She refused to look at me. “Right now, I’d love for you to get suspended.”
I moved toward her, my jaw ticcing. “Figure you get rid of the devil, hell might be more tolerable?”
“Yes, because I hate you.”
I glanced around the room at the girls I knew hated her just because she was Barrington—forget that she was hot. Then looked at the guys I knew would be giving her more grief than she could handle if they didn’t think she was, in some fashion, mine. “I can assure you,” I whispered, “the little dance with the devil you’ve been doing is the only thing that’s kept the demons from ripping you to shreds, baby girl.”
Her nostrils flared, the anger of hers I knew so well sparking to life as she placed a palm on my thigh and leaned in. “You think I can’t handle myself? Because the way I see it, I handle you just fine.”
“Oh, you do, baby girl. But only because I fucking let you.”
“You let all your Barrington whores get away with so much, Bellamy?”
She had no idea what line she was toeing. On a smirk, I fisted the hair at the nape of her neck, then yanked her head down to my lap. “You wanna know what all my Barrington whores get away with, baby girl?”
She fought to break free of my hold, nails tearing into my jeans as I tugged harder.
“This is what all girls like Blondie get away with.”
Whispers bounced around the room. The students in front of us turned to watch.
“Is that supposed to make me feel special, Bellamy?” She relaxed in my hold, resting her cheek close to my dick.
“Whatever you wanna call it.”
Then her teeth sunk into my thigh. Hard.
I bit back a groan, then placed my other hand on the back of her head. “I swear to God, when I fuck you, I’m gonna do it with no mercy, baby girl.” Then I pushed her away. Her hair a tangled mess and her face red as shit. Any minute, I expected her to throw a punch.
“Mr. West!” Mrs. Smith whacked her pointer stick on the board. “I swear to the good Lord above.” She shook her head, grabbing her demerit slip pad and writing one out. “All ‘do it with no mercy, baby girl.’ Lord Jesus, take the wheel,” she said, placing the paper on the corner of my desk.
“That’s on you!” I pointed to the pink slip. “I swear, you are the one-night stand from hell.”
“No, that’s on you.” She shoved the detention slip across the desktop. “A one-night stand would have fucked you. I never will.”
“Bullshit.”
The bell sounded, and Mrs. Smith groaned, the hinges of her chair creaking when I assumed she’d stood up to go to the board. She started going over mitochondrial DNA.
Halfway through the lesson, I’d almost nodded off, until the PA system beeped: “An intruder has been spotted in the building. An intruder has been spotted in the building.”
Mrs. Smith tossed the marker down. “Under the desks.” She hurried to the door, locking it before she rushed to the windows to pull the shades. Students clamored underneath the tables and Drew pushed out of her chair, turning to me with a look of panic. “What’s happening?”
I snatched her wrist and yanked her down to the floor with me. “Just get down.”
“Keep y’alls mouths closed,” Mrs. Smith called from the back of the room.
My pulse ticked up, the thought that this could be real ran through my head, creating a whirlwind of anxiety with every hallway door that slammed shut.
“Why are we hiding?” Drew whispered as she settled against the leg of the desk.
“Active shooter drill.”
Mrs. Smith shushed us again. The girl on the other side of Drew started crying. These things were always shit because we never knew if they were real or not.
“Oh my God.” Drew pulled her knees to her chest, placing her forehead on them. She looked like she was about to completely lose it.
“It’s a drill, Drew. Stop panicking.” And that—that was the first time I had lied to her. I had no idea if it was a drill or not, but if it were real, it wasn’t like there was anything we could do.
“How do you know?” she whispered.
I shrugged a shoulder, and she tugged her legs closer to her chest. Seconds ticked by. The eerie silence in a room that was usually chaotic created a suffocating tension. Images of newsreels played through my head on a loop...the sound of gunshots, kids fleeing buildings with their hands behind their heads. That could be us.
Drew released an uneven breath, focusing on the tile in front of her. “I’m scared,” she whispered.
I was, too. I swallowed, then I laid my open palm on the floor between us, and she grabbed it, dropping her head to her knees again.
My stomach kinked and knotted, Drew’s hand sweated in mine. I watched the second hand on the clock tick by, waiting for shots to ring out or officers to knock on the door and give us the all-clear, while thoughts of what would happen to my mom and Arlo cycled through my head. By the time the officers finally came around and opened the door, letting us know the drill was over, the tension in the classroom was almost unbearable.
We quietly went back to our desks, pretending that drill couldn’t have been our shitty reality. Smith went back to the board, pressing her thermos to her lips with shaking hands. Then she picked up where she had left off, drawing another diagram.
Drew sat beside me, lip gripped between her teeth, tears threatening to spill over. She raised her hand and asked to be excused, already halfway to the door before Mrs. Smith acknowledged her.
The girl had evidently never had one of these drills before, and if they unnerved me, I could guarantee it had put her on the verge of a breakdown.
“I gotta piss,” I said, on my way out of the class.
I followed the empty hallway to the girl’s restroom. Drew stood at the sink, swiping at her smudged mascara, even though the tears kept coming. I had no business following her in here. No business giving a shit if she was scared for the simple fact that she wasn’t mine. But yet, here I was, making myself weak for her with every passing second.
“You all right?” I asked, my voice echoing off the grimy tiled walls.
Her gaze met mine in the mirror. On a ragged sigh, she dropped her chin to her chest, the sudden movement covering her face with a curtain of hair.
“Guess you didn’t have those drills at your prep school, huh?” I moved behind her, placing a hand on her shoulder as I gathered her hair to the side of her neck. She didn’t move. Didn’t acknowledge me. “They’re shit,” I said.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“It scared you.”
She turned to face me, wiping over her face again. “It’s irrational to be crying right now. I didn’t die.”
“Out of all the things you’ve done that are irrational, I promise you, baby girl, this is not one of them.” I half-smiled and swept a hand over her damp cheek, terrified at how normal this felt. At how right this felt.
Her gaze held mine for a moment before she grabbed my jaw, then pressed a kiss to my lips. The kind of kiss that didn’t say she wanted me, the kind that said she needed me. And damn, if it didn’t make my chest go tight.
I grabbed onto her waist, pulling her close, and for once, I didn’t feel the need to bend her over and fuck her. I didn’t want to hate her. Just protect her.
“I’m not fucking Jackson.”
“And I’m not fucking anyone else.”
Because I wanted her. Only her.
Her fingers trailed my cheek as she took a step back, her gaze searching mine like there was something she could figure out about me if she just stared a little bit harder. Then, without another word, she slipped out of the bathroom.
Leaving me feeling more vulnerable than I ever had in my entire life.
23
Drew
That afternoon when I got home from school, I was still shaken up. I sat on the couch, feeling numb, and my only thought was Bellamy. He’d seen me cry. And I never, ever let anyone see my c
ry. He held my hand, kissed me... I could still feel the heat of his lips branded on mine.
Where was the bad guy I was supposed to hate?
I stared at my phone. I was passed caring right now. My walls were down. He’d put a big old crack in them in the space of one class. red
Me: Thank you. For holding my hand
It sounded pathetic when I wrote it out like that.
Dickhead: Yep
Dickhead: Hope it didn’t ruin the whole you hating me thing we’ve got going on...
God, I was so screwed. So absolutely screwed. What was the point in fighting it any more...?
I typed out the first part of a response, then another text came through.
Dickhead: Because you all angry at me makes my dick hard AF.
So, this is where we were going. And this I could handle a lot more readily than the weird emotions that were trying to worm their way through my chest.
Me: That explains a lot.
Dickhead: Don’t believe me. Tell me you hate me, and I’ll show you what it does.
A little blossom of excitement took root, and of course, I rose to it because Bellamy may have been the solid rock at my back today, but normally he was a blazing fire licking over my skin, threatening to singe me. This...this is what we did, and I wanted the familiarity of it, as though my sense of self were tied to him being filthy and bad. I pressed the voice-clip button. “I fucking hate you.”
Seconds later, a picture came through of his fist wrapped around his bare dick. Heat trickled over my skin, and I caught myself squeezing my thighs together. Of course, I’d seen it, had my lips around it, but seeing his hand around it...that was something else entirely. It seemed so much more brutal, almost angry.
Me: You gonna stroke it for me?
Dickhead: You gonna finger fuck yourself for me?
God, when it came to him, I was a sick addict.
The next day at school, Bellamy wasn’t waiting at my locker, and the sinking sense of disappointment that came took me off guard. Everything with him was so complicated, my feelings never the same from one day to the next. I kept waiting for him to show up, but he never did.
I shoved my biology book in my locker at the end of the day and grabbed my backpack. When I turned around, a redhead was leaned against the metal wall, staring at me.
Cleavage spilled out of her shirt, and she had this whole aura of “don’t fuck with me.” She was exactly the kind of girl who would have a razor blade. She was also the kind of girl any guy would want to screw, so when she said, Bellamy sent me to talk to you, I instantly assumed he’d slept with her. And that had my spine stiffening.
I quietly shut my locker door. “O-kay.”
“You should stay the fuck away from Max, and don’t drink anything you didn’t pour yourself around any of those Barrington assholes.” She looked me up and down. “Then again, I don’t know what Bellamy’s worried about; you’re probably fine. You aren’t Dayton trash, are you?”
“He spiked your drink?”
She gave a curt nod, her expression shuttering. “Just trust me on this. They’re not good guys.” She took a step back. “I’ll be sure to tell your friend the same thing.”
“Wait. How do you know Bellamy?” I asked.
Her blood-red lips kicked up in a smirk. “I haven’t fucked him.” Then she walked off, disappearing into the rapidly thinning crowd in the halls.
I shouldered my bag and made my way to the exit, thoughts whirring through my mind. Max had date-raped that girl.
I wondered if Jackson and Olivia knew. They couldn’t. They’d never let the guy in their house, surely? Then again, who were they going to believe? Their friend or a Dayton girl? And that thought had a sick feeling swirling in my gut.
My encounter with the redhead played out in my head the entire drive home. And when Olivia texted to ask if I wanted to go grab food with her, all I could think about was how the hell I could broach this with her. Surely to God, if what the girl said was true, Olivia wouldn’t set one of my friends up with him.
Olivia’s Mercedes barreled over the road. She talked at a hundred miles an hour about some party this weekend while I stared out the window, watching the streets of Barrington whizz by.
I sent a text to Nora, telling her we needed to talk, though I had no confidence that she would listen. Had the original information come from anyone but Bellamy, maybe... I knew Nora was too blinded by the Barrington glamour and her hatred of Bellamy to listen.
“Anyway, Max will be there,” Olivia slowed in a turn lane, putting on her blinker. “So, you should bring your friend.”
Seconds passed where I grappled with the best way to say it...“I spoke to this girl at school today.” I swept a hand over the leg of my jeans. “She said Max Harford date-raped her. You ever hear anything about that?”
She frowned. “What girl?”
“A redhead. I don’t know her name; she just came up to me and—”
“Ugh! A redhead? You spoke to Zepp Hunt’s trashy girlfriend? You know word is, she got him arrested. I wouldn’t believe a word she says.”
“But wasn’t Zepp the one who beat Max?”
She shrugged. “Men are Neanderthals. Who’s to say what she told him. They’re Dayton. Beating up the Barrington quarterback is like, gold for them. I mean, they kidnapped Jackson and put him on your porch, Drew!”
“Yeah.” But they didn’t hurt him and considering they hated him, they absolutely could have... I’d seen the scars on Max’s face. That wasn’t just a beating; that was punishment. That was a blood debt.
“Forget about it. It’s bullshit.” I didn’t think it was, though, and if it wasn’t...I could totally see why Dayton would hate Barrington. By association, I could see why Bellamy would hate me.
Olivia pulled into a gravel lot filled with pickups and motorcycles. I stared up at the orange and brown sign with the light to half the letters unlit: Waffle Hut. What the hell kind of name was that?
I followed Olivia inside, and the middle-aged woman behind the counter gestured toward an empty table in the corner. I sank to the plastic booth, my hands sticking to the seat before I took the grease-covered menu and skimmed about twenty-different ways to eat hash browns.
A few minutes later, the bell above the door chimed. Jackson walked in with Max and Nora. I didn’t even know she would be here, but there she was, her hand on Max’s arm. That horrible feeling settled in my gut again.
“God, I live with you. Leave me alone already.” Olivia snorted as she shuffled over to make room.
Jackson glared at me before sliding into the booth next to his sister. He was obviously still annoyed over Bellamy’s stunt last weekend. Not that I could blame him.
Max plopped down beside me, practically smooshing me to the wall so Nora could squeeze in. I’d never been more repulsed by being near someone.
We placed our orders, and ten minutes later, a feast of greasy food turned up on the table. From the looks of which I was not sad I’d stuck with ordering just a milkshake.
I plucked the cherry from the thick whipped cream, cringing when Max threw an arm around Nora’s shoulders. I wanted to rip it off and drag her out of here. Even before I knew what I now did about Max, I thought she was too good for an arrogant rich boy like him.
Jackson glanced up from the phone he’d been paying attention to for the past five minutes. “Davis said he’s down. That makes eight of us.”
“We’re so gonna beat their asses.” Max laughed, rubbing his hands together before he picked up his fork.
God, boys and testosterone. “Whose ass are you beating?” I asked, sucking the milkshake through my straw.
Jackson’s typed out a text before he shot a sick grin at me. “West and his boys.”
Oh, this was not good. Granted, I could see why they’d feel the need for the backup, but it seemed wrong. Unfair. “That seems kind of barbaric,” I said. “I mean, aren’t you guys above that?”
Max turned his attention to me. �
��So, I mean, what’s the deal between you and West, Drew?”
“Nothing?”
“Not what I heard.”
Jackson shifted, stuffing the rest of his greasy sandwich into his mouth before shoving his plate away. “Whose side are you on, anyway, Drew?”
“No one’s. I just think fighting is stupid.”
Jackson’s phone beeped again, snatching his attention from me. “Davis said he’d meet us over in Paradise Valley at ten. Sheridan said all the losers are over at Hunt’s house.”
The guys kept talking about beating up the Dayton trash, and with every backhanded comment they made about Bellamy, my agitation grew. After a few minutes, I excused myself to the bathroom. Because this was bullshit.
The minute I closed the door to the grubby stall, I took out my phone. Maybe my loyalty should have been to Olivia and Jackson, but eight on three just seemed shitty. I had no idea who I really trusted anymore, but something always pulled me back to Bellamy, no matter how stupid it might be. I couldn’t not warn him.
Me: Just a heads up...Barrington are going to turn up at Hendrix’s house later to, and I quote, “beat your ass”
Dickhead: Yeah?
Dickhead: And how do you know that?
God, he was a dick. Couldn’t just take the warning.
Me: Does it matter?
Dickhead: If you’re with him—yeah.
Me: I told you I’m not fucking him!
Dickhead: Doesn’t matter.
Possessive was not even the word.
Me: Just be careful.
Dickhead: Come on, baby girl. Tell me you don’t think he could actually beat my ass.
Me: Don’t think they’re planning one on one, Bellamy
When I went back to the table, two more Barrington guys had shown up. I ordered a plate of fries, just to stall Jackson and those guys a little longer, hoping maybe Bellamy’s idiot self would change his mind and leave Hendrix’s house. Although, really, I knew he wouldn’t abandon Hendrix.
No Good: A Standalone Enemies to Lovers Romance Page 14
