Falling for My Bully: A Lesbian Romance
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Falling for my Bully
A Lesbian Romance
Alexa Woods
© 2021 Alexa Woods
All Rights Reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be
reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express
permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book
review.
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or
dead, or places, events or locations is purely coincidental. The characters
are all productions of the author’s imagination.
Please note that this work is intended only for adults over the age of 18 and
all characters represented as 18 or over.
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Epilogue
Also by Alexa Woods
About Alexa Woods
About the Book:
A powerful CEO. Her new employee, who once was her high-school
bully. Fireworks soon ignite – but the question remains: Do people ever
really change?
June’s life is a dream come true. A confident, successful CEO of her
own company, she’s so different from the bullied, scared girl she was in
high school, sometimes she can’t believe those days were real.
That’s until one day, she finds none other than Arabella, aka The Queen
of Mean, working for her. Why in the world did her old tormentor take a
position at June’s company of all places?
And how come she’s so…different…too?
Fallen from grace, formerly rich Arabella is reduced to a paycheck-to-
paycheck lifestyle, and she wants June’s forgiveness – and soon, her love.
June fights her suspicions and her growing attraction to the woman who
once threatened to destroy her – until she can’t.
Just as June gives in to her feelings, her company comes under attack,
and there’s only one suspect: Arabella.
As she struggles to find the truth, June can’t help but wonder. Did
Arabella really change? Or did she just pretend so she could make good on
her old threat to destroy June?
Chapter 1
June
“There’s nothing worse than letting your ex-public enemy number one
walk through the front door of the company you built from the ground up.
You can’t let her work for you! She could wreck everything. Years and
years of work, just gone because she’s a tactless, classless, mean-girl
turdbag probably hell-bent on sabotage to make up for the fact that you
succeeded, and she didn’t.”
Summer Johnson, June’s best friend and often the only reason she’d been
able to hold onto her sanity over the years, especially in high school, had a
pained expression on her face. June felt every stab of that pain. She’d been
feeling it for the past two hours, ever since Davis Sutherland walked into
her office and gave her the files for the new hires.
“Do you remember how people used to make fun of us because we were
friends? Because we bonded over our names being Summer and June?”
Summer rolled her eyes. “Now you’re trying to change the subject.”
June wasn’t. She was trying to figure out how to approach the
conversation when deep down, she had just as many misgivings as Summer
did about her old nemesis breezing her way into her company.
As CEO, June trusted her HR department to make the best possible
choices. She’d learned years ago to relax and take a step back so she
wouldn’t go completely insane because she couldn’t micromanage every
single detail of her company.
Things had started out slow. She’d been halfway through her business
degree when, on her way to college, power walking down the sidewalk
because she was late for a group presentation, she’d snapped the heel clean
off her shoe. They weren’t a cheap pair either. She’d taken off both shoes
and run in a freaking skirt suit the rest of the way. Once there, she’d begged
a fellow classmate to exchange shoes with her so she didn’t have to go up
on stage barefoot.
She’d thought about what a waste it was that all those shoes out there,
when they fell out of fashion, or someone fell out of love with them, or
when they broke, just ended up in a landfill or taking up storage on thrift
store shelves where no one would buy them. Plus, there was the whole
problem with tons of flip-flops ending up in the ocean. She’d literally been
in the middle of giving her presentation when it had come to her - the idea
that would change her life.
“June. Are you listening to me? You. Can’t. Hire. Her.” Summer crossed
her arms and leaned against the kitchen counter.
As soon as June realized who her HR department had hired for the
director of marketing, she’d grabbed her things and made a fast getaway
from her office before she could do something she regretted in places
people could see. Like hurtle straight into a very real meltdown. Glass
walls, while modern and pretty, were sometimes very, very inconvenient.
She’d sped home, risking getting pulled over and slapped with a speeding
ticket, and called June, who came over immediately, also probably breaking
the law several times to get there as quickly as she did.
June breezed past Summer, forcing a calm she didn’t feel. She went to
the fridge and took out a pitcher of homemade sun tea. It was her absolute
favorite, her mom’s recipe, and one of the only guilty pleasures she
indulged in that included real sugar. She poured two tall glasses and passed
one to Summer. June downed half her glass without tasting it, but the cold
liquid wetting her parched throat was heaven. She hadn’t been able to
swallow down the lump in her throat for the past two hours, but the tea
helped. It hit her belly, cooling some of the acid burning there at the bitter
memories that the name Arabella Ferguson evoked.
“I-I know that,” June stammered.
Sweat beaded at her hairline as though she’d just been powering through
an intense workout. Spin class. God, she hated spin class. Her body burned
like she’d just been peddling for her life. She reached up and smoothed her
hand over her forehead, wiping away some of the dampness.
Summer winc
ed. “Well, if you know that, do something about it.”
“I can’t! She’s already been hired.”
“You’re the CEO. That literally means that you can.”
“Right,” June said dryly. “Because I can really just fire her for no reason.
I can’t just pull a power trip and get rid of her. It’s really, really nice that
people are nicer now. That they realize they should be held accountable for
their actions. I wanted my company to be a safe place for people to work. I
wanted everyone to be treated equally, to be given great opportunities and
benefits, a good work environment that fosters positivity. In a woke world,
how would it look if June Phillips, CEO, fired a perfectly capable, talented,
educated woman without just cause?”
“Duh, there’s good freaking cause. She’s a mean girl. A bi atch. A first-
class bully.”
“Is there any proof of that? Anything documented? Or could she spin
things around, twist it to look like yes, we have a past. Yes, we went to
school together, but I’m the one with the vendetta. She could tell whatever
story she wants. If you ask anyone if she was a bully, they would say she
was popular and that all popular girls can be mean, but you know what she
looked like on the exterior. Smart. Pretty. Rich. Her family did tons of
charity work and she always did her part with a smile.”
“That’s what made it so much worse. She was disgustingly rotten on the
inside. Ugh, it’s like getting your favorite chocolate bar only to find it’s full
of maggots on the inside.”
June nearly gagged. “God, that’s…that’s just wrong.”
“I’m just saying. She’s definitely worm eaten under her pretty blonde
exterior.”
“We don’t even know if she’s blonde anymore.”
“On the positive side, her hair could have burned off from all that dye.”
June rolled her eyes. “I’m not going to say be nice, and I hate that I’m
even thinking it. I’m a big believer in karma. I usually let that take its
course. I can’t be mean, even when I should be mean. I can’t stand here and
think bad things, even about my worst tormenter. It’s been ten years. If she
hasn’t come around by now, she’s never going to, and that’s a shame. Being
mean and nasty your whole life would just suck.”
“It does suck,” Summer agreed. “It sucks for you, because now that
turdbag is going to be in your office every single day. You think she was
bad in high school? Think about all the trouble she could cause there. She
probably did her research and found out you were CEO and decided to
infiltrate and sabotage, sabotage, sabotage.”
“She’s just part of a marketing team. Any decisions still have to go above
her head.”
“I’m not talking about her tanking marketing projects. I’m talking about
her infiltrating and taking down the whole company.”
“That would be hard for anyone, even Arabella.”
Summer wrinkled her nose. “I don’t know. She had the whole school on
her side way back when. She’s wily and crafty. Cunning like a fox. Or more
like a snake in the grass. A pretty, blonde, blue-eyed, stacked, gorgeous
snake. Does she still look the same?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t see her.”
June didn’t want to think about any of Arabella’s finer attributes. Her
attitude had always ruined them in high school, but even back then, even
when she was pulling pranks on June like putting stinky meat trays with
congealed meat juice and blood in her locker, trapping her in the bathroom
and forcing her to have a freaking clown makeover done by a little squad of
popular girls eager and ready to follow any and all orders, or pushing her
into a pool at a party they both attended, June always noticed that Arabella
had a nice body. It was just there. In her face. All the time. It was there in
everyone’s faces, all the time. It wasn’t June’s fault she had eyes and
Arabella had nice breasts, a tiny waist, a curvy bottom, and long legs.
Summer’s face puckered up. “She said you stank like poverty. Like, all
the time. She’d wrinkle her nose, like this.” She demonstrated, pulling her
best Arabella stench smelling face. June desperately tried not to laugh. It
was pretty hilarious, seeing her best friend put on such an unappealing
expression. “Anyway, you have to get rid of her.”
“I can’t just get rid of her. I can see the headlines now.” She spread out
her hands, mimicking newsprint. “CEO goes from victim to perpetrator,
innocent woman fired before a single day worked in a jealous fit of
retribution.”
Summer snorted. “It would never happen. That’s way too long of a
headline.”
“Ugh, you get what I mean. Getting rid of her goes against everything I
stand for.”
“She goes against everything you stand for.”
“If she got the job, then I have to give her the benefit of the doubt.”
Summer waved her hands frantically, nearly sending her glass of sun tea
flying off the counter. “She got hired because she looks good on paper and
is all shiny and nicey-nice during interviews, but that’s not the real her.”
“If she was hired by my HR team, it was because she was qualified,
experienced, and talented.”
“For gosh darn sakes, this is Arabella we’re talking about.”
June ground her teeth as Summer’s face turned red. She thought that June
wasn’t hearing her, but she was. She truly was. She didn’t want Arabella
working at her company any more than she’d like to clean a public
washroom. With her tongue. But she’d already been hired and that was
freaking that.
“I don’t want to be a hypocrite,” June protested.
“You wouldn’t be.”
“Yes, I would. I can’t give everyone else a fair shake and not her.”
“You could give her a shake alright. It’s called karma and it’s about to be
a real bitch for a bitch. I mean, what if she lets everyone know you were a
loser in high school?”
“What if she does? Then she’d have to confess how she came by that
knowledge.”
“You said she could spin anything. What if she makes you into the bad
guy?”
June considered that. She hated drama of any kind, and she loved having
a workplace that was full of hard-working people who were enthusiastic,
talented, driven, and kind. They took other people’s garbage and it turned it
into literal, wearable works of art.
“I think her true colors will shine through soon enough, if that’s how she
wants to play things. She’s so self-centered she probably doesn’t even know
it’s my company she applied to. Even if she does, she must be pretty
desperate to consider working for me.”
“Or pretty villainous.”
June didn’t want to think the worst. It made her stomach sour and her
blood feel like she was drenched in ice. She didn’t want to think about
internal problems, about Arabella pulling the same shit she’d pulled in high
school. She wanted to believe people changed and that her HR team hadn’t
got suckered into making a huge mistake. Besides, wh
at could Arabella
possibly want retribution for? She was always the aggressor, the bully, the
one in charge, the one with the upper hand.
“Her true colors,” Summer mused when June’s silence stretched on and it
was obvious she wasn’t going to contribute anything else to the
conversation. “Maybe that’s what you need to do. Get her to show them so
you can fire her with good cause. I’d suggest making her life a living hell,
but I know you aren’t going to do that, so I’m not even going to go there.
Hey!” Summer slapped the countertop and June jumped. She watched her
friend run a hand through her wild and untamed bright red hair while her
green eyes shone with a spark that could only mean trouble. “The company
barbeque. That’s it. I’m coming. You’re bringing me as your date.”
“No, Summer, everyone knows you’re my best friend. And it would
look…”
“I don’t give two rat’s bottoms what it looks like. No one will think
anything other than that you’re bringing your lovely bestie to your own
company function. Everyone else gets to bring a date or their kids or
whatnot. I need to come with you. I need to observe this d-bag up close and
personal.”
“This is exactly why you shouldn’t be there. Because you’ll end up
calling her a d-bag just like now and things will get awkward, and she’ll file
a freaking harassment suit against me and that will be the beginning of the
end.”
Summer shook her head. “Nope. Not going to give her any incentive to
act like the victim. I just want to observe her. From afar, if I have to. I’ll
hide in the bushes if you don’t give me an official invite.”
“Good God,” June groaned.
“How can you forget what she did that day? It still makes me furious
when I think about it.”
June’s throat was suddenly dry and scratchy again. Even though her
stomach was churning worse than ever, she picked up her drink and downed
the rest of it. “I haven’t forgotten anything.”
Chapter 2
High School
June
“Ewww, what’s that stench?” A pair of pink-clad shoulders hit the locker
next to June’s so hard the metal rattled. She nearly groaned when she