Her Spite: A Reverse Harem Bully Romance (The Forgotten Elites Book 2)

by Eden Beck

  But this is more than a chance to get my foot in the door with Bridget’s friends.

  It’s a chance to humiliate her.

  So long as her friends don’t manage to humiliate me beyond repair first.

  Annabelle is one of the only girls here who’s name I bothered to learn before today. She’s plain compared to Bridget, but would otherwise be considered pretty—if it wasn’t for the pinched-up way that she keeps her nose at any given moment. It’s a look not resigned to her, unfortunately.

  In fact, most of the girls here—all from Ridgecrest—share a similar expression. But maybe that’s only when they’re looking at, or having to interact with, me.

  “Ew,” says Annabelle, who’s already two flutes in, as she looks over my outfit. Obviously, the champagne has gotten rid of any polite filter that she might have had to begin with, however forced it may have been. “Why are you wearing those clothes?”

  She looks me over for a second time, as if seeing me for the first time.

  I just bat my lashes at her and tilt my head to one side, playing dumb. “What are you talking about?” I look down at myself, at the open blouse tucked into my school skirt. “This is just the Ridgecrest uniform. They do allow plain button-ups.”

  Not that they’re meant to be worn quite this way.

  “No, I mean, why are you wearing those particular clothes,” she says, her words already slurring.

  These girls must have gotten used to a lot more alcohol before they got tucked away at Ridgecrest. They’re all drinking like fish, but not one of them has made it to their third glass yet, and already I can see glassy eyes and flushed faces all around.

  Annabelle, meanwhile, somehow manages to screw up her face even more before continuing, “I get it that the whole open-legged tramp thing is your style, but even that aesthetic can surely have some higher-end pieces to it? You look like you just walked out of a thrift shop, or maybe an animal shelter. Either way, it looks like you’re wearing something that other people discarded as trash. It’s gross.”

  “Right?” This time, it’s another one of the girls that leans in. I don’t catch her name over the words that come tumbling out of her mouth next. “Is this going to be your date to the gala, Bridget … or did you finally manage to snag that boyfriend of yours?”

  If my ears could perk up, they would now. “Gala? What gala?”

  The other girls must not notice the look on Bridget’s face, but I do—and it’s enough to make me lean in even closer to the circle of girls, despite their sour champagne breath. “This is the first I’ve heard of a gala on campus.”

  Annabelle leans back, her hand waving dismissively in my direction. “It would be, for you.”

  “Only students that matter get invited,” the other girl replies, still ignoring Bridget’s silent plea to keep quiet. “Otherwise, the Ridgecrest review board would have to re-review all the cases.”

  Review board?

  I freeze for a second, remembering something Bridget told me on my very first day at Ridgecrest.

  I thought she was delusional then … but maybe I was wrong. If there really is a way to get out of Ridgecrest a term early, then I need to know about it.

  “Shut up,” Bridget hisses, making a cutthroat gesture with one of her hands.

  She’s ignored, however, in favor of a drop of attention. Even if it’s mine, the same girl they were just making fun of not that long ago, it seems these girls are all starving for whatever attention they can get.

  So, I just bat my eyelashes even more as I ask, “And this gala … how did you all get into it?”

  “You have to be invited, of course,” Annabelle says, cutting off the other girl before she can speak. “But don’t worry about it. You won’t be.”

  Bridget is starting to look more and more like a desperate mime, but I press further.

  “How are you sure? Isn’t there some way—”

  It’s the other girl that laughs, this time cutting Annabelle off. “Not in a million years,” she says, “because we’re the ones who would have to invite you. So, I’ll just save you the trouble by letting you know now. Don’t bother trying.”

  Bridget stills, a small breath of relief whispering out between her lips. I, meanwhile, can’t bring myself to look at her. I can’t bring myself to look at any of them.

  Of all the things I expected to embarrass me, this is not it.

  But still, somehow, her words sting.

  Pull it together, Aubrey.

  I thought that there wasn’t anything these girls could say to me that would embarrass me, but I guess I was wrong because that comment does. This is not what I wanted to happen while I mingled with all these mean girls.

  I’m supposed to be infiltrating their side of the cool-kids table, not be the charity case that they adopt in exchange for doing their homework. I need to fit in with them, and I need them to view me as an equal and not an outsider.

  Or if not an equal, at least … at least not the very bottom of the food chain.

  The very bottom that can’t even get an invitation to the review to get away from Ridgecrest for a stupid gala.

  I set my own barely touched glass to the side and excuse myself for a moment. It takes me so long to find the nearest bathroom—a massive room with marble countertops and busts of roman generals lined up along the wall—that I’ve nearly forgotten the whole incident by the time I close the door behind me and press my back to it.

  Still, I pause to take a couple careful, measured breaths.

  I need to pull myself together in more ways than one. I need to remember why I’m here and what I’m doing this for.

  Ever since I arrived at Ridgecrest—no, before—I’ve felt like I’ve been losing grip of who I am.

  But maybe that’s not it. Maybe I’m only now finding out who I truly am.

  And who I am does not need validation from the likes of Bridget and her friends. Who I am needs revenge.

  But who I am also apparently needs an invitation to this gala. So, as much as I’d like to storm out of here and find some pigs to slaughter to pull a Carrie, I can’t do that.

  I take one quick look in the mirror, make some slight adjustments to my hair and wipe away the shadow of a smudge beneath my eye, before heading back out, head held high.

  I don’t really need to get close with Bridget’s friends. I just need them to trust me enough that when the time comes, I can get the hell out of Ridgecrest once and for all.

  One of them is going to have to give me the invitation, because Bridget would skin herself alive before finding a way to get one for me.

  When I return, Bridget is the only one to glance up at me—and only for a second. The moment her eyes flit away, another glass of champagne lifted to her lips, I see the slightest hint of a smug smile tug at the corner of her mouth.

  Bridget won this one, I’ll give her that.

  But we’ll see how long that smile of hers lasts.

  Chapter Five

  It isn’t long.

  After the stupid party, in which I wouldn’t have purchased anything even if I did have money to spare, I hit Bridget up for some clothes as soon as we get back to our room. I may not want the approval of her friends for myself, but I have a feeling they won’t take me seriously until I have a name brand tag on my shirt.

  Even if it looks exactly the same as the school issued one.

  And, of course, it doesn’t hurt that I know the pain it will cause Bridget to have to share.

  She’s not exactly the generous type, after all.

  “What do you mean my clothes?” she asks, balking even more than I expected. “I have to wear my clothes. I draw the line at walking around campus naked for you for god’s sake.”

  She is so overly dramatic. She knows I’m not asking her to walk around naked.

  This is just another part of her game. Act dumb, get what she wants.

  Well not anymore.

  I cut to the chase.

  “You had a whole different w
ardrobe pre-baby, I’m sure,” I say. Knowing her, she’s had ten different wardrobes since then.

  “Hush!” she scolds as she looks around our room in case anyone heard me say pre-baby.

  There’s no one here but the two of us, but I’m glad that she’s still worried about it enough to know that she has no choice but to do what I ask. For a moment there, she was almost starting to fool me that she really didn’t care.

  That’s when a girl gets truly dangerous. I would know.

  “I want you to donate all your old clothes to me,” I say, tilting up my chin slightly.

  “Donate? God, my friends are right—you really are like a walking thrift shop. Fine, I’ll pick them up the next time I go home to visit.”

  Now I cock my head. Bridget never would have allowed me to wait it out like this back when she was blackmailing me. In fact, I’m pretty sure the very first time I failed to do exactly as she asked, exactly when she asked, she went and spilled my secret to the entire school.

  “No, I need them now.”

  “You have got to be kidding me,” she says in exasperation. “I just got back here practically! And I have a coffee date with Sterling tonight. It will take me all weekend to get home and back just to get those clothes for you.”

  She bites her tongue, as if trying to keep herself from lashing out further, then snaps out, “You really couldn’t have asked me this earlier? We were practically up the road from my house.”

  “A date with Sterling?” I ask, suddenly. Something inside me seizes up. “I didn’t know you two were …”

  She sucks on her teeth for a moment, realizing her mistake.

  I, meanwhile, feel the strange sensation of jealousy wash over me. I wish it wasn’t that. I shouldn’t feel jealous of this. Of them.

  But something about the two of them together sickens me, banishing any hope for Bridget that I might relent on my most recent demand.

  “Then I guess you’d better leave now,” I say with a smile that I’m not even trying to make seem real, since she wouldn’t bother trying to believe it anyway.

  She’s really starting to hate me. I can see it in her eyes. Bridget grabs her purse and heads toward the door of our dorm—head held high.

  That simply won’t do.

  I’m trying to break Bridget after all, and she’s not an easy one to break.

  “Oh wait,” I say calling after her. “Give me the clothes you have on now before you leave.”

  “What? No!”

  “You have plenty of other outfits to put on,” I say as I motion to her overflowing dresser.

  “Then pick something from there,” she says. “I’m not giving you the ones I’m wearing.”

  “I don’t want any of the ones from your dresser,” I say. “I want the ones you have on.”

  Bridget looks horrified. She also looks like she wants to tell me to fuck off. But instead, she marches back into the room and grabs a new outfit to wear, before taking off the one she had on and tossing it to me as hard as she can.

  “There, happy?”

  “Yep,” I grin, knowing I’ll never wear it. “Safe trip.”

  I think I’m starting to understand why Bridget enjoys being the mean girl.

  Since Bridget didn’t have time to warn Sterling about canceling their date, and I’m pretty sure that she’s too furious and distracted on her drive home right now; I go to meet him instead.

  This is going to be a good chance for me to start getting into the boys’ little circle too. It’s easier to deal with them one at a time, than when all three of them are together. When Warren, Chase, and Sterling are all together, they seem to feed off of each other’s egos and act three times as horribly.

  That, I blame entirely on Warren, though Sterling is no angel either.

  If I can get them alone, it should at least make it easier for me to get under their skin. I don’t have the same kind of leverage over them that I do Bridget.

  It isn’t the first time Sterling is surprised to see me.

  “Where’s Bridget?” Sterling asks when he sees me walking up to him. His head swivels to either side, as if expecting some kind of ambush from behind. I’m pretty sure he knows that I wouldn’t walk up to him at all unless I had a message to give … or some darker alternative.

  “She had to go home for some reason,” I say, flippantly. “She asked me to fill in for her.”

  “Fill in?” he asks with a raised eyebrow.

  “Yeah, on the date that you guys had scheduled for tonight.”

  He blinks at me in shock, an expression that makes my heart beat just a little bit faster. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen Sterling in shock.

  Just as quickly, the expression fades from his face, however. It’s replaced with a wary look instead.

  “That doesn’t sound like Bridget at all. She’s too much of the jealous type to ask another girl to fill in on a date. Besides, doesn’t she hate you?” he says. “You’re the last person on Earth she would ask to fill in for her.”

  She’s also, apparently, not the most thoughtful if she didn’t even bother to cancel this so-called date. I half expected him not to show up.

  But then again, she was a little busy getting her driver to bring the car back before he drove too far away from the school, what with the house mother looking over her shoulder the whole time she was on the shared phone over at Mason House. Maybe she didn’t have time to think about getting her burner phone to text Sterling after.

  Or maybe, like all things Bridget, he doesn’t really matter to her at all.

  It’s a similar train of thought that I see play across Sterling’s face. He’s not usually so easy to read, but then again, he’s probably not used to getting stood up.

  Still, I need to be careful before he gets too suspicious and I ruin any chance of getting get him alone. I shrug my shoulders as if I have no idea what could possibly be running through Bridget’s head, nor do I care.

  “No idea,” I say. “It’s no skin off my nose if you don’t want to hang out with me. I have schoolwork to do anyway. I was just trying to do her a favor, and no—she doesn’t hate me, not anymore at least.”

  Sterling seems to be mulling it over in his head. At least this is somewhat believable. If anyone has a bad habit of flip-flopping on friends, it’s Bridget. One moment, you think you’re in her good graces … the next she’s blackmailing you to sleep with a teacher so she can get into an ethics class.

  “Alright,” he says cavalierly. “I suppose your company is better than none.”

  “Gee thanks,” I mumble under my breath.

  He laughs when he hears me and throws an arm around my shoulder as if we’re suddenly old friends. It’s offsetting for a moment until I remember why I’m doing this—to get information, anything that I can use to take these guys down.

  This isn’t a date, I remind myself. This is reconnaissance.

  Sterling and I walk across the campus and end up going to the school bookstore. There’s a little coffee shop inside of it where we sit and talk about nothing in particular. I think it’s the first time we’ve done this—talked casually about anything. Last term most of our conversations ended with him storming off or staring blatantly at my ass while I was bending down to put away art supplies.

  It’s strange to see him in this new light. For just a few minutes, an hour at most, he’s just another normal boy. One with strikingly attractive features—a nose that slopes upward just so, dark brows that knit together expressively, dimples that appear on either side of his mouth when he accidentally smiles—but normal, nonetheless. At least, compared to how he normally is.

  And normally, he’s a massive pain in the ass.

  But even I can’t deny he really is handsome. He has the whole ‘brooding bad boy’ vibe down perfectly.

  After we finish our coffee and several segue ways of random conversation topics, we decide to take another walk. By the time it starts getting dark, we end up sitting on one of the benches on campus grounds, enjoying th
e cool weather, and laughing about one of the teachers that can never seem to pronounce anyone’s name correctly.

  It would be deceiving for any stranger that walked by and saw us sitting there. We look like close friends enjoying a nice evening together while Sterling tries to explain a funny story, talking with his hands about a surprisingly innocent incident that the guys all had over the break. We’re even sitting so closely together on the bench that our thighs are touching.

  I’m so keenly aware of the fact that I almost miss what he says.

  “—and then he threatened to send me to Brown of all places if I didn’t shape up. All that for sticking a fucking whoopie cushion under his seat. And he called me the childish one.”

  I nearly choke. “Hold up. Wait. Your dad …”

  He eyes me warily all of a sudden. “He’s on the review board there? At Brown?” He lets out a small sigh and turns his head to face me straight on. “I thought everyone here already knew that. You of all people know how word gets around.”

  I ignore what was clearly mean to be a jibe.

  “It’s just … I’m trying to figure out how you ended up here.”

  Sterling lets out another one of those sighs and stretches one leg out lazily in front of him. Despite the gesture, the ease of our earlier conversation has already evaporated.

  “Why do you want to know?” he asks with almost tangible hesitation.

  “Just curious. I like to know a little about the parents of the boys I date,” I tease.

  For a second, Sterling’s eyes widen.

  “Relax,” I say. “I was kidding. I know this isn’t really a date.”

  He looks a little more at ease now, but also almost … a little disappointed, which is surprising to say the least. Did I really want Sterling to think this was a date?

  More importantly … had I actually forgotten it wasn’t?

  “Do you really have a drug problem?” I blurt out, suddenly.

  Why not cut right to the chase? We’re all here because we either did something messed-up, or because our parents thought we did. I want to know which one of those two scenarios was the case for Sterling. Either he has a legitimate drug problem, or he just has an overbearing father like mine who had convinced himself that his son was on the brink of screwing up his life for good.