad made all the arrangements already. But, you do make a good point.”

  Jade saunters around behind me like a panther and forces me to a stand. She slithers up behind me so that her chest is against my back, and I sense her frantic breathing. The way she clamps her hands around mine, placing the gun in my hold, I don’t think she realizes the power she’s almost given me.

  “You should be the one to kill him, not me,” she whispers in my ear. “How’s that for poetic justice? I can see the headlines now. You know what they’ll make it sound like...don’t you? The kidnapper attempts to take the girl for a second time. Girl kills her kidnapper in a desperate attempt to be free of him. It’s almost too simple. It definitely doesn’t give you enough blame. Oh well, we can’t all get what we want. And I think you’ll have a good time thinking about the way the life slipped out of his eyes after you shot him.”

  Suddenly, my eyes are on Wyatt. He’s holding his side, sheer determination on his face. I know that he would tell me to do it, to just get it over with. That he never deserved me anyway. But I will not accept it. Jade’s finger itches toward mine, guiding it to the trigger. My heart is in my throat.

  Run. Is what I would say to him if he could hear me. I love you. Run. This is my fault.

  Just as Jade forces me to pull the trigger I shove back into her. In an instant, the gun is thrown to the ground. Bodies fly for the black metal. I throw myself around Wyatt and he grips my hand and we hurdle up the stairs, racing on jello legs for the landing. Gunshots echo in my head, just barely missing us as one of them aims and fires continuously. We throw ourselves into my bedroom, and I slam the door shut. Wyatt grunts through the pain in his side as he tries to force my dresser in front of the door. I help him and then quickly take my phone out.

  SOS. I need your dad at my house immediately, I text Elaina.

  Then I call 911 and toss the phone on the bed. I tug Wyatt into the closet and he uses one muscled arm to hook around my waist and pull me down. We say nothing. We are silent, knowing that this is our best chance at surviving. I hear their footsteps and Wyatt tugs me close, leaving a kiss on my forehead, my cheek, then my lips. In the dark, I see the gloss of his eyes.

  “I love you,” he whispers.

  My heart floods with a burst of anguish and adoration, my entire body rippling with overwhelm. I fight another round of tears from blurring my vision and I nod, simply nod, because he knows exactly how I feel. If I died today at least he’d know. And now, I know. What we have is real, raw, and true. It’s perfect, untainted, and flawless even in its darkness. We are imperfections drawn up from lonely lost souls, mended into one body that no longer grieves its hollow center.

  I hear the footsteps in the hall behind us. The thin walls giving us no respite. I pray to whatever god there is that the police trace my call and that Sheriff Kendall listens to Elaina.

  The door explodes as a bullet flies through it, and, who I assume to be Jade, tries to force it open. Wyatt holds me against his chest and I listen to the steady beat of his heart. Is he not afraid? He holds me as we stay silent, listening to the person’s aggressive attention on the door. Then I hear them. Sirens. Sirens flow through the walls, and the person leaves the doorway. Footsteps judder down the stairs, and I can only imagine what my father and Derrick are doing.

  I can hardly breathe, and we listen to additional people entering the home. Loud shouts filter up toward us, muffled by the floor. I feel liquid on my chest and realize that Wyatt’s deep wound is flowing out onto my shirt. I look up at him, realizing that he’s been bleeding heavily for far too long.

  “Wyatt, look at me,” I say, peering up at his eyes. “They’re going to take you to the hospital. Everything is going to be okay.”

  We wait for what feels like lifetimes before I hear someone ascending the stairs again. The person pushes at the door and I jolt up from my place in the closet, unsticking myself from Wyatt.

  “Savannah Zukair!” the cop ca
lls.

  “Here. We’re in here,” I respond, and a cop I’ve never seen before meets my eyes from beyond the doorway. I help him open the door just enough for him to come through. Soon, there are others following.

  “He’s hurt badly. He was stabbed,” I tell them, and Wyatt’s figure appears. He is unable to stay standing, and hunches over onto the floor of my bedroom. Everything after that is a string of events that smear together, scattered throughout a haze of shock. Sheriff Kendall grants me a stern look as the cops escort us out of the house. He stands in front of Jade, my father, and Derrick.

  “She has footage of everything. Search her stuff,” I tell him as we pass, and the look she gives me alone could kill a man.

  Outside, I give the cops a statement through a thick tongue and sloppy thoughts. My body is near collapsing, and I watch as Wyatt is taken by ambulance to the hospital. My heart pitters softer now, but everything is faded. Dull. As if the heightened experience of being so near to death has taken every ounce of energy and now my body can only cling to the most simple of details.

  I don’t even notice when Elaina pulls up and runs for me, throwing her arms around my shoulders.

  “Oh my god! Are you okay?” The question needs no response. She embraces me and keeps me close as we sit on the curb outside my dad’s home, the exterior a mask of perfection.

  The sun is setting, and everything looks dim. But peaceful. The spring air is fresh, and I realize just how much my senses have shut down when they start to rise up again to a noticeable level. My tongue has been burned with Derrick’s semen. My body is in pain from the cuts and hits. My sight is clouded with shock and I can’t smell anything other than Wyatt’s metallic blood on my shirt.

  “Savannah, we’re going to take you to the hospital now,” Sheriff Kendall arrives at our side, and he looks down at me with a pitying slant to his brows. His whiskers pinch to one side and I can tell that he is guilty. “We’ll do a formal investigation. There is evidence enough to pin Derrick with sexual assault charges, and Detective Kim with attempted murder. Your father…” he sighs regretfully. “Your father as well.”