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

by Eden Beck

  Compared to these boys, with Chase being the new exception of course, I was more like a prisoner than a queen. It doesn’t matter now anyways since all of that has been taken away. And to be honest, I like it better this way.

  The loss of my freedom was the thing I dreaded the most about coming to Ridgecrest—but in a way, I got it here. I might still be stuck in some weird limbo between high school and college, but at least I have some say over my life.

  However little that is.

  It really is nice though, lying here in Warren’s arms, feeling his fingers drag against my skin and his tongue in my mouth.

  I’ve noticed that kissing each of the guys feels different. Kissing all of them feels heavenly, but each one is different in their own way—like different planets in a galaxy. All of them are incredible and heavenly, but each one feels like it touches a different part of me in some way.

  When we lie next to each other, I often find myself disappearing into a kind of dream-like state. I lose myself in them completely.

  I forget everything else.

  “Do you have a date to the gala yet?” I ask, my voice wistful as I curl up against his body with my hand pressed to his chest.

  “Why?” he chuckles. “Want to ditch Sterling now and have me take you instead? You should. I’d make a much better date.”

  “No,” I laugh. “I don’t think he’d forgive me if I did.”

  I don’t add that I have other reasons for wanting to go with Sterling. He might not be looking forward to seeing his father, but I am. At least as much as someone can be excited about seeing a stranger who could be whole handedly responsible for the direction of their future.

  “Is that so?” he asks. I can see the lines in his brow scrunch up. “I thought that it was Sterling who had committed to going with you.”

  “Semantics,” I say, off-the-cuff.

  He’s right though. Honestly, Sterling would probably love to be let off the hook and not be my date to the event. I know that he really doesn’t want to attend the gala at all since his father will be there, but that is exactly why I want to go with him. Walking in on Sterling’s arm, with his father on the review board at the event, is sure to go over well with not only Sterling’s father but also the other members of the board too.

  And I can definitely use all the help that I can get to gloss over my past image with the review board and all the high-ranking members. I need to get back into Brown, and as much as I now hate the idea of making Sterling go to something he doesn’t want to and put him in an uncomfortable position with his father—I need him to.

  Besides, it’s not like I’m asking him to chop off an arm.

  It’s just one night and one event. At most we will be there for a few hours, and I can’t imagine that anything too off-the-wall will happen between Sterling and his dad there in a public space filled with students, faculty, and board members.

  “You really should get a date for the event,” I say. “It would help throw Bridget off our scent. I feel like she’s starting to get a little too suspicious of me hanging around the three of you so much. And I can tell that she’s getting suspicious of you and I.”

  “Oh, how can you tell? I haven’t noticed anything.”

  “Well, it doesn’t help that every time we’re near each other, you stop what you’re doing to stare at me.”

  “Yeah,” Warren laughs. “I guess that does make it look a little obvious. I think she noticed that we were both late to class the other day too. And she did ask me yesterday why you had changed your mind and decided to let me slide on my volunteering shifts.”

  “See? That’s what I mean. You should ask another girl to the gala.”

  “Actually,” he says slowly as if he knows I’m not going to agree with what he’s about to say. “I was thinking about taking Bridget instead.”

  “What? No, that’s a really bad idea,” I say.

  I can’t believe he’s even thinking of doing that.

  “Bringing your sister to an event where all of us will be? That idea just oozes drama. This gala is really important to me. I don’t want anything to blow it.”

  “Having Bridget there isn’t going to blow it,” he says. “Besides, she’s already going whether or not I take her. She didn’t directly ask me to take her, but I could tell that’s what she was implying. If I don’t take her, she’ll be mad. Maybe it will get her to back off a bit if she gets to pretend to be special again, if just for a night.”

  From the way he’s talking, he doesn’t sound like he’s expecting much to come of the gala.

  This time when I pull back a bit and look at him more closely, my expression is more serious.

  “You really don’t think either of you is getting out of here early, do you?” I ask.

  Warren lets out a choked guffaw. “Not in a million years,” he says, shaking his head. “We’re in here because our parents want us in here. Even if we were given the very unlikely offer of leaving early, we wouldn’t be able to take it.”

  I swallow, hard. “So, some people really are offered an early ticket out of here then?”

  I’d started to wonder if it was just another baseless rumor. Almost begun to hope it was another baseless rumor.

  Warren just lets out a sigh. “Does it really matter? Is being here at Ridgecrest still so bad that all you do is think of getting out?”

  I don’t give him an answer. I just settle back down against his chest and wrinkle up my nose at the thought of having to spend the evening with Bridget at Warren’s side the whole time.

  “Your sister is going to smell something fishy, you know.”

  “It’ll be fine, you’ll see,” he says. He’s definitely not listening to me, even though I just know that this isn’t going to end well. Nothing with her ever does.

  Speaking of things not ending well—Bridget’s voice suddenly comes from just outside the door. I give Warren a quick, shocked glance as we both scramble up off of his bed. I can hear the resident advisor trying to argue with Bridget about not disturbing Warren in his room because he is studying for exams, but then Bridget starts threatening to report him to the Dean for something I can’t quite make out.

  It doesn’t matter, I can tell from the tone of his voice that he’s about to back down.

  Whether or not the allegation is even true doesn’t matter. Bridget is every bit as powerful on this campus as her brother is because money talks and she has an equal amount of it.

  If only Sterling was here to make even them look like paupers, well then, maybe we’d have at least some leverage. But as it is, I suddenly become keenly aware of just how loud my speeding heartbeat is pounding in my ears.

  “What do we do?” I whisper to Warren with a look of panic on my face. “She can’t find me in here with you.”

  “I know that,” he says, his own voice betraying a tone of urgency that just makes my heart beat even faster.

  He looks around to see where I can hide, but the dorm room is literally one open rectangular space. Even the wardrobe doesn’t have any doors on it. There’s no way for me to get out of the room without running straight into Bridget and having her see that I was in Warren’s room with him alone.

  “Here,” Warren said as he lifts up the blanket that is hanging down alongside the bedframe. A cloud of dust bunnies flies up when he lifts the blanket.

  “You want me to go under the bed?” I ask.

  He shrugs because we both know there isn’t any other place to hide. I drop down on the floor and lay on my back, then scoot myself under the bed while cursing myself inwardly. I should have laid on my stomach. It would have made this whole thing a lot easier.

  To say it’s a tight fit is an understatement. Good thing I’m not claustrophobic, though after this experience, I might be.

  Warren drops the blanket back down just before his door opens and I can hear the heels of Bridget’s boots stomp into the room. Even her footsteps sound like trouble coming. He sits down on the bed with his feet blocking the c
rawlspace right next to me. I try to breathe as silently as I can, and hope that I don’t sneeze due to all of the dust under the bed.

  “Where are your books?” she says to him in a highly agitated tone of voice.

  “What books?”

  “Your advisor says that you are in here studying for exams, but I don’t see any books.”

  Uh oh.

  I can’t see anything from under the bed, but I can hear enough from her voice to know that her level of suspicion has now exceeded a mere casual curiosity. She knows that Warren is lying.

  “What are you, the exam police now?” Warren asks with some serious snark before turning the question around on her. “I don’t see you studying either. Didn’t mom say that you needed to pull up your grades this semester too?”

  Bridget huffs and his comment has apparently worked well enough to at least take some of the heat off of him for the moment.

  “What are you doing here anyway?” he asks. “And why are you hassling my resident advisor? That poor guy hasn’t done one thing wrong his whole life. The threat you made against him is totally empty.”

  “I didn’t hassle him,” she says with an air of entitlement. “I came to ask if you, Sterling, and Chase wanted to come with me and the girls tonight to a party.”

  “What party?”

  “One of the other dorm buildings is hosting a holiday party and I want to go,” she says. “Don’t tell me that you’ve been so preoccupied with that atrocious Aubrey that you’ve forgotten that the holidays are coming up. Which, by the way, also reminds me that we need to get mom and dad a holiday gift before the winter break.”

  “Bridget, the winter break is still a few weeks away.” Warren sounds impatient and I wonder if he is worrying about the fact that I can barely breathe under this bed or if he is worrying about having to go home over the winter break.

  I hadn’t even thought about the break yet. It’ll just be another extended time period that I’ll be alone on campus again … but this time for more than a single week. A few months ago, I would have gladly welcomed a few weeks of solitude to get away from the madness of Ridgecrest.

  But now, these days, the thought of being alone without Warren, Chase, or Sterling … I dread it.

  “You never plan ahead for anything,” Bridget continues scolding. “It’s a miracle that you’ve even made it this far in life. If it weren’t for me, you’d never have your assignments turned in on time, and mom and dad would have disowned you by now for forgetting their birthdays every year.”

  Sheesh. I knew she and Warren had a … complicated … relationship to say the least, but the way she hurls abuse at him, I’m surprised he hasn’t tried to strangle her yet.

  “Actually,” he says. “I did plan for something.”

  I don’t actually hear anything, but if it were possible to hear the sound of a condescending look, I’m pretty sure that Bridget is giving him one right now.

  “I was going to ask you later today if you would like to go with me to the gala,” he says sweetly. I can tell that he’s laying it on thick to get her off his case with everything else.

  “Like as your date?” she asks.

  “Yeah, I thought that you would enjoy going to it. It’s supposed to be a pretty lavish event and you like parties more than anyone I know.”

  “I figured you’d be asking some hot girl that you wanted to try to land in bed,” she says.

  There’s still sarcasm in her voice, but I’m not fooled. There’s relief there too. Warren was right, but I still think it’s a bad idea.

  There’s just always so much that can go wrong when you throw Bridget into the mix.

  “At least you’re not thinking about taking Aubrey,” she says. “Not that I really thought that you would stoop that low, but then again you have been acting a bit oddly lately.”

  “Sterling is taking Aubrey,” Warren says. “You know that.”

  As soon as I hear him say it, I think we both wish that he hadn’t. Bridget makes an audible sound of frustration that is a cross between a sigh and a grunt. Before she can say anything about it, Warren quickly turns the subject away from the fact that the guy Bridget has a huge crush on asked me to the gala instead of her. Or at least, as far as she knows.

  “Besides,” Warren says as he lays on another thick layer of charm, “I thought it would be nice for you and me to go together. It’s been a while since we did something together.”

  There is a moment of silence before she agrees to go with him. I can almost hear the smile in her voice. It’s strange how much she seems to rely on Warren for her emotional security, even though she would never admit to it.

  I guess if your parents are detached, you latch on to whoever is closest to you. It would explain why Warren puts up with her too.

  I watch as her shoes turn around to leave and her footsteps sound like they are getting further away. When I hear the door close, I slowly start to push myself out from under the bed. It’s no small task. It’s as if I somehow expanded or the bed got smaller while I was squeezed under it in hiding.

  Eventually, Warren sees my struggle and reaches a hand down to help pull me out and up to a standing position, and then helps to brush all of the dust bunnies off from my clothes and pick them out of my hair. My white shirt is so streaked with dirt, I doubt even the laundry service here will be able to get the stains out.

  “Well, that could have gone worse,” he says.

  “Says the guy that wasn’t crammed under the bed,” I say as I start sneezing from all the dust.

  Warren chuckles sympathetically and leans forward to give me a small kiss on my temple, and suddenly I forget about being under the bed and about almost getting caught by Bridget. The only thing that I can think about is the feeling of his lips on my face.

  I wish, for just a second that I could stay here forever.

  I might be surrounded by uncertainty, but for a few precious moments everything else around me seems to fade away. The shame that brought me here, the bullying of last term, the complexities of this relationship between Warren, Chase, and Sterling, even my own simmering revenge against Bridget … it all seems so small and insignificant.

  Chapter Twenty

  If only my problems could stay so small and insignificant forever, but at long last, the night of the gala arrives.

  So much is riding on this one night. My entire future here at Ridgecrest could be overturned if I just manage to say the right things to the right people.

  Or nothing could change at all.

  And quite frankly at this point—I’m not one hundred percent sure which one I’m hoping for anymore.

  The hours somehow both drag on and speed by at the same time. Before I know it, I’m dressed in a gown borrowed from a helpful—if the tiniest bit resentful—Alaska and heading to the main hall. I couldn’t bring myself to wear one of Bridget’s dresses. I want tonight to be a fresh start, whatever happens, and wearing something of hers seems just a bit counterintuitive to that.

  I get the slightest shudder of shame when I think of some of the things I did to her over the last few months.

  I thought I was getting even, but it was more than that. I started to take it too far, way too far.

  And all just out of spite.

  I’m better than that.

  I can do better than that.

  The gala is absolutely everything that I expected it to be when I arrive, and more. They hold it in the main hall, an impressive place on a typical day, but even more so now that it’s been filled with long rows of tables and chairs for people to sit and eat and drink at, and festive music is being played by a live quintet of musicians. It’s obvious that they have spared no expense. Even the decorations are impeccable. The entire hall has been turned into a winter wonderland, with strings of sparking white lights, a huge ice sculpture that was brought in and looks like it cost a sizeable amount, and an entire backdrop of blue and white décor that looks like a winter landscape complete with paper snowflakes.

/>   Whoever is in in charge of their decorating committee should be commended, but then again, I guess when the parents pay a small fortune in tuition to send their kids here, throwing a well-decorated party once a year is well within Ridgecrest’s means.

  Bridget said a couple of words to me before I left to go get ready with Alaska, but not nearly as much as I expected her to. And nothing close to what I expected her to say.

  She was almost civil.

  So civil, in fact, that I don’t know whether or not I should be worried.

  But then again, she probably didn’t want to risk having to hear anything about Sterling being my date to the gala. If I was her, I would have stayed quiet too.

  Still, because the universe seems determined to hate me, Bridget and I somehow manage to arrive at the entrance to the main hall at exactly the same time. She doesn’t waste a breath trying to be civil any longer, pushing past me in the doorway, which is fine with me because I don’t want to be around her anyway.

  It’s almost something of a relief. At least she’s acting normal again.

  I, meanwhile, stop in the door and suck in a breath at the sight of it all laid out before me.

  My eyes scan the room to see if I can find the guys. Sterling is supposed to meet me at the entrance, but I don’t see him anywhere.

  Just when I’m about to slip into the crowd and start an earnest hunt, I feel a pair of hands wrap around my waist from behind and I turn to see Sterling. I’m actually rather surprised that he’s being bold enough to put his arms around me in this public of a space.

  I’m so used to the opposite that just this brief display of affection makes my heart almost hurt.

  “Hey,” he smiles as he leans forward to give me a small kiss. He seems much more relaxed in this moment than I had expected him to be—almost strangely so.

  And I didn’t think it was possible for my heart to hurt even more.

  “What are you doing?” I ask once he pulls away. I look around quickly to make sure that no one saw the kiss, especially not Bridget.