The Proxy: A Reverse Harem Bully Romance (The Thorns of Rosewood Book 2)

by Cassie James

  “Just…” Macie pauses for a second, like she’s really thinking about what she’s going to say, weighing the pros and cons of her statement before she makes it. “Ugh. Just don’t let them get to you, Pipes. I know you’ve got to be really going through it right now, trying to figure out who you are in the middle of all this shit, but… I don’t know. You were so much better than that self-centered mean girl I met sophomore year. Don’t let them turn you into her again—I promise it’s not who you are.”

  “I won’t, Mace. I promise.” She offers me a tight grin, and as I move away from the door, letting her slip out ahead of me, hope blossoms in my chest. I definitely don’t have shit figured out at all, but I feel like I’m moving in the right direction. Having one person that I know is unequivocally in my corner eases some of the tightness in my chest. Still, there’s a lingering fear that settles over me like a dark cloud; I hope I don’t let Macie down while I’m on this strange pilgrimage of self-discovery.

  The rest of the school day passes in a relative blur. The students at Rosewood are noticeably chilly, which is probably for the best since it means they mostly end up ignoring me. The worst was the whispering. “Thorns’ Whore.” I grit my teeth and bear it all day. It’s hardly fair they’re calling me that even when I keep my distance from The Thorns the whole day, even going so far as to pretend not to notice when they try to get my attention in class and in the hallways. I’m not ready to deal one-on-one with Jude or Brennan yet.

  When it’s all finally over, I go out to Tyler’s car to wait for him. I sit on the edge of the hood and drop my bag next to me, digging out my phone so I have something to focus on. I can feel people staring at me, but I don’t turn my face up at them—I don’t want them to think I give a shit. I’m just losing myself in that goddamn email again—which I still haven’t figured out how to talk to Brennan about—when I hear the clacking of heels drawing close.

  I look up just as Tori draws to a stop a few feet away, malice shining in her eyes. It’s uncanny, really, how quickly people catch the scent of drama in the air at Rosewood. Tori hasn’t even opened her mouth before a crowd is drawing closer, circling around Tyler’s car as I slide from the hood with a long-suffering sigh.

  Tori doesn’t say anything right away, which surprises me. She’s never been one to think before opening her mouth.

  “What?” I bite out as she crosses her arms over her chest and squares her shoulders. Her expression hardens, and it’s clear she’s preparing herself for what I’m sure she assumes is going to be a drawn out fight. Think again, Victoria.

  I lean casually back against the car, careful to look as unaffected by her as possible. This is the same girl who tricked me into trusting her and then attacked me in the courtyard, tearing my shirt and exposing me to an entire crowd. If she’s gearing up for a fight, I’ll fucking slaughter her. Every mention of her name in my log was a betrayal, one that I can’t allow even if this replacement version of me isn’t exactly The Rose that Piper once was.

  “I’m sorry, did you need something?” I ask as a ripple of hushed chatter breaks through the wave of students crowding in around us. Her eyes flash. “Because you just standing here staring at me is starting to get just a little creepy.”

  “I cannot believe,” her voice drips with pure hatred, “that you had the nerve to show back up here.”

  “To Rosewood?” I scoff. A hush falls over the crowd, and you could hear a pin drop for how quiet everything goes as we stare one another down. “Rosewood belongs to me.” My words only make her more furious.

  Her voice goes high-pitched as she hisses, “Have we not made it clear enough that we don’t want you here, Silicunt?” Nervous laughter spreads through the crowd. “You really think anyone wants to deal with The Thorns’ sex doll walking around school as if she’s one of us?”

  “Ugh,” I say as I lift my nails to study them instead of making eye contact with her. I’m burning up inside, so desperate to step forward and show her that I can hurt her worse than she can hurt me, but I force myself to maintain the air of cool indifference. Deep down, I just know this will bother her more than putting my hands on her would. “How much longer do you plan to throw this little hissy fit, Victoria? At some point, things would be much easier if you’d just accept that I’m not going anywhere.”

  “We don’t want you here!” She stomps her foot, her eyes taking on that same crazy quality I’m getting used to seeing on Mom’s face. Her cheeks flush with anger. It’s obvious she thought it would be a lot easier to come at me. She got too used to 2.0—she wasn’t ready for me.

  “Here’s the thing.” I take a few steps closer as the crowd tightens around us, all of them holding their breaths while they wait to see if this is going to turn into a full-blown girl fight. “You keep saying no one wants me here.” I pointedly look around us. “But no one else has said a word.”

  I spin in a slow circle, making eye contact with several people as I do so. Several pairs of eyes avert away from my gaze, and while there’s another ripple of hushed conversation, no one speaks up. Just like I thought. Tori isn’t speaking for the whole of them. They might be content to ignore me or talk behind my back—but none of them have a problem with me as big as Tori is trying to make it out to be.

  Tori makes a strangled sound. “All you are is a shitty replacement for a dead girl that no one misses!” An awkward stillness falls around us as her words sink in. I’m sure she expected the words to hurt me, but they don’t. Of course I’m a shitty replacement for the original Piper. You can’t replace someone using social media and questionnaires and expect them to be all that accurate. The very idea of that is flawed. I’m not really meant to be the perfect replacement, I’ve already realized, I’m only meant to comfort people who can never actually get back what they lost.

  Chelsey appears, looking around with big eyes like she isn’t sure what she missed. She’s loyal to the wrong person. She settles by Tori’s side, prepared to offer a united front even though Tori’s never treated her much better than a pet. I ignore the girl, not wanting to drag her any further into the mess than she has to be. No, this showdown is mine and Tori’s alone.

  “What scares you most about me?” I taunt Tori. She doesn’t answer—not that I thought she would. “Are you afraid that I’ll steal The Thorns from you? Well, guess what? They were never really yours in the first place. And it’s not like I want The Roses back, now that you’ve tarnished the name and everything The Roses stood for. Then there’s your new role as the biggest bitch at Rosewood, but I don’t want that either. Or have you still not realized that no one actually likes the head bitch stomping around like everyone else is scum on the bottom of her shoe?”

  From the looks on other people’s face, I’ve really hit the nail on the head with that statement. People are tired of Tori Pruitt already. I’m not surprised.

  “Fuck you, Silicunt,” Tori spits out, but there’s doubt in her eyes now.

  I raise my voice so that everyone will hear this next part. “You can keep coming after me, day in and day out, trying to tear me down and run me off, but you’re not going to win, Victoria. I may not be the mean girl you remember, but I’m not going to sit back and let you treat me, or anyone else here, like less than we are. There’s a difference between being liked and being feared—and guess which one always wins people’s loyalty in the long run?”

  I turn my back on her as she splutters, making my way back to the hood of Tyler’s car as the crowd shifts uneasily around us, as if they have no idea what the fuck just happened. I stood up for myself, now hopefully everyone else around here will follow suit.

  My attention falls back to my phone as Tori, embarrassed by my brush off, turns and flees the crowd, Chelsey not far behind her. The crowd slowly starts to disperse, people chancing quick looks at me since they don’t realize I can still see them. Most of the crowd has lightened up by the time I see The Thorns pushing their way toward the car.

  “What happened? Is everything
okay?” Brennan sounds downright panicked.

  All I offer is a shrug and a smile, still not entirely positive I can trust any one of them to have my best interests at heart. Not when two of them left me vulnerable after the most intimate moments of my life and the other shared my most humiliating thoughts with the world. “Ready to go?” I ask Tyler as the rest of the crowd hightails it out of there. I slide off the hood of his car and around to the passenger side door. I hear the lock disengage, and I slide into the seat without ever looking back at any of them.

  8

  Piper

  Tyler’s polite but distant on the ride to school the next day, treating me with the same quiet disregard that I treated him with on the ride home yesterday. The silence is unexpected, though not altogether uncomfortable, and I catch myself staring at him as we make the drive to Rosewood. Something about the way he carries himself with me is different from the way he seemed to carry himself with Original Piper. He’s guarded, and I can’t tell if it’s for his benefit or mine.

  He’s not like I thought he would be based on my log, either. That Tyler seemed distant, like he wanted nothing at all to do with his dead girlfriend’s replacement. That Tyler wouldn’t be picking her up for school with a gentle reminder that he has soccer practice. “You know, in case you want to try to find another ride home—but it’s okay if you want to wait for me, too.”

  Fucking weird. I’m still thinking about it later as I sit in English, barely paying attention as our teacher tries to explain the intricacies of Macbeth. It’s not the only weird thing about today, either. If people were mostly ignoring me yesterday, they’re sure as hell making up for it today. Even now, the girl next to me is blatantly staring.

  I offer her a healthy dose of side-eye before turning my focus back to the droning teacher at the front of the room. But even as I try my damnedest to pay attention, I can feel the weight of her stare boring into me. “What?” I hiss as I turn back to her. Her eyes go wide, and she pulls back a little, but I continue regardless, fed up with the unwarranted attention. “Why are you staring at me?”

  “Piper, is there something you wish to share with the class?” My face burns when I realize that my outburst was louder than I intended and now every eye in the classroom is on me. I shake my head no as a blush flares hot over my face. “Then it would do you well to pay attention.”

  When class is over, I waste no time following the girl out into the hall. I dodge around a rowdy group of guys, trying not to lose her in the crowd since I have no idea who the fuck she actually is. I breathe a sigh of relief when she pauses at a bank of lockers and drops her bag to the ground.

  “Hey!” I call out to her and she startles. As I get closer, I can see that her hands are shaking as she reaches up to tuck her hair behind one ear. My stomach tightens. I don’t have anything in me that suggests I know this girl, but it’s obvious my presence is making her seriously nervous. Jesus, Piper, what did you do to this girl?

  “I wanted to say sorry for snapping at you in class.” I explain, and her mouth falls open. I try not to grimace at her surprise. How terrible was Piper really to these people for this to be someone’s reaction to a simple apology?

  “Uhm…” Now I’m nervous, too, and I can’t seem to get the message from my brain to my mouth to just stop talking. “Yeah, I’m just… Today’s been super fucking weird. Yesterday, people seemed to barely want to look my direction. But today? People are looking at me, all curious and shit. It’s the way I would’ve thought they would’ve been looking at me when I first showed up. Do you—uh—know what’s going on?”

  “Oh,” she squeaks out. “I shouldn’t have been staring in English. That was totally weird.” I shrug. It’s only as weird as everything else that’s going on today. “I didn’t realize how much you’re not her.”

  I quirk an eyebrow. “Her?”

  She twists her hands together, and it seems like she’s forcing herself to look me in the eye as she answers. “Piper,” she whispers, her voice a cross between reverent and disgusted. If I didn’t have an inkling of how shitty the old Piper was before, I have a pretty good idea now. I don’t manage to get a word out before she continues on earnestly. “It’s just, no one’s ever seen anything like yesterday. Someone standing up to Tori like that.”

  There’s a difference between being liked and being feared. I wasn’t joking when I’d said the words to Tori. And Piper—the original—was no better. More tactful, maybe, and without the need for an audience that Tori seems to have, but still mean and shrewd enough to earn the fear of her peers. No love. No respect. I might not personally need or want validation from anyone at Rosewood, but I know I don’t want to be that person, either.

  “No one was glad Piper died, but it felt like a relief for a little bit not to have her forcing us to fall in line all the time.” She takes a deep breath, her eyes apologetic like she feels horrible saying these words. But I’m glad she’s being honest; I’m glad she feels like she can be. “When you came back, at first, we thought it was going to start all over again. But you’re different. Quieter. Not such a…”

  “Bitch?” I supply for her.

  She cracks a little bit of a smile. “So, that’s why people are paying you so much attention. When you handled Tori like such a badass yesterday, a lot of us started to realize we weren’t giving you a fair chance.” She pauses then adds, “Sorry again about staring.”

  She gathers up her books and says goodbye with a quick smile before scampering away. I can only imagine how she must be feeling, putting all that out in the open after spending a lifetime afraid of the girl I’m the spitting image of. It was brave, and belatedly I realize I should have gotten her name. The students at Rosewood might not have given me a fair chance—but maybe I hadn’t given them one, either.

  The bell rings, and I head off to Humanities feeling lighter than I have since waking up. I slide into my seat, tensing back up as The Thorns make their way into the room.

  There’s serious tension just below the surface, a kind that I’m not sure I would notice if I didn’t have so many years worth of data on them stored on my server. They joke and laugh as they cross the room and claim their spot in the very back corner, but Jude’s shoulders are as tense as I’ve ever seen them, and Tyler’s smile doesn’t come anywhere close to reaching his eyes.

  Brennan glances in my direction, looking at me fully for the first time since I came back. His eyes look so dead, and I frown. He snaps his eyes away from mine with a tight frown of his own. Before I focus back on the front of the classroom, Jude catches my eye. I expect him to be an asshole, but he doesn’t so much as smirk. He stares at me for a minute and then lowers his gaze to the desk. That’s fucking weird. As far as I know, I’ve never seen Jude be anything but 100% confident.

  I drag my attention away from them. They don’t deserve my attention. Not after the shit they put me through. And I need to remember that.

  Dr. Charles asks me to stay behind after class. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I saw in my logs where he embarrassed me, basically insulting my ability to keep up with my coursework. “Miss Hawthorne,” he says as I approach his desk, “I’d like to speak to you for a moment about your progress in my course.”

  “Of course, sir.” My smile is as fake as the cheerful tone I use when addressing him. The very last thing I want is my failures to be paraded in front of other people again, but I refuse to give anyone the satisfaction of knowing that I’m bothered. It’s bad enough they’ve all read my inner thoughts from the last time this happened. I can feel someone behind me, and I wish they would just go. I’d much prefer to be insulted alone than in front of an audience.

  When the other person’s presence doesn’t disappear on my silent command, I glance behind me. To my surprise, it’s Brennan standing there. I furrow my brows as he stands there—unmoving and not making eye contact. I turn back to Dr. Charles, resigned to Brennan witnessing whatever is about to happen.

  The man’s tone is begrudging a
t best when he speaks. “Your coursework has improved drastically since we last spoke about your performance. The initial improvement was so dramatic that I considered the possibility that you were copying your work from one of your peers.”

  Even though I can’t technically prove that I wasn’t cheating, my mouth still falls open in protest as I bristle at his callous words. The thought of not doing my own work strikes me as wrong immediately—I’m too prideful, in all of my iterations, to not succeed by my own volition. There’s no question that cheating is something that Piper would never have done. And though I may not know much about 2.0, I’m pretty goddamn positive she wouldn’t either. Dr. Charles holds his hand up to stop my protests before they even begin.

  “I shared my concerns with my colleagues, and Ms. Diaz was quite fast to come to your defense, informing me you’d taken my suggestion of getting a tutor seriously. I asked Mr. Diaz-Baker to stay behind today so I could congratulate you both in person.”

  Uh… what? There wasn’t anything about tutoring in my logs. Dr. Charles motions Brennan forward, and my heart kicks up a notch as he shuffles forward to stand next to me, the scent of his subtle cologne filling my nostrils as he does so. My palms are sticky with sweat, prompting me to run them over the front of my skirt as I studiously ignore Brennan’s presence right beside me.

  “Whatever method you’ve used to study seems to have helped tremendously, Miss Hawthorne, Mr. Diaz-Baker. And in the spirit of rewarding you for the effort you’ve shown, I’d like to offer you an extra credit opportunity to help raise your grade back to an acceptable level.”

  “Okay.” I nod, even though I’m already pretty sure I’m about to regret it.

  “The caveat, of course, being that Mr. Diaz-Baker partners with you for this project. To ensure your progress.” My mouth falls open, and I’m sure Brennan’s going to protest as well. But he’s quiet as I splutter. Dr. Charles shoots me one last sharp glance before saying, “It would be foolish of you to refuse this offer, Miss Hawthorne, as you won’t receive another. I will provide you with a rubric tomorrow.”