by L.J. Shen
“Liars. Both of you.” Arabella stretched like a kitten, trying to be sexy.
Soren looked between me and Lenny. They were right. If I had a penny for every time I stood up for someone who’d been bullied at school, I wouldn’t be able to afford a fucking used piece of gum.
So why her? She was the only girl at school not to give me mad respect.
“Oh shit, man. I didn’t know she was your girlfriend.” Soren cupped his mouth, his eyes glittering.
He thought she was my weakness. My Achilles heel. He thought wrong.
“She is not my girlfriend.” I yawned.
But Lenora had the poker face of a tablecloth. She was scarlet red and had her fists curled beside her body. Everything about her screamed rattled.
“I hate him,” she said, losing her footing.
It was annoying, but not unwarranted. I took her internship, manipulated her dad, bled all over her bathroom, and threw garbage at her door. It was only a matter of time until she snapped.
“Why would I ever want to be with someone like him?” Lenora shook her head, oblivious to the audience around us. “I despise him in every single way. He is a monster. A cruel bully. A fuck-up.”
Monster.
Cruel bully.
Fuck-up.
I swallowed, but grinned, cocking my head at Arabella.
See? my humorless smile said. No love lost here.
“Hmm. Still unconvinced. Prove it.” Arabella jutted one hip out, pushing her breasts in my direction, even though we were standing a few feet apart.
“You act like I give a fuck what people think. That is very unbecoming for someone who is not a complete idiot. You know what the word unbecoming means, right, Arabella? And idiot? I’m sure you’re familiar with that word, too.”
Arabella blushed under her five coatings of makeup and insecurities, but didn’t break character. She knew how to fake it—unlike Lenora, who was too real for her own good.
“Why don’t I suck your cock in front of Emma Watson’s Goth twin? Let’s see if you caught feelings. It’s been long overdue, anyway. You did take me on a family vacation, did you not?”
Fucking Indiana.
Everyone in my family was on my case after that. Nobody bought our relationship. They all wondered who I was trying to piss off.
Myself, I wanted to scream. I deserve a piece of shit like Arabella, so that’s who I invited.
Arabella’s lifelong goal was sucking my cock. She put more effort into her cause than most researchers working to cure cancer. Unfortunately, her sheer desire to please me made her a boner-slaughterer of the highest degree. I’d get turned on by a baboon trying to lick its own armpit before considering dipping my dick into her mouth.
But Arabella didn’t only want to suck me off. She also wanted to hurt Lenora, who never bowed down to her Queen B status and had slapped her at her own party.
I happened to have a dog in this fight, too.
Good Girl thought she was too good for me. Maybe she was right, but it was time to teach her a lesson. I was going to take every single thing she loved and cared about. Not because she interested me, of course, but because she was a means to an end. A way to get what I wanted.
Both kisses had been mistakes.
The first one, in the janitor’s room, was to calm her the fuck down and prove a point—that I could have her if I wanted her.
The second one was human error.
I was drunk, busted up like a piñata, and she was there, piecing me back together. Literally. Not metaphorically. I refused to grow a vagina like Knight, who was a total fucking goner for Luna, the girl next (to his) door.
I wasn’t going to make a third mistake, and the sooner Lenora knew that, the less chance I’d have to gain another pathetic stalker.
Plus, it fucked me up to think I hadn’t gone all the way with Alice in the janitor’s room. I always went all the way, and Lenora couldn’t continue screwing shit up for me.
“Spen-cer! Spen-cer! Spen-cer! Spen-cer!” People threw their balled fists in the air, chanting in the circle formed around us.
It was nine o’clock in the morning, and way too goddamn early for anything that wasn’t coffee and a bullet to the head. But Arabella wanted to suck me off, and everybody wanted to see it.
I glanced at Good Girl. Her eyes glittered with rage. She’d never witnessed me getting a blow job. Yet.
Her eyes said, Don’t you dare.
Mine answered, Fuck off.
Students cupped their mouths, barking, howling, snickering between them. It was one last hurrah before I pissed off from this town for good. Why not?
I pushed the tip of my boot toward Arabella.
“Kiss it first.”
This was where it was supposed to end. I didn’t think she’d do it. Arabella had a reputation to uphold. But I’d underestimated how far she would go to hurt Lenora. She strutted her way to me on her studded heels, stopping when we were toe-to-toe. She sank to her knees, placing her glossy lips on the tip of my muddied boot.
Everybody took pictures of that shit. I looked between Lenora and Arabella. There was a story behind this, more than just this BJ.
This wasn’t about riding someone’s dick. No. This was personal.
Revenge.
What did Lenora do to Arabella?
I glanced at Astalis with a smirk. Her expression made me want to throw up, but she said nothing.
Step forward and end this, my eyes challenged her. She looked like fire, radiating heat from across the room with her gaze alone.
But she didn’t move an inch. She just watched and let it happen.
Arabella looked up, grinning at me in triumph.
“Unzip, Spence.” She put her hand to my crotch. I swatted it away.
“If I don’t come, you won’t be able to show your face in this town again,” I warned.
Why the fuck did Lenora pretend to care? She said she’d never be with me, and meant it. But now she looked like she’d kill me if I went through with it. Which, naturally, made me want to do it even more.
“Daddy bought my way into a fancy school already. After that, I’m probably headed to Miami. Cali is so basic these days.”
Everybody laughed. Everybody other than one girl.
“Soren, Hunter, guard for teachers.” Knight sighed, rubbing his eyes tiredly. He always had my back. He shot me a glance, shaking his head. “You’re such an asshole, V. I’m just waiting for a bitch to bring you down. Hopefully she’ll stab your ass in the process.”
“Don’t threaten me with a good time, Cole.” I smirked.
When Arabella’s lips touched my dick, I realized it was real, and it was happening. Fortunately, my cock was hard from the prospect of moving something in the little English Rose’s chest. Her defiance infuriated me. Her rejection angered me. And I still wanted to fuck her up a little before we moved to England, make sure she was sufficiently mortified.
I looked at Lenora with my most unaffected expression, locking eyes with her as Arabella’s head bobbed back and forth at my waist for everyone to see and laugh at.
She stared right back at me. But this time, her face said something else. War.
I heard Arabella sucking and moaning around my shaft and hardened more as I stared at Lenora, imagining it was her lips on me.
Submitting.
Cowering.
Raising the white flag.
There was noise around us. So much noise. Yet somehow, I could hear her silence clearly. Loudly. The way she digested everything.
“Push me, Vaughn, and I’ll push harder. I’m not the same girl you threatened in Carlisle Castle,” she’d warned after she stitched me up. I believed her.
“Do your worst,” I said out loud, looking straight at her, ignoring Arabella as she tried her hardest to get me to come. I couldn’t even feel her.
Lenora smiled, but the fire in her eyes was out.
This was the one war England was not going to win.
That night, I dream
ed I was a warrior in a Fae world.
In the dream, I had a spiked sword and a huntsman’s raven cape and gauntlets. My natural blonde hair danced in the wind like snakes. We were in a magical forest, of all places. The kind where orange and yellow sunrays seep past green branches and butterflies roam free.
Vaughn and Arabella were my captives, trapped in ivy against a thick tree trunk, their hands laced together.
I pierced the sword through Vaughn’s heart first, watched as blood poured from his mouth as he struggled for his last breath, his face still cold and defiant. Next was Arabella. I stabbed her numerous times in the chest. She laughed and laughed and laughed, and I just kept stabbing her.
“Die!” I yelled. “Why won’t you die?” Warm tears stung my cheeks.
But Arabella refused to die. She broke off the ivy chains and advanced on me, zombie-like, leaving a dead Vaughn chained to the trunk. She grabbed my shoulders and shook me.
“Lenny!” she screamed.
“Lenny! Lenny! Lenny!”
My eyes popped open, and I darted up in bed, panting. Poppy sat on the edge of my mattress, staring at me with a mixture of horror and pity. She was wearing one of her little satin pajama sets.
She frowned, running her thumb under my eye. “You were crying in your sleep.”
I shifted uncomfortably, coughing. My throat felt groggy, my entire body foreign to me, like I was trapped inside it. So much for the new me. I sucked—not as hard as Arabella, granted, but I still did. All it took was one shove from Vaughn, and I was distraught.
The jolt of jealousy I’d felt when Arabella sucked Vaughn off earlier today had shocked me into submission. I felt helpless, weak, and nauseatingly miserable. My fever spiked every time I thought about them touching each other. And I thought about it all the time.
There was something I hadn’t told anyone. Not even Poppy.
An altercation involving Alice, Arabella, and Soren shortly after the pool incident with Poppy. In fact, the day after Arabella and Vaughn came back from Indiana.
It happened after PE class, in the girls’ locker room—the whole cliché, American high school nightmare wrapped in a barbwire bow. I changed my clothes next to my locker, somehow squirming out of my sports bra and shorts after putting on a black dress. It was extremely uncomfortable, but it beat being seen naked for even half a second by miles. I didn’t trust people not to barge in and take pictures. I knew I was a target, and I refused to give anyone in this school more ammo than they already had.
I was in the middle of closing my locker when someone else did it for me.
A hand shot from behind my back, slamming the metal door shut. It flew from impact, crashing against my face. My nose went numb before the burning sensation took over, and I felt warm blood dripping from one of my nostrils. I blinked, too stunned to understand what was going on.
“Hello, Drusilla,” Alice drawled.
Ever since the janitor room incident, she’d alternated between this and Vampirina. Everyone seemed to adopt the nicknames. Not that I cared. Better to be Drusilla than the airhead extra whose only role in the show is to parade her tits and blurt stupid one-liners for comic relief.
I turned around, refusing to cower, wince, or pinch my nose to stop the bleeding.
Arabella and Soren were standing behind her, their arms folded over their chests, grinning.
“So, I was wondering…” Alice tapped her lips, frowning. “What is it about you that interests Spencer so much? You’re ugly. You wear basic-ass clothes. Your accent is a boner-killer, and now your sister is a goddamn reject, just like you.”
“Also, you’re ugly. I know she already said that, but I feel like it’s worth repeating.” Arabella shrugged.
Soren burst out laughing.
I let out a very provocative yawn, ignoring the blood that crawled from my nose and mouth.
“Sophisticated,” I pointed out.
Alice shoved me against my locker, hard.
“I don’t need to be sophisticated. I’m pretty.”
There were so many things wrong with what she said, but starting to list them seemed counterproductive.
“I would love to know what he finds in you.” Arabella stepped forward, grabbing my jaw and angling it side to side, like she was examining a frightened animal.
I slapped her hand away.
Alice and Soren jumped in, each of them holding one of my wrists against the lockers behind me. People were long gone—the misfortune of always having to be the last to get dressed so I didn’t get harassed—and I knew I was all theirs. There was a football practice going on outside, and even if I screamed, no one would hear me. The boys and coach were yelling and laughing far too loud.
I resisted Soren and Alice, trying to unchain myself from their grip.
Arabella crashed her open palm against the locker behind me with a warning thud. I didn’t even twitch.
“Are you fucking him?” She narrowed her eyes, growling.
I wasn’t going to answer her. Screw that. Giving her what she wanted was letting her win. Let her think I screwed Vaughn into oblivion.
“None of your business.”
“Are you guys, like, friends?”
God, no. He just kissed me twice, and made me fantasize about sucking his blood.
A throaty laugh escaped me. “If you like him so much, you shouldn’t have sucked his best mate off.” I’d heard the rumor that she was with Knight before senior year started.
Arabella pinched my nose hard, squeezing more blood out of it. She released it when I started coughing. My eyes watered, but I held back the tears.
“Look at her, Bella. She’s shitting her pants.”
“I think the nasty smell is coming from your mouth.” My voice rang unsteady, even to my own ears.
“Maybe she’s just his little bitch. Is that it?” Alice pondered, ignoring my jab. “His errand puppy. Another one of his soldiers.”
“Maybe he gives her attention because she knows his secret,” Soren chipped in. “I’m telling you, dude, something made him the way he is. He’s too fucked up to be normal. He ain’t like us.”
I choked on my saliva. I couldn’t believe they smelled the secret from so many miles away. Not that what I’d seen back there was all that scandalous, but Vaughn hadn’t wanted me to see it. That much was clear.
A light bulb flashed behind Arabella’s eyes, and she grinned.
“Vaughn Spencer has a secret, and you’re going to tell us what it is,” she whispered, her voice laced with threat.
“Go wank a cactus,” I muttered.
The slap came out of nowhere. It rang in my ears before the sting spread across my cheek. I couldn’t believe it was happening to me. I’d never been hit before. Ever. Maybe that’s why I reacted the way I did.
I spat in Arabella’s face.
I saw the way her features twisted, morphing from calm to horrified and finally disgusted. She raised the back of her hand, and I thought she was going to smack me again, but all she did was wipe my saliva from her cheek and the corner of her mouth, rubbing the leftovers on my dress.
“Hold the bitch down,” she commanded Soren and Alice.
Within seconds, I was lying with my stomach flat against cold tiles that smelled of bleach and feet. I resisted, squirming back and forth as Soren seized my legs. Alice pinned my wrists. I swallowed back tears and barely grunted when I felt Arabella’s heel digging into the base of my spine. Christ.
“Now, Drusilla, I’m going to give you one more chance, even though you behaved like an animal and spat in my face. Before I make sure you never walk again, tell me: what’s Vaughn Spencer’s secret?”
I screamed with the rest of my power, letting out steam, without actually producing any words. Somehow, even though I didn’t even remotely like Vaughn, it hadn’t occurred to me to compromise his secret. Not even once.
The taste of the blood from my nose mingled with my saliva, and I coughed, feeling her heel digging deeper into my lower back. It
pierced my skin and pressed against my bones. A door slammed shut in the distance, the thud carrying into the locker room.
“Someone’s coming. Hurry up.” Soren slapped my unruly legs back into place when I tried to kick his face. Arabella stepped over me, her entire weight shifting onto my back.
The last thing I remember before I fainted was screaming so loud the walls rattled. When I woke up afterwards, a few junior girls helped me to my feet. I was fully clothed, so they didn’t see my back, but the blue and purple marks stayed for two months.
Now, Poppy was giving me a long sideways look, demanding to know why I was so upset.
“Why were you crying? Why were you yelling at someone to die? What’s going on, Lenny?”
There was no point in telling her. The school year was officially over. By next week, I’d be on the plane, picking up where I’d left off at home.
Carlisle Castle.
Art.
Pope.
There was going to be an entire ocean between Arabella, Soren, Alice, and me. Vaughn would be there, true, but he’d never hurt me physically. He just liked to taunt me with his venomous kisses and mind games. I could handle him.
I shook my head. “I just had a bad dream, that’s all. You know how I miss Mum extra hard every time we go through a change in life. I’m thinking about what’s next. Moving back is going to be weird without her there.”
It wasn’t even a complete lie. I did miss Mum like hell. But I was delighted to go back home. Poppy scanned my face intently before sliding under my duvet beside me, scooting her butt next to mine.
“Oh, I know, Lenny-loo.” She wrapped an arm around my shoulder and kissed my temple.
Poppy had been there for me since Mum passed away. That’s why I was never going to fully forgive Knight for breaking her heart, even though the writing was on the wall.
“But I’ll be attending the London School of Economics, just a few short hours away from Carlisle,” she reminded me. “I’ll check on you all the time. I promise.”
I believed her.
She wiggled and took something from the back pocket of her PJs. A Hershey’s Kiss. Unwrapping it, she popped it into my mouth.
“Here. I was going to indulge a little, but you seem to need it more than I do. Chocolate has always soothed you, since you were a kid. Now go to sleep, and have sweet dreams, all right? I promise you, life will be sweet from now on.” She kissed my temple again, brushing my hair away from my forehead.
