Three of Us

by Goode, Ella

  She gives my arm a squeeze. “To be honest, I don’t know where that came from. I saw red when he pulled that shirt off you. Then he wouldn't let you go… I just reacted.” I can hear the anger in her voice.

  “You were pretty badass.” I smile at her. I wasn’t just trying to be nice when I told her we were best friends. I know now that it’s true.

  “I kinda felt like it,” she laughs in agreement.

  We walk in silence for a moment before I ask her what is now messing with my head. “Everyone thinks I’m a slut?” I ask. I’m on the verge of tears as I wait for her to answer me.

  “Maybe. People have been whispering about you and the Audley twins since you got here. It’s not normal and things that aren't normal to people generally get shamed. Besides, what’s wrong with being a slut?” she adds.

  “Nothing,” I say instantly, because there isn't anything wrong with it. “It’s that the word is out there to begin with. That they are trying to make it sound like what we're doing is wrong.

  Erika stops walking and turns to look at me. Her face is serious. “You’re lucky. You grew up in a place that accepted what the three of you are. It’s not going to be that way everywhere. You know that, right? This is something you’re going to have to face the rest of your life if you three choose to stay together.”

  “I’d never leave them. I don’t care what anyone says,” I whisper, more to myself than to anyone listening. I don’t want to think about a life without them. It’s what I want more than anything. I swallow the lump that has formed in my throat. I don’t know why I never thought about this before now. She’s right though. I did grow up in a place that let us be who we are. Still, the idea of men trying to grab at me like Surfer Dude did scares the crap out of me. Worse, I stood in shock and let him. I don’t know what I’m more upset about—how I reacted to the situation or how others are reacting to my relationship with the twins.

  In high school, no one dared breathe a negative word in my direction. The Audley twins ran that school and from the day I moved to town, everyone knew I belonged to them. Mom said that our relationship was unusual, but I never perceived it as something negative or bad. Looking back, I can see my naivety. Anything that’s not normal is usually subject to a lot of criticism. I should’ve prepared myself.

  This is going to be trouble. I wonder how Levi and Zeke are going to react to all of this. Did they think about what it would be like for us here? Is this why they were holding off claiming me in all the ways I desperately wanted? They’re so protective of me, but I feel the same way toward them. I want to shield them from all the hurts in this world. How do I do that and still have them?

  13

  Zeke

  The phone screen cracks in my grip, but I manage to make it through the entire Snap story before snarling, “I’m going to murder him.”

  And by him, I mean, the frat boy who got laid out by Olivia’s roommate yesterday. The frat boy who had the fucking Audacity with a capital A to come on to Olivia, to call her a slut, to embarrass her. No, not just embarrass her—to make her feel low.

  “I’m going to reach down his throat and pull his balls out of his mouth.”

  “No, you’re not,” Levi replies.

  I jerk my gaze up from my broken phone to meet my twin’s eyes. “What the hell do you mean, I’m not?” We’re always in sync. Always. But not over this? What the fuck?

  He shrugs. “If you go, I’m gonna have to go with you and we will both end up in jail. How are we supposed to protect our girl if we’re behind bars? And it’s not like we didn’t expect this.”

  My jaw drops. How can my brother, who worships the very ground that Olivia walks on, not be out of his mind with rage? “Did you get a concussion this morning? I mean, for fucking real. Have you taken one too many hits to the head? How can you be so calm about this?”

  “Because one of us has to.” He shoots to his feet and the wooden chair he’s been sitting on creaks loudly. The creak turns into a crash as the damn thing splits in half and topples over.

  I feel marginally better. The loud noise breaks through my red haze of fury. Levi’s right. We’ve got to go about this with caution. First, we have to decide what to do about Olivia. She’s our number one priority.

  “Do you think we keep this from her? She’s not techy, so I doubt she’s going to see this shit.”

  “We could wait for her to bring it up,” my twin concedes. “But she could keep her mouth shut to protect us like how she’s been avoiding us since Saturday because she knows our control is thin.”

  “Good point.” I look at my watch. “Let’s go fix this little problem and collect our girl for dinner.”

  “This is not how I wanted to spend her birthday.” Levi’s getting mad. It cheers me up considerably.

  “D-day starts in eight hours. We’ve got plenty of time.” I propel my brother out the door.

  On the way over to the frat house, I give Sandro a call. He’s got a pirated feed of the campus security cameras. “Dude. Can you tell me the make and model of this assfuck?” I send a screenshot from the Snap story. A guy’s never very far from his car.

  “Yeah. Give me five.”

  “You have three. I’m almost to Greek Row.”

  Keys click at a furious pace and then a “gotcha, motherfucker.”

  “Typical. Silver Beemer parked behind his house. There are three of them there. His has the Illinois license plate with the vanity plate that says “BEARFCKR.”

  “For real?”

  “Not even lying.”

  I relay this news to Levi, who rolls his eyes so hard I fear they’re going to fall out the back of his head. He swings a hard right, goes down a third of a mile and finds the alley entrance behind the frat house. It takes only a couple minutes to get what we need from the Beemer. I tuck it under my arm and get back in the car.

  “Ready when you are.”

  Levi swings around and drives right up on the frat house lawn.

  Some pink-eared freshman comes running out. “Hey, you can’t do that.”

  Levi slams out of the car, straightening to a full six foot five inches and peers down at the kid. “Who’s going to stop me?”

  The kid stumbles back. “Um, ah, I don’t—you should—”

  “Invite me in,” Levi says.

  I join him and glare at the hapless boy who grows whiter than a sheet of paper at the two of us. “You heard the man. Invite us inside.”

  “Um, d-d-do you want to come in?”

  “Can’t say that I do, but I will anyway,” Levi answers and bounds up the stairs.

  He busts open the door and starts going through rooms, looking for our prey. There are yelps of alarm and some whiney cries of “you can’t do that!” which we both ignore. We finally find our prey on the second floor, with a joint at his mouth.

  He blinks owlishly at us. “What the fuck, man?”

  “Come with us,” I order.

  The frat boy frowns and his hair flops over his forehead as he bends down to stub out his joint. “Breaking and entering is illegal, you know.”

  He sounds like an entitled prick. I crack my knuckles and smile. This is going to be more fun than I anticipated. Nothing better than seeing some smug asshole go down.

  “We were invited in, weren’t we, Levi?”

  “We sure were, Zeke. And they told us to take out the trash before we left, didn’t they?”

  “I’m sure they’d appreciate it if we did.”

  The kid’s reflexes are slow. Maybe if he hadn’t smoked the weed, he would’ve been able to avoid us. I doubt it. He looks soft around the middle. He’s probably lived off Daddy’s money so long that he wouldn’t know how to defend himself even if he’d been sober for a week.

  Levi leaps over the coffee table in one athletic stride, grabs the collar of the frat boy’s white polo and drags him forward. A couple of Frat Boy’s friends try to stop Levi, but my brother shakes them off easily as if they were flies on a watermelon.

 
; Frat Boy grabs at Levi’s hand, but is no match for my brother. “Fuck off, man. You’re hurting me.”

  Levi marches forward, his grip relentless. I give the boys in the room a jaunty salute and follow my brother and the trash heap that is the frat boy out of the room and down the stairs.

  Frat Boy’s knees bump against the treads and he howls in pain.

  “It’d be easier if you just cooperate,” I suggest. This kid’s got a low pain threshold if a few knee bruises are causing him to cry like a bear who got his paw caught in a trap.

  “I don’t even know what I did—ow! Goddammit. That’s my hair you’re tearing out!”

  “Levi doesn’t think much of your answer. Maybe you should try again,” I suggest.

  “Okay. Fine. So maybe I teased your girl a little. There’s no harm. I was just trying to be friendly—fucccccccckkkkkk!” He screeches.

  “Levi hated that answer.” I find the basement door in the kitchen and kick it open. No one tries to stop us. Levi takes the stairs two at a time. The frat boy tries to keep up, but has a hard time keeping his balance. He falls on his face the minute that Levi lets him go.

  I set up the car battery that I took from the frat boy’s car along with his jumper cables.

  “What the fuck is that?”

  “Your car battery,” I tell him while Levi grabs a chair. Down here in the basement where they do their dirty little rituals, there won’t be cell service. He won’t be able to call out and no one will be recording this—at least not without our permission.

  “Wh-what are you going to do with that?” He’s nearly pissing his pants in fear.

  “What do you think?” I open and shut the clamps a couple of times. “I’m going to attach these to your balls until you can’t use your dick anymore. Because here’s the thing, asswipe. You assaulted our girl in public while people had their cameras out. That tells me that when the cameras are off, you’re doing even worse things. Some people shouldn’t have working dicks. You’re one of them.”

  He starts crying—hard crying with snot coming out of his nose. “Why? I was just joking. It was just a joke! No one got hurt.”

  “Disgusting,” Levi mutters and throws the chair down. “Take your punishment like a man.”

  “I-I’m sorry.” The frat boy eyes the clamps in fear. “I’ll call her and apologize.”

  “You think you’re going to be allowed to talk to her?” I shake my head. “No, my dumb friend, you’re not even going to breathe the same air as her. After we fry your balls, you will call the administrator and tell them you’re dropping out. There are good schools in Alaska.”

  Levi pushes the frat boy into the chair.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” the stupid idiot asks as if I didn’t just spell it out.

  “I’m telling you that you aren’t going to be around our girl ever again.”

  “You can’t do that. Don’t you know who I am? This is my school.” He tries to stand up. Levi shoves him back down and gets about two inches from the ol’ boy’s face.

  “Nah. Not anymore. It’s our school now. We make the rules. Rule number one: Olivia Moore is untouchable. Rule number two: so are the rest of the girls. Rule number three: you don’t even go here anymore.”

  My twin wraps the bungee cord around Frat Boy’s arms and I move forward with the clamps. The sound of pissing fills the air followed by the redolent smell of urine.

  “Fuck, man!” Levi yelps and jumps out of the way.

  “Water conducts electricity better than cotton,” I say and apply the clamps.

  Frat Boy’s screams are louder than I expect. I give Levi a nod. “You ready?”

  He pulls out his phone. “Yeah. Looks like we have seven hours until D-day.”

  I smile. “Plenty of time to take care of the girl who filmed it.”

  “Let’s go.”

  14

  Olivia

  “I think I ate too much cheese.” I hold my stomach, not sure where I came up with the idea to ask for triple the cheese when we ordered a pizza to our room. I should have known better when they asked me to repeat what I said. It sounded like a good idea at the time. “I’ll never move again,” I groan. I have never been more thankful for elastic and lycra as I am in this moment.

  Erika picks up another slice, shrugging and taking a bite, not fazed by the greasy cheese in the least. “I should hate you,” I tell her. She eats double what I do, and I don’t know how it fits inside of her. “Where does it go?” Erika laughs at my comment like I’m joking. I’m not. I really want to know where it goes. I think she could out-eat Levi and Zeke. Why do I have the urge to now test this theory?

  Thinking of the twins has me glancing to my phone on my desk, well out of reach. Luckily I can’t move, so I can’t stalk them or wonder why they have been so quiet. I’m trying to stay away from them so I don't torture them anymore. I’ve been unable to help myself when I’m around them lately. I turn into Hormone Central when they’re near me. I’m so desperate for them to touch me that staying away from them seems like the only option. We all need to cool off a bit.

  My body aches for them and the absence is causing that ache to intensify by the second. There’s no winning at this point. I just have to keep reminding myself that it’s only a matter of time. They’re hurting just as much as I am. The minutes are longer than ever at this point, which is why I’ve stayed away, but it won’t be for much longer. Tonight is my birthday and then, all bets are off.

  “So I know we are avoiding your men, but if I know things, do I tell you?” My head jerks away from the clock, which I swear hasn't moved, to look at Erika. Her tone puts me on edge.

  “Oh god. Did they find out? Are they in jail?” I sit up. Panic starts to take hold of my body.

  “No, they aren't in jail.” She looks away from me and makes it sound as though they are somewhere worse than jail.

  “Erika!” I yell. “Tell me.”

  She releases her lip from between her teeth. “They were seen going into Hope’s room over at the Alpha Gamma sorority house.” She can’t get the words out quick enough.

  “Really?” I stare at her. She nods.

  “Yeah, I mean—”

  I jump up, cutting her off. “This is our chance! Get your shoes,” I tell her, running over to slide mine on. I have to hurry or we will miss this golden opportunity. I almost fall over as I try to get the sneakers on without taking the time to untie them.

  “Are we going over there to confront them?” She hops up from the bed and puts her hands on her hips. She no longer looks half-sick like she did a moment ago. She looks pissed and ready for battle. It’s the same expression she wore when she took down Surfer Boy hours ago. The look that indicates she’s at the last of her patience and if you step in her path she’s going to destroy you. I like this look on Erika. It’s nice to know she has this feisty side.

  “No, I don’t want to see that bitch. She’s on my shit list.” I look through my clothes and find a black shirt to pull over my baby tee. It’s still light outside, but I feel like we need to be in black for our mission.

  “List?” Erika’s eyebrows scrunch together in confusion. “You have a list?” she asks. “Who is on this list.”

  “You need a black shirt,” I tell her. I point towards her clothes. “We’ll talk about the list later. We only have so much time,” I quickly add.

  She looks at me as though I’ve grown a second head.

  “We can get my clothes back!” I shout. “They’re not home! This is our chance!” They’d promised they would give them back to me, but they haven’t returned one single piece yet. They probably believe I’ve forgotten, but I haven’t. I need those clothes to seduce them if things don’t go as I plan tonight.

  Erika’s mouth parts, but no sound comes out for a moment.

  “But your boyfriends are over in Hope’s room,” she repeats.

  I wave my hand at her dismissively. It’s starting to look like Bitchface did me a favor. She has created a
n opportunity for me to get my shit back. This doesn’t get her off the list though. I have a feeling that she’ll be on there forever. She’s earned the number one spot and I can’t see anyone taking her place in the near future.

  “Like I said, she’s on the list. I don’t give a flip what they say to her.” I don’t. The Audley twins’ wrath is one you never want coming your way. If they went looking for her, that means they know what she said to me. That’s the only reason my men would be in a sorority house. If I were pledging a house they might enter one, but I doubt that would ever happen. They would probably come and get me as soon as I tried to join or do something crazy like make a big donation so that the sorority wouldn’t let me join.

  They’re already don’t want me in the dorm where they have fairly easy access. In a house where there are all those girls and all those rules? I can just imagine the twins camped outside on the front lawn. They would be harassing every person that tried to come in. I have to fight a smile thinking about it. They’re so over the top, but they’re mine.

  “We have to leave!” I tell Erika. We are wasting too much time standing around. I reach to get my things together. I make sure to leave my purse and phone in the room just in case the twins check my location. Erika follows behind me. She’s still looking at me like I’m half crazed.

  “We need a name for our mission,” I tell Erika as I pick up the pace.

  “Yeah, Operation You’re Crazy Pants,” she mutters, jogging to catch up.

  “Oh, we’re getting more then my pants back.” I smirk, making her laugh.

  I pick up my speed even more. I’m half running now, heading towards their place. I’ve never been there, but I know what it looks like from pictures they have sent me. I may have also mapped it a few hundred times.

  “You’re awfully fast for someone who claimed they’d never move again.” I’m getting winded, but Erika doesn’t seem the least bit winded as she says the words. When we arrive at a condo building, I’m out of breath.