Wicked Blue Bloods: A Highschool Bully Romance - Crestwood Academy Book 1

by Devyn Forrest

  I suppose forever was like, only a year and a half long.

  Jeff sat in Mom’s normal breakfast seat, crunching at a plate of chips that they had probably eaten the night before. He glanced up at me as I entered, eyeing my messed up hair and my big weird Ridgewood High School t-shirt with my glum expression.

  “There she is,” Mom chirped. “Jeff and I were just wondering if you would make an appearance this morning.”

  “Here I am...” I said, in a mocking magician way. I fell into the chair across from Jeff, all-out staring at him. Maybe if everything else was going to shit in my life, I could try to make Jeff’s life a living hell. Wasn’t that what step kids did on television shows? It always looked like a hell of a good time.

  “Would you like a pancake?” Mom asked.

  “No. I’m watching my weight,” I told her.

  Mom snorted. “Oh, that’s funny. You’re basically skin and bones.”

  “Whatever. Not at Crestwood,” I told her.

  Jeff snorted. “That’s right. I’ve worked in Crestwood loads. Those women they got over there, I can’t believe they can still stand up. Those skinny little legs! They wouldn’t hold up a stick-man.”

  “You’ve worked in Crestwood?” I asked my interest perking for the first time. “For who? I probably know the family.”

  “I’ve just done some landscaping for a few of the bigger families,” he said, dropping eye contact. “Like, the Franklins. I don’t know if you know them, but they’re pretty well-known...”

  “Attorneys,” I said, finishing his sentence.

  “Yeah. Them.” He pointed at me like I had won a prize.

  Mom seemed pleased, although my heart had started to thump wildly in my throat.

  “That’s wonderful! So you go to school with one of the Franklins?” Mom asked.

  “Sure do,” I said. In fact, I’d done far more than that with the Franklin boy, but Mom didn’t need to know any of that.

  “Who else have you worked with?” I asked Jeff as I reached for the platter of toast, dropping one in front of me and then scraping peanut butter over it . If Jeff had anything at all interesting to say, I was ready to squeeze it out of him.

  “Oh, I don’t know. I worked briefly with the governor...”

  “The Winters?” I demanded and shot forward in my chair.

  “Wow. You really know a lot about Crestwood,” Mom said. She dropped toward us, falling against Jeff’s knee. He wrapped one of his hands around her belly, squeezing her against him.

  “I guess so.” The back of my mind burned with curiosity. I sensed something off, something wrong. How was it possible that my mother’s boyfriend, here in Ridgewood, had worked so extensively with two of the highest-caliber families in Crestwood? These two families had a very real say in the happiness of my current Crestwood life.

  Were they related?

  “Come on. Eat your toast,” Mom coaxed. Her eyes were filled with happiness and I couldn’t very well tear through it and just demand what was off about this guy.

  “Fine...” I said, flashing a half-smile and bringing the toast to my lips. When I tasted it, I realized just how hungry I was, considering I hadn’t eaten since the previous day. My head began to articulate actual human thoughts, remembering Teony in the car the previous night, demanding—if there was anything else I needed to tell her.

  I blinked at Jeff.

  Was there anything else?

  “I think I would like to go to be excused,” I told them.

  “That’s fine, honey,” Mom said. Her palm grazed over Jeff’s cheek in a loving way that made me want to vomit. “Just make sure you eat something later.”

  I stomped upstairs, wishing I could be the sort of teenager to make a bigger, better scene. As it was, though, I really couldn’t blame Mom for what she was doing. I had been the one that made her a widow. I was the one that ripped him from our lives. Sure, he had been drunk and staggering around the entrance of the house when I had picked him up. But I should have been attentive to the road.

  “It’s not your fault,” Mom had said a thousand times, weeping into her hands at the hospital. When I had woken up, I could hardly remember my own fucking name. “You just wanted to protect him...”

  We hadn’t spoken for about a week after that. It wasn’t because we didn’t want to. Mom and I had always been close and would be again. But I still remembered the severity of those silence times, how she would open her lips and then close them again, seemingly unable to drudge up the energy to really say what was on her mind.

  Now, I paced my bedroom before reaching for my computer and flinging open the anonymous online forum for Crestwood Academy. Since I had started there, I hadn’t posted anything, nor had I read much of anything. My studies, my art project, and my sexual obsession with the boys (yeah, sure, I admit it) had taken my head far from any ideas of gossip.

  I entered the password for the anonymous online forum and of course, I should have expected it; that almost every single post was about me. Jesus Christ. I muttered to myself.

  Username foxtrot20: Daddy Killer Faints at Gala

  Username Delta 69: I found the newspaper article after Kennedy killed her dad

  Username Lilyspawn88: Is it true her dad was decapitated?

  Username Viper89: Hey Crestwood’s three kings. How good does Ridgewood fuck?

  Fuck! I slammed the computer closed and fell into sob after sob, my shoulders cramping and my stomach quaking. I didn’t know how the hell I was going to return to Crestwood the next day or ever again for that matter. I was half-willing to let them beat me, to return to Eric and Wren and huddle in with my nice little clique of Ridgewood friends forever. Hell, maybe I could even be happy being a nurse or some shit and never paint a picture or write an article again.

  Then the image of Kieran’s handsome face peering down at me after we’d fucked rang through my mind. I couldn’t let someone like that walk all over me—someone I had heard a gasp and moan before coming. In a way, I had seen him in his most vulnerable.

  And now, I had to figure out how to fight back.

  Chapter Twenty

  It was the second week of November, which meant I had hardly been a student at Crestwood. When I marched off the bus that Monday morning, I was half-surprised to find the boys waiting for me, the convertible humming at the curb. But as I approached the car, not a single one of them turned their heads to greet me. Instead, Caleb tugged something out from the bottom of the car—dropping an enormous trash bag directly at my feet.

  “Open it, Ridgewood,” Caleb ordered, jerking his head at the bag.

  “Today, Ridgewood,” Kieran barked, his neck craned as he narrowed his eyes at me from the driver’s seat.

  It was like they had organized this. Several other cars came up behind them, stopping to watch and I didn’t know what to do. I stared down at the trash bag, wondering what would happen if I opened it. Was it just a stupid joke—something they’d come up with to mock the fact that they loved to treat me as Ridgewood trash?

  “No,” I told them. I took a big step back from the trash bag, crossing my arms over my chest.

  “You’ll do as you’re told,” Dante boomed, his eyes narrowing on me. “Or else we’ll give the bag to everyone in the school and I don’t think you’ll want us to do that.”

  Ok, now my curiosity was peaked. Wild with apprehension, I finally tugged open the bag, finding within it hundreds of photographs—all of me, naked and writhing on Kieran’s bed. My eyes bugged out and I started shaking as I stared. I picked one of them up—one in which Kieran was hovering over me, his lips wrapped tightly around one of my nipples. My face in the photograph was one of pure ecstasy.

  I am such a fucking idiot.

  “You really think something like this would scare me?” I turned the photo around to face them. “After all the shit you’ve already put me through?”

  Kieran cut me one of his horrific smiles. “Maybe you could use them to your sales,” he shot out. “I know y
ou’re always hunting for more cash.”

  “In that case,” I growled, “Maybe I should demand some money from all of you. I gave all of you a pretty fucking good time, didn’t I?”

  “Don’t pretend you didn’t want it,” Caleb scoffed. “We have you on tape saying how much you did.”

  “We didn’t even have to force it out of you,” Dante affirmed and then high fived Caleb.

  I took an enormous step back from the garbage bag. The cars behind Kieran’s hadn’t budged. Several students had their phones out of the windows, recording me and taking photographs. I knew that these images would be posted in the online forum in less than an hour. I was their perfect scapegoat. Now, they no longer had to bully one another.

  “This is so easy for you, isn’t it?” I asked the boys. “Force someone to get close to you...”

  “We didn’t force you to tell us anything,” Caleb spat. “You did that all on your own.”

  “Get in the fucking car, Kennedy,” Kieran said then, his voice firm and menacing.

  “Fuck you! Why the hell would I do that?”

  He turned his head quickly toward me, as though I had just projected the worst insult he’d ever heard. “I don’t think I need to ask you again. You’re going to get in this car, Kennedy, and I’m going to drive your stupid Ridgewood ass up this hill. Do you understand?”

  I flashed my eyes back toward the line of cars. I imagined both scenarios; getting into the car, or walking up with the trash bag banging against me as I went. What was worse?

  Suddenly, an idea began to form and I felt I had absolutely nothing to lose, so I hopped into the back seat, grabbing the trash bag and yanking it along with me.

  “That’s a good girl,” Kieran said, in a manner that made my blood boil. “I knew she would follow along. Didn’t I say so, boys?”

  When Kieran cranked the engine again, the stream of cars behind us followed suit. We escalated up the hill toward the academy, sweeping through the trees. Still, my hand clung tightly to the garbage bag, filled with photos of my orgasmic face. I shook with rage but tried to keep my appearance serene and unfazed. I couldn’t let them know they had gotten to me, yet again.

  At the top, I glanced toward the still-flapping tarp, which hung over my graffiti. The girl who had done that felt like an entirely different human. I wished I could drudge up that emotion again, that inner rage. I wished I could return to that day and do it even worse—or better. So much so that the people of Crestwood would never have darkened my door.

  “Aren’t you going to get out, Ridgewood?” Kieran asked.

  The three of them hovered outside the sports car, blinking down at me like I was their plaything. I knew I had only a moment to conduct my plan.

  Suddenly, I sprung forward, dropping my hand into the cup holder where Dante always kept his lighter for his after-school cigarettes, which he smoked religiously. I grabbed the bright-green lighter and then swept over the side of the car, striking the lighter at the garbage bag and then the photos within. I moved quickly, trying to ignite as many images as possible. I needed to make sure they all caught.

  “What the fuck!” Kieran cried out.

  Then, I turned quickly and smashed the burning bag of photos into the back seat of Kieran’s car. Enough of the photos were on fire to cast dark smudges across the seats, even catch a small portion of it on fire. Caleb and Dante leaped back, while Kieran reached for his backpack and smashed it over the fire, cursing.

  Without waiting to see what happened next, I turned on my heel and stomped toward Crestwood Academy. But before I reached the door, I ran toward the tarp that hung over my graffiti and yanked on it with all the strength I could muster. Within seconds, the tarp flew toward the ground, revealing my perfect drawing, unaffected. In fact, it seemed that since the tarp had been up, the weather hadn’t bothered it at all.

  Maybe it would last there forever.

  I lurched around, pointing at the graffiti. “I meant what I said,” I called out to the boys, to all of them who hovered around the convertible, gawking. “And you know I do what I want. Fuck it. I caused the accident, so just what else am I capable of?”

  I couldn’t believe I had just said that. But instead of dwelling on it, I marched the rest of the way into the school, my nostrils flared and my heart pumping. By the time I had reached my locker, I had essentially blacked out, giving myself over to whatever was going to happen next. If I knew Crestwood like I thought I did, I could only vaguely anticipate the next round of horror.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  They came for me again during art period. I was called down to Headmaster Blair’s—sent with another note and perched alongside Kieran, Caleb, and Dante. The stoic old man peered at me behind his little glasses, almost incredulous. His fingers drummed against the mahogany desk.

  “Kennedy. Why is it that you’ve been surrounded with so much chaos since your arrival at this school?” he asked, leaning back into his chair.

  I snorted. “Maybe it’s because I’ve had a target on my back since I came. Maybe it’s because of the enormous class divide between Crestwood and Ridgewood. Or maybe it’s just because everyone at this school is an asshole.” I shrugged. “Pick one, Headmaster Blair. I don’t frankly care which one.” I could feel the rage inside me and at that moment, I didn’t give a shit what would happen.

  Headmaster Blair’s eyes ticked from Kieran to Caleb to Dante. “Boys, I’ve known all three of you since you were born. I have known you to be fine, upstanding men in your community, which is why I trust that whatever happened this morning wasn’t your fault or you’re doing.”

  Again, I couldn’t help but scoff at his words. It was like I had pressed play on my super-intense sarcasm and couldn’t turn the shit off. “Fucking hell,” I muttered, mostly to myself.

  “Excuse me, Kennedy?” Headmaster Blair demanded.

  “Nothing.”

  “Sir, it really was a mistake,” Kieran began, acting like an innocent eighteen-year-old rather than the monster he truly was.

  I cut my eyes toward him in shock. Was he actually standing up for me, after belittling me in front of so many that morning, and abandoning me after we had fucked in his bedroom? My heart thumped wildly. There wasn’t any way I could give him another chance— but if he was willing to lay down himself in this way in front of Headmaster Blair.

  “There was a lighter and I don’t know whose it was,” Kieran explained. “But some shit—I mean, stuff—in the back seat of my car caught on fire. It was completely innocent and not Kennedy’s fault. She shouldn’t be punished for it. If anything, I should be, since there was a lighter in my car and I was clumsy. I know they’re not allowed on school property.”

  “Is that true, boys?” Headmaster Blair asked the other two. His eyes grew into tight almonds.

  Caleb and Dante nodded in agreement. I was in complete disbelief. Why had they gone to so much trouble to ruin me that morning, only to back down the minute I could have been expelled?

  Maybe it’s because they want me to be the one to give up, rather than being forced out by the headmaster.

  This seemed logical enough. Headmaster Blair just sighed and pointed toward the door, saying, “Very well. Get out of my office while you still can. I swear to Christ, I’m not going to live a day longer than my next birthday.”

  The boys and I piled out of the office and I kept my eyes on their backs, all of which pulsed with muscles I had once touched and squeezed and ached to understand better. But when the door closed behind us, they turned cold eyes toward me.

  “Why did you guys do that?” I asked, not fully sure which thing I was referring to. The images or the covering up for me.

  Kieran clucked his tongue. “Did any of you hear something?”

  “I don’t think so,” Caleb returned, snorting.

  “Maybe just a little poor fucking idiot who would be hearing from my attorney parents, if it wasn’t for the fact that she didn’t have a dime to call her own,” Dante hissed, his
eyes glittering.

  “Maybe just a little poor fucking idiot who should drop the fuck out of our school and go back to where she belongs,” Caleb spat his voice laced with cruelty.

  “Or just a slut whore. Someone willing to spread her legs to whoever’s around, just for the pleasure of it,” Kieran hissed.

  This was the worst insult of all. But I swallowed hard, yanking my shoulders back.

  “If you think for a second, I’m going to drop out of school just because you guys have some sort of power trip going against me, then you aren’t as smart as you think you are,” I growled back.

  The bell rang out for second period, drawing the rest of the students out from their classes. They swarmed in the hallways, yet allowed an enormous bubble to form around the boys and I. It was clear we weren’t to be touched.

  Finally, I snorted, sweeping out of the stupid circle we’d formed. I sauntered toward my locker and for whatever reason, I thought back to that first day when Hailey had hung up those mice in my locker, as though that would affect my psyche. Now, I felt nothing could mess with me at all. It was like I was made of concrete. People could stomp all over me. But it would hurt them more, in the end.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  At art class the following afternoon, I stretched my palms across my new canvas, inhaling deeply. I was still in shock that I hadn’t been punished for nearly setting fire to Kieran’s car, but in the wake of the incident, basically, no one at school had said a single word to me. At lunch that day, I had braved the cafeteria—thinking, to hell with everyone. As I loaded up my plate with potatoes and a bread roll and a slice of pizza, one of Hailey’s posse torn past me, elbowing me in the side so hard that I had fallen forward. My lunch tray fell, allowing the contents of it spill across the floor. My face had nearly smashed into the floor, but I had just missed it. Fucking elites! I muttered under my breath as I tried to regain my composure and wipe food off my skirt.