by Bella King
I cheered for him in the stands, yelling his name embarrassingly loud and drawing attention to myself. I didn’t care. That was my other half out there, and if I had to scream my lungs out for him to win, that’s what I would do. We were one, and that’s what you do for the man that you love.
I tightened the red cashmere scarf around my neck, keeping the cold out. I would need a lot more than a scarf to keep me warm, now that winter had arrived, but that’s what Apollo was for. We routinely slept together, sneaking to each other’s houses in the night. That’s what we had to do until we moved out to college and could stay in the dorms together.
I grew excited as the football game came to a close, and Apollo jogged up to the stands. I wanted privacy with him, but I didn’t have it until later. That didn’t keep me from jumping into his powerful arms the minute he got close enough.
“You won,” I said, as he spun me around.
“Of course, I did. For you, Georgia,” Apollo replied, holding me up in the air.
I felt like I was weightless when I was in his arms like this. I should take my mother's diet advice, so I never get too heavy for him. I was only half-joking think that.
“This was your best game, wasn’t it?” I asked, pulling my head from his shoulder.
Apollo paused, putting me down on the snowy grass in front of him. He placed a fist under his chin, then nodded. “Yes, I do believe so. I’ve never scored this much in a single game before.”
“Practice makes perfect,” I said, beaming at him.
“You make me perfect, darling. It’s all you,” he replied before kissing my cheek.
“They’re not watching,” I said, waving back to our parents, who had left the stands to get warm now that the game was over. They were only in it because I made them come. They like to pretend they’re too busy for everything, even though they’re retired. They can’t fool me.
Apollo leaned down to me, stroking my cheek with his large hand. It was marvelous how gentle he could be with such huge hands. He looked deep into my eyes, his own glistening with affection. “I love you, Georgia,” he said to me.
“I love you too, Apollo,” I replied, standing up on my toes to kiss him.
He wrapped a thick arm around me and held me tight as he kissed me with the same passion we had shared when we kissed for the first time. It never got old, and I knew it never would. The taste of his lips, the touch of his skin, and the prickle of his stubble on my face drive me wild. I could never get enough, and I made that very clear each time he kissed me, always pulling him in for just one more.
“Hey, isn’t Cora supposed to be here?” Apollo asked as he pulled away from my lips.
“Oh, yeah, she said she was too busy with your brother to come,” I said, shrugging.
“Nasty,” Apollo said, laughing. “Sloppy seconds, I guess.”
I punched him in the chest. Some things hadn’t changed. He was still as crude as ever, making light of things that he probably shouldn’t have. Cora and he were long finished, and he was my man now. That was set in stone. Besides, Cora was so obsessed with Apollo’s brother that I barely got to see her anymore. Hopefully, she calmed down soon before she vanished from the planet entirely.
Anyway, I was happy for her. She finally found someone who respected her and treated her the way she should be treated. She was always such a gentle soul, and that’s what she needed in her life to fit her. She couldn’t deal with the crazy stuff that Apollo and I got into. That wasn’t for her, that was for us.
Sometimes people cool down after the first few months together, but for Apollo and me, it felt like things were still ramping up. The sex was wild and unhinged, the love was on fire, and the heat we made in the night was enough to steam up our bedroom window in the dead of winter.
There wasn’t much time left in school after the final football match of the year. We had some final exams, but Apollo and I decided not to take them. Why bother? We had already been accepted to Winterlake University on special demand from Apollo’s father, and our tuition was even free, not that it needed to be. Our parents had more money than they knew what to do with.
This was far from the end of our journey together, but Apollo and I faced each new day and challenge with strength like no other couple. The hatred made the love that much better when we finally broke. There is a saying. Make your enemy your friend, and they will never betray you. It’s true.
The End.
Unhinged Lover
A Dark High School Bully Romance
Prologue
It’s all about risk and reward.
His hot tongue entered my mouth, tasting the embers of passion that floated within me. A large hand slipped down to my small black dress, lifting it and tracing a finger up my thigh slowly as he kissed me.
I didn’t pull away this time, but instead, leaned into his touch and let him take me in the empty classroom. This was the man that had terrorized me for months, made my life hell, and almost ruined me. Perhaps he still would, but for now, I submitted to his power.
The kiss was a cruel dance, meant to ensnare me in his charm, to pull me into his sick world so that he could own me. I wasn’t sure if I was taming the brute, or if I was being drawn deeper into his trap. Only time would tell. For now, I experienced every feeling all at once – anger, resentment, love, pleasure, guilt…
I wouldn’t be able to look at myself in the mirror and say that I didn’t love him after I allowed this to happen. I had let him cross the line too many times, and this was the result. As fucked up as it was, I couldn’t resist the pleasure that a man like him could give to me.
There was nothing loving about the way that he took me, but I didn’t care. I wanted all of him in that moment and not a damn thing less. It was unclear to me whether he was the one gaining the upper hand over me, or it was I that now basked in the power of dominance.
We were broken people from broken places, our emotions littered with the terrors we had endured that took us to this point. It was the bitter past that we shared that made us come together in this way. No sane individual would take on this kind of a relationship with someone so deadly and damaged, but I wasn’t sane anymore, and neither was he. Perhaps we had both become…
Unhinged.
Chapter 1
Life doesn’t start at the beginning.
It was time to run. I slammed the rusted blue metal door to the locker shut, attempting to hide what I had been doing before Jacob and his gang of high school dropouts arrived on the scene. It bounced open, whining loudly on its old hinges. I had busted the damn thing open, and there was no way for it to close now.
My sneakers squeaked against the blue and tan checkered tiles as they propelled me across the men’s locker room. There was a way out in the bathroom. If I could get there, I would be able to slip through the small upper window that ventilated the place. It wasn’t very big, but neither was I.
The men’s locker room at the Lakeshaw Academy for Troubled Young Adults was nearly a clone of the women’s, aside from the added urinals occupying the wall across from the toilet stalls. I already knew every detail of the place before having stepped foot inside.
I could hear footsteps and voices echoing down the hall toward the locker room, but I wasn’t sure who they belonged to. If it was Jacob and his friends, I was done for. I don’t mean that figuratively. These guys were all vile, hateful, and dangerous. I was taking a huge risk by sneaking into the men’s locker room so soon after school had ended. I should have known there would still be people in the building.
Thievery was what had brought me to Lakeshaw Academy in the first place. I hoped that it wasn’t what put me in my coffin.
The window was there, thank goodness, positioned high up along the wall and guarded by bars that could easily be pulled out of place. I knew this because that was how we crawled out of the women’s locker room to smoke cigarettes. I wasn’t a smoker, but it was nice to get some fresh air throughout the day. The school was very strict about showing u
p and staying inside the entire day.
I rattled the bars, my heart doing a dance beneath my ribs while my stomach did somersaults. This hunk of metal wasn’t coming loose the same way that the one in the women’s locker room did. Of a second, I panicked, but the grill that separated me from the outside world slipped free after a few more rattles.
I tossed it to the floor, cracking a tile in the process. That thing wasn’t light. It was solid iron and would have been very effective in keeping people from slipping through the window had it been installed properly. The bars held up, but it could be pulled from the weak frame with a bit of wiggling. You could count on a government-funded academy to build shoddy security systems.
I had no time to squirm through the opening gently. My hips slammed against the concrete edges of the hole as I hoisted myself up and pulled my body through to freedom. The voices entered the men’s locker room, but by that point, I was already outside. I doubted that grown men could get through the sliver of a window that could barely fit me through it.
I stood up, gulping in the fresh air outside. The school day was over, which meant I was free to go home or wander around until my curfew at 10 PM. Yes, they were that strict about my life outside the academy, and I was on parole. Fucking up would mean a stint in the slammer, not the ideal way to spend my early adulthood.
Doing stupid things like breaking into Jacob’s locker to find dirt on him wasn’t going to help my case either, but it also didn’t hurt as long I didn’t get caught. It had been a close call, but nobody was quick enough to see me commit any crime or flee.
I jogged off the premise, happy relief washing over my adrenaline-fueled body. I could finally breathe normally, free from the risk of getting my head caved in by a bunch of angry pricks. Jacob and his friends weren’t friendly people. Crossing them was playing with more than my reputation in the eyes of the law. It was playing with my life.
A satisfied smirk spread across my face when I reached the main road outside of Lakeshaw Academy. I slowed my job to a brisk walk, making my way back to my shared living quarters. It was like project housing, but only for those young adults convicted of crimes. It was a second chance, but it felt like a test.
I lived with a couple of other women who had done various crimes to get them thrown into this hellhole. The woman that slept on the bunk above mine, Sarah, had burned down her parents’ house after years of abuse, killing them in the process. I didn’t blame her at all, but the judge cared little for her story. She was given a choice to either spend years in prison or attend Lakeshaw Academy to finish their extended education program.
I was given a similar choice for my crimes, although I wasn’t responsible for anyone’s death. I was always a bit of a thief. It was how I had grown up. Money was always tight in my family, and I had witnessed my mother grazing shelves at the grocery store to collect enough food to last us the week more times than I could count. I picked up the habit.
Stealing food in one thing, but I couldn’t keep myself from stealing other things. Any time someone pissed me off, I would snatch something from them. I got busted for it eventually and was in possession of a little white bag of powder that I had stolen from a jock bully when they caught me.
I didn't intend to do any of the drugs I had stolen, but the judge took one look at me and told me to stop bullshitting him. He gave me a choice to either finish my education at Lakeshaw Academy or go to prison for a year. Lakeshaw was two years, but you would come out without a record, and that was worth the extra year. Plus, you had a lot more freedom, even if they did lock you up in the school for most of the day.
I chose Lakeshaw, as everyone else here had. We were all adults, ranging from 18 to 21, just trying to wrap up our high school years slower than any normal student would. Getting caught up in the criminal reform system made it hard to graduate on time. I was 19 but turning 20 in two months. I still had a year and a half of Lakeshaw Academy left.
My brisk walk turned into a slow meander as I enjoyed a patch of sun between the thick groupings of pine trees by the road. It was summertime, but I was still in school because it was year-round. We didn’t get much in the way of breaks either.
I took a deep breath, appreciating the thick scent of the hot tar and pine sap that permeated the air here. I had found deeper gratitude for the simple things in life since my life had turned into a nightmarish series of events. Petty things were of little concern to me. I cared about two things - my survival and the thrill of life. Everything else was meaningless noise.
I adjusted my pleated black skirt and thought of my next moves against Jacob. I wasn’t on his radar yet, but I knew it was only a matter of time before I was. From what I had seen, he liked to scout out attractive women at the academy and pull them into his group to enjoy. Some of them fell for him, but others resisted. If you didn’t want to join him, he and his gang would make sure they treated you like garbage, something everyone else at the school mimicked.
Being the object of torment at a small academy full of criminals was the last thing anyone wanted. Most women opted to get on Jacob’s good side, doing him favors and working with his gang. They practically owned the academy, having risen to power a year before I arrived.
It wasn’t all about sex, though I was sure that Jacob got plenty of that. A lot of women really loved him, which I found foolish because he showed no affection toward any of them. He was handsome but entirely too unhinged for me. I mean, the man was borderline insane. He was in Lakeshaw Academy for a reason.
I had found out about Jacob’s crimes through my other roommate, Mary, whose brother had been in league with Jacob during the crimes that got Jacob put away. Mary’s brother ended up in jail, but Jacob ended up here with us.
Jacob used to be the frontman for a group of delinquents. He liked to collect people and organize them, using them for various crimes that he himself didn’t take part in. He could never be found guilty of anything until he snapped one day.
Nobody knew the details about why he snapped, but he ended up beating a man within an inch of his life. It was a crime of passion, done in broad daylight on a busy street. He didn’t stop beating the man until the police tased him and took him away.
Details about crime were only rumors. Nobody knew what put Jacob in such a state of rage that he would give up his freedom to try to kill someone. All I knew is that he must have been insane, and probably still was. He was a risky person to be around, at the very least.
I didn’t want to get wrapped up in Jacob’s storm, but I knew that it was coming. That’s why I had been searching through his stuff for something to use against him in the event that I do become a blip on his radar. I wanted something to keep him away from me, but I had failed to find that on my first run through his belongings.
His locker didn’t have a whole lot in it. He stashed a few extra pairs of underwear, socks, and shoes in there, along with a picture of a naked woman he had gotten off the internet taped to the inside. He was smart enough to keep anything incriminating in less obvious places. I was going to have to look harder if I was to find something.
It wasn’t imperative that I dug up dirt of Jacob, but I wanted a defense for when he and his gang came for me. I knew they would because I was an attractive woman. They couldn’t keep their greedy tattooed hands off women like me.
I was naturally blonde but died my hair jet black to avoid the blonde jokes. It matched my grim personality better that way as well. I was always on the shorter side, with a petite frame and an ass to die for. I wasn’t terribly gifted in the tit department, but I was carrying a decent enough ass behind me not to care.
Nobody ever made jokes about me or comments about my body, partially because they knew I would slap the eyeballs out of their worthless heads if they reduced me to my attractiveness alone. I knew I was hot, but that wasn’t the only reason why I was worth something. I was devilishly clever and sneaky, as well. It served me well up until it didn’t. Then I was thrown to the vicious criminals of Lakeshaw
Academy.
I took the crumbled concrete steps up by threes to the front door of my living quarters. Everyone else was already home, as I could hear them from the outside loudly talking about their days and making food. I was hungry.
I yanked the lopsided door open and stepped inside.
Chapter 2
A meal is best when shared.
“Y’all eat all the fucking garlic already?” Mary yelled just as I walked into the kitchen.
“Yep,” I said, dropping my black bag on the floor beside the rickety kitchen table. “Sarah did.”
Sarah was standing across from Mary, arms crossed. Her mouth dropped open on my accusation. “How the fuck would you know?”
I laughed. “Your breath was rancid last night. I could smell you from the top bunk.”
Sarah pouted. “You’re fucked up, Elise. Why do you always have to rat me out?”
Mary shook her head. “Don’t listen to her. She’s going to have to buy more seasoning if she keeps using all of it.”
“I’m like the only one that cooks around here,” Sarah shot back.
I didn’t want to get involved in their bickering. “Let me know when dinner is ready,” I said, picking my bag back up and leaving the kitchen.
Mary and Sarah continued to argue about who was replacing spices when we ran out while I went down the narrow hallway to my room.
I shared this room with Sarah, who was relatively tidy. She’s the only person that kept my messy nature in check, or the entire room would be covered in laundry. She had us clean twice a week which was barely enough with how much stuff I threw around, but it was all she could get me to do.
I slung my bag up onto the top bunk of the bed that leaned against the wall in the corner of the room. I swore that the only thing keeping this thing from toppling over was the tight corner that was at an 89-degree angle. It squeezed the bed into place.
