Vihaan snorted. “Please tell me you didn’t spend your lunch period, researching bullies in the computer lab.”
“How else was I supposed to spend it?” Lena asked. “I’m honest to God worried about you.”
Vihaan shook his head. “It was probably a onetime thing. He doesn’t look like any of the bullies back in middle school. And at least he asked if I was a fag. Didn’t just assume it like Con and the other Sticks. That means it’s working. We’re working.”
His words paused Lena’s argument. Vihaan was right. The boy who slammed her best friend against the lockers sure didn’t look like any of the bullies she’d seen in action back when she met Vihaan at Dorchester Middle.
This bully wasn’t bulky and beefy, but cut and broad shouldered in a way that made his uniform strain against his flexed back. His eyes hadn’t been set in a perma-glare like the world owed him something for giving him a too big body and too big emotions at the same time. And he also hadn’t been poorly groomed.
No, he’d struck her as handsome, actually. Even when he had Vihaan pinned against the lockers. Clean cut and sharp jawed, with hair that somehow managed to look soft and perfectly gelled at the same time. For a moment she’d gotten lost in that profile. If he looked this good from the side, what he would look like from the front?
She’s soon found out when he’d shifted his violent gaze from Vihaan to her.
Had she thought him handsome? Upgrade that to hot. Insanely hot. Forget his muscular body, or the fact that he stood so tall, she barely reached his shoulder. His face alone made his school uniform look like something being modeled in a catalog for rich people who only liked to look at beautiful things. He was so hot he sucked all the oxygen out of the air and made it hard to breathe. To see even.
She had been pretty sure there was still a school and a hallway jam-packed with rich kids doing exactly nothing to help Vihaan. But for moments on end, all she could do was fall into his intense green eyes.
“Lena? Lena? Are you listening to me?”
She snapped out of her memory daze to find Vihaan flapping her arm over their held hands, his expression set to what the hell?
“Sorry,” she said, shoving that first look memory down into the cellar of her mind where it belonged. “I was just thinking about this one Psychology Now article I read about a bully who escalated from taking lunch money to sexually assaulting a boy in the showers. Sadly, the victim never reported what happened to anyone, so now after years and years of therapy he’s finally figuring out how to live with the trauma. What were you saying?”
Vihaan shot her an annoyed look. “It’s not like the school would do anything about it anyway. He’s a Stick. He could murder me in the hallway, and the principal would probably cover it up as long as we were able to win the New England championship this year.”
Vihaan had a point. The Sticks were considered gods at Boston Glenn. And even worse, according to the rumor mill, Keane had been poached from Beaumont Academy, the prep school who had won the state championship last year, so he probably thought he had a permanent ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card to carry around in his uniform pocket. She wanted to believe Keane wouldn’t get away with murder, but Vihaan’s lunch money…well, yeah, her friend might be right about that.
But she couldn’t stop fretting over the problem as they got off the T still holding hands and started the twenty-five-minute walk to Vihaan’s house. “There’s got to be something we can do to stop this Masshole from ruining your last two years at Boston Glenn.”
“Stop, Lena,” Vihaan begged. “If he comes after me again, I’m just going to give him my lunch money.”
“No, no, it’s not right. Your mom works two jobs. That Southie doesn’t deserve that money. I don’t care how well he hits a ball.”
“Puck, and how do you know he’s a Southie?”
Lena cut him a frank look. “I know you only moved to America three years ago, but you have got to start learning to tell us Bostonians apart. If they sound like they’re about to hawk a spit wad and tell you to go fuck yourself at the same time, then they’re from one of the Irish sections of South Boston, okay?”
“This is somehow oddly specific and hopelessly confusing at the same time,” Vihaan told her. He dropped her hand since they were getting close to his house. “Besides, it doesn’t matter either way. Sticks get what they want. Whatever they want. Everyone knows this.”
Lena sank into miserable silence. Hating that Vihaan was right.
“Don’t pout,” Vihaan said, when they reached the three decker where he lived in a third floor apartment with his mother and brother. “Besides Keane is so hot, I find myself wishing I could afford to board at Boston Glenn, so that he might find me in the shower and assault me. In fact, I think I will fantasize about this tonight.”
Lena scrunched her face at him. “So politically incorrect, Vi. And way to make me feel good about bearding for you.”
“Yes, I am a horrible fake boyfriend,” Vihaan agreed with an easy grin. “So you can cease worrying about me.”
Lena knew what he was trying to do, but… “It’s not a joke.”
Vihaan sighed, his expression turning serious. “I know. So just let me pay him. It will be all right. I promise.”
“Will it, though?” Lena asked, her voice cracking with worry.
“Hey, Lena, do you need me to walk you to your father today?” a voice called down before Vihaan could answer.
Lena raised her eyes to see Rohan, Vihaan’s older brother, leaning out of one of their front windows.
Their mom maintained very strict rules about them inviting girls into the house, so she’d never stepped foot in her best friend’s apartment. But his older brother, Rohan, always offered to escort her the rest of the way to her dad’s store, which was about another twenty-minute walk from their three-decker.
Technically, Lena shouldn’t have attended middle school in Dorchester, but her dad had transferred her there, using the store’s address for seventh grade. He’d betted that her superior grades would stand out here more than in their fast-gentrifying Upper Roxbury home district and he’d been right. Both Vihaan and Lena had tested into Boston Glenn and received full merit scholarships.
Rohan had thanked her profusely for setting a good example and helping his little brother achieve during his first years in America, and he’d been walking Lena to her father’s convenience store ever since she started at Boston Glenn.
Usually she took him up on his offer in the colder months, when the sun set early, but it was still bright out. So she waved up and said, “No, that’s okay. See you tomorrow.”
Lena kept her voice light, but as soon as Rohan disappeared back through the window, she returned her worried attention to Vihaan. “Maybe you should tell your brother. He might have some ideas about how to help you.”
Vihaan started shaking his head before Lena was even finished with her suggestion. “He is very stressed about his sophomore year in university. All he does is go to class and study. He does not need this additional stressor.”
Her heart sank a little. “But—”
“Let it go, Lena.” Vihaan said. Then he turned to walk away before she could protest any further.
Lena plodded the rest of the way to her dad’s convenience store, still fretting over what had happened with the new school bully.
“Were you given much homework then?” Dad asked when she walked into the EasyStop.
Lena couldn’t figure out how he’d managed to clock her glum expression. He was sitting behind the bulletproof counter, just like he’d been since 12am, his suspicious eyes glued to the four-camera security monitor he’d mounted next to the counter.
She glanced at the security camera. There were only a few customers in the store. Two teenage girls in the candy aisle and a large black man in a Dickies workman jacket, studying the beer, like his choice would determine whether the Boston Revolutions won or lost their basketball game tonight.
The man’s relaxed sh
oulders told Lena he wasn’t any threat. But the girls…they were whispering and pointing.
“Hold on,” she said and went over to stand at the end of the aisle.
Sure enough, the girls abruptly stopped whispering. Lena lingered, pretending to have a hard time choosing between the old-fashion Hubba Bubba and one of the new-fangled, way more expensive Big E-Paks of Eclipse gum they’d recently started carrying. And a few minutes into their can’t decide standoff, the girls made a hasty beeline for the door.
When she went back up to the front of the store, her father gave her a quick, tired smile before returning his suspicious eyes back to the security monitor. “You are good at spotting these criminals. I think this skill will help you very much when you become a doctor. You will know when someone is truly in need of medicine or trying to scam the system. There are so many of those these days. I saw it on an episode of Boston Hope.”
Lena rarely received compliments from her father, and they usually lit her up. However, the way her stomach knotted every time she thought of spending the rest of her life in a hospital, like the doctors on Boston Hope, made it hard to enjoy this bit of praise.
But her father had dropped out of medical school to raise her alone after her mother had died in childbirth, she reminded herself. The least she could do after all he’d sacrificed for her was make the dream he’d had to give up for himself finally come true.
“Where is Rohan?” he asked, drawing her away from her guilty thoughts. Usually he stopped in and exchanged a few words with her Dad in Punjabi.
“It’s still light out, so I told him I could walk here alone.”
Dad finally tore his eyes away from the security monitor. “You should let him escort you, even when it’s light out. His walking you here is a good way to show he is needed. Indian men are not like Americans. We appreciate smart females. But we don’t like too much independence. Also this is a way for you two to spend time together—and before you go saying something like, ‘Eww, Abba, he is four years older than me!’ Let me remind you these few years will not matter at all when you reach university age. Also, you must start your campaign to earn a proposal from him early, as his mother will be a hard sell. It will take time to work your way into her good graces.”
Lena could have pointed out that Vihaan’s and Rohan’s mother held down two jobs and was never home anyway. And even if she worked a nine-to-five, she was probably hoping for a nice Indian girl for both of her boys. A nice full-Indian girl like the ones Rohan was probably currently meeting at college, not a half-black one like her.
But she already knew what her father would say. He had a long-range plan. This was why he favored Rohan over Vihaan for her. Vihaan was bright and bubbly when he wasn’t getting picked on by bullies—it would be easy for him to net a nice girl her dad had declared. But Rohan was too studious and conscientious to attract the attentions of a normal Indian girl. He had every faith that his mother would become increasingly desperate and eventually decide to accept a half-Indian daughter into her home.
Lena loved her dad and couldn’t be more grateful for him. Just the fact that they were standing in a convenience store he was way too overqualified to run showed how much he loved her, how much he had sacrificed. But he had a plan for everything, and sometimes it felt like she’d never be able to execute all of them. Never be able to make him happy the way a full Indian daughter would have. And deep inside that knowledge hurt.
“I don’t have too much homework today,” she said, changing the subject. “You should go upstairs and take a nap.”
Even when she had a lot of homework, Lena never admitted that she did. What she’d referred to as a nap was technically the only sleep her father got on weekday school nights, since he refused to hire an assistant clerk with money that would be better invested in her college fund.
He must have been tired, because he didn’t give any protest. Instead he tapped a finger on a thick envelope and said, “The Irish will be by tonight. This is for them.”
Lena simply nodded, though the sight of the envelope filled her with disgust. This was another reason she didn’t love Southies. Her father had been paying bogus protection money to them since he saved up enough to buy the original owner out of the store.
She continued to scowl at the envelope, even as she pulled out the stack of books and plays she’d borrowed from the school library after receiving her AP English syllabus. They hadn’t been assigned any homework on the first day of school, but in her experience, it always paid to get a jumpstart on all required reading, especially the Shakespeare.
She rang up a few sales and started perusing As You Like It, scanning down often to the translation notes at the bottom. But it was slow going. She kept on thinking about what had happened with Vihaan that morning. And that unexpected zap of…something she didn’t quite understand when the bully had hit her with his green gaze.
“Think that envelope belongs to me.”
She looked up to see a hulking Southie. Now this guy looked like a bully. He had a weird combination of big muscles and an even bigger beer belly. His ears stuck out and his hair was cut close to the skull. And though he was here to pick up his protection envelope, his mouth sat at a permanent downturn. Like she’d come into his store to extort him out of money he didn’t deserve, not the other way around. But the eyes were the same. Intense, like they could blink to violent any second now.
If he had come into the store as a regular customer, Lena wouldn’t have just gone to stand beside him, she probably would have picked up the landline, and kept her finger hovering over the 9-1-1 speed dial until he left.
But as it was, Lena wordlessly handed over the envelope. Hating that he snatched it from her the same way Keane had snatched that five from Vihaan.
Like it had been his money all along.
This was why she hated Southies, she reminded herself as she watched the Irish mobster swagger out of the store. And this was why she had no business feeling any kind of way about the new bully, much less obsessing over his good looks and the way his eyes had bored into hers. Southies were the worst—
But then her disgusted thoughts suddenly cut off as a new idea began to form. An idea which could solve Vihaan’s bully problem….
When you grow up like Keane did, you put away those superhero comics pretty quick. His suitemate, Con received a whole stack of the damn things on the first day of school from a loving pa back in The Cheese State. But Keane had held up a hand, a wave of disgust rolling through his stomach, when Con offered to let him read Viking Wolf, the first spin-off comic from that Viking Shifter game he and a few of the other guys on the team liked to play after second practice.
He appreciated the offer, but those comics were full of it. Previous to his ascension into fancy muckety-muck schools that gave talented hockey players full rides, he’d learned the hard fucking way that nobody ever showed up to save you when bad shit went down in Southie. You only had two choices in life asshole or get assholed. (And if you didn’t understand asshole as a verb of life, then you had absolutely no chance of making it out of his neighborhood at all.)
Keane hadn’t read a comic since his balls dropped.
So, it was surprising to find himself reading one when Lena knocked on his suite door, loud and hard, like she knew what she wanted. “Hello, Keane,” she called on the other side of the wood. “It’s Lena. You there?”
Was he there? Hell yeah, he was. He leaped out of bed, only to freeze at the sight of her when he yanked open the door. She looked different from this morning. The tie was gone and the hip hugging uniform skirt was at least six inches shorter. She’d also unbuttoned her shirt, so low he could see the edges of her bra.
His cock instantly turned to concrete.
He’d been right about her. She had been hiding a fantastic pair of tits under that uniform. But now she stuck them out and said, “I’m here to see what I can do to make you leave my boyfriend alone.”
“That right?” Keane asked, his voice l
ow as his dick pulsed, panting for a taste.
Normally he had a policy about messing with other guy’s girlfriends. It was a hockey thing. Don’t shit where you skate and all that. Bros before hos who could ruin your team’s chance at a championship.
But Band Nerd wasn’t on his team, Keane reminded himself. Also, he didn’t deserve a set of tits like the ones Lena was shoving in his face. Probably didn’t even know what to do with them.
Keane crooked his head to the side, pretending to take her request under serious consideration. “What if I told you to dump that chump and get with a winner.”
She grinned, like he was the coolest bro on the planet. “It depends, are you the winner I’d be getting with?”
“Hell yeah,” he answered with a smirk.
“In that case…”
She stood on her tip toes and leaned forward, pressing her incredible tits into his chest as she grabbed him around the shoulders. Then she…
Shook him hard and yelled, “Wake up, Boston. C’mon, bro, wake up already!”
Keane jerked awake. Con was standing over his bed.
Fuck! It had only been a dream.
“That for me?” Con asked, lifting both his eyebrows.
Keane followed his roommate’s gaze down to the morning wood tenting his sheet. “Fuck no,” he answered, throwing back the cover and hopping out of bed. “I gotta take a shower.” For more reasons than one.
Con just snorted as Keane shoved past him. “Yeah whatever. You don’t have time for a shower. We only got ten til practice.”
“Fuck!” Keane yelled again.
“Yeah, I was surprised to find you still sleeping.”
Keane was surprised, too. He usually got to practice fifteen minutes early. He liked to show coaches why he was always a ten times better pick than any of the entitled rich shits that riddled most hockey teams like a fucking venereal disease.
Ruthless Tycoons: The Complete Series (Ruthless Billionaires Book 3) Page 79
