Them Seymore Boys: An Enemies to Lovers Bully Romance (The Seymore Brothers Book 1)

by Savannah Rose

  After they had stalked out of the room and taken most of the pungency with them, Julianne beamed at me.

  “Compliments of Kennedy, I told them.”

  I shook my head at her. “What the hell! Why?”

  Her grin turned malicious, a snake devouring its prey. “Because you’re in this, Kennedy, whether you want to be or not. It’s time for you to grow up and stop dragging your feet. They’re bad news and everybody knows it. Sympathizing with the enemy is the surest route to destruction.”

  Sure, but at whose hand?

  I watched her face for a moment while Franks was busy opening up all the windows and turning on vent fans. Lucky for him, this was a chemistry class in the afternoon, people expected all kinds of acrid smells coming out of here.

  Even with the fans on, I didn’t think I would ever get the ghosts of that smell out of my nose. Not anytime soon, at least.

  I didn’t see any of the Seymores at lunch, which should have been a good thing—but I had the sneaking suspicion that they were all off somewhere cooking up a horrible revenge for me.

  I thought about trying to convince them that I actually didn’t have anything to do with the stink bomb, but I didn’t really think they would believe me even if they let me get close enough to talk to them.

  Rudy and Bradley reappeared in time for Spanish, and had magicked up new clothes from somewhere. They smelled like the generic soap in the locker room showers, which was a marked improvement.

  Rudy’s hair was still wet and flopped artistically over one side of his face. I liked the effect—like a soft callback to high emo culture. It suited him. So much so that I couldn’t quite look away from him.

  To nobody’s surprise, he caught me watching him and glared. I let my eyes linger for a few more seconds before turning away. Apparently, it’s hard to be intimidated when you’re wearing orange pants.

  “Buenos dias, estudiantes! We’re going to do something fun today,” the teacher beamed. “Pair up, go ahead. Perfect. Now… each of you will write a sentence in English. Don’t share it with your partner until I call on you! When I do, your partner will read it silently and translate out loud. Ready? Go!”

  Joan turned to me automatically. “Don’t make it too hard,” she said. “I can barely remember the word for ‘apple’ most days.”

  “Okay.” I thought about it for a minute, then smiled. The crazy chicken says, “see you tomorrow!” I wrote.

  I figured she wouldn’t have to think too hard about any of that.

  I was wrong.

  She was still thinking. And she was thinking a little too hard, if you asked me. She slid a devious look past me, toward the Seymores, then lit up with a grin. She scribbled something down and folded her paper over, giggling.

  “I swear if you wrote ‘antidisestablishmentarianism’ on there I’m changing your sentence to the Star Wars opening script.”

  She laughed, shaking her head. “I didn’t, I swear. You’re better at Spanish than I am, I’m pretty sure you can translate this easily. I wish Julianne had this class. She’d think it was hilarious.”

  Crap.

  Now I was going to be the anti-Seymore mouthpiece by default—unless I failed the translation in some plausible way, which wouldn’t be easy.

  My mom doesn’t speak a whole lot of Spanish anymore—she’s worked too hard to get rid of her accent for the sake of business to risk slipping into it again—but she spoke it a lot when I was little, and so did half of my nannies.

  I wasn’t exactly fluent, but I would have to try really hard to get anything less than a B in a high school Spanish class.

  “All right, everybody should be ready now, yes? Trade your papers with your partner, but no reading yet! I want to see you translate on the fly. Bradley, why don’t you go first.”

  Bradley stood up and the room felt smaller in relation to his massive build. He cleared his throat and opened the page. “Me llamo es llama, mi mama esta un perra, y me gusta hombres largos.”

  He glared at Rudy, who was grinning mischievously up at him. God, he was cute when he smiled. That one little dimple, the crinkles around his blue eyes. The slight slant of his lips, sharp canines almost visible. I swallowed, blinked, and felt heat rush to my cheeks.

  The whole class burst into laughter and didn’t stop laughing until he’d finished. Even the teacher was wiping mirthful tears from her eyes. But I…I was dreaming and trying to hide the look I knew I had in my eyes.

  “Okay, Rudy, what did you write?” she asked.

  “My name is llama, my mother’s a dog, and I like big men,” Rudy said innocently.

  The teacher shook her head, still chuckling. “Well, let’s hope there isn’t too much more of that. This is a classroom, not a roast. Kennedy, you go next.”

  God damn it. I stood, snatching up the paper and opening it with a snap. When I read what she’d written, I had to hide my grin behind the paper. I knew exactly how to twist this.

  “Mi major amiga es una estupida reina del mono cucaracha rubia,” I said.

  Rudy laughed and my heart soared. There were a lot of other reactions, lots of confusion and a few scandalized gasps, but most of the class seemed to think it was funny.

  The teacher had a hand clapped over her mouth. She let it drop and turned to Joan, who was frowning at Rudy, confused.

  “What did you write?” the teacher demanded.

  “My best friend is a blonde queen who stomps on stupid cockroach monkeys,” Joan said, tossing her hair.

  Rudy tilted his head at me with that look in his eyes again. The teacher laughed helplessly.

  “Oh no,” she said. “Something was lost in translation, I’m afraid. What she said was, my best friend is a stupid blonde cockroach monkey queen!”

  “Oops,” I said flatly.

  I sat down again and could feel Rudy’s eyes on me. Joan nudged me. “Sorry,” she whispered. “I didn’t think it would be that hard.”

  “I’m not used to seeing all those words lined up together,” I said by way of excuse.

  She nodded solemnly. “I guess it’s a good thing Julianne doesn’t have this class. She would have been mortified.”

  Furious was more like it. Julianne had a habit of assuming malicious intent before all else, even if it didn’t make a whole lot of sense, so I was relieved when the shared amusement faded from Rudy’s eyes on the way to music. Relieved—and a little disappointed.

  I was starting to crave those tiny, unimportant moments of connection with him like an addict. I knew it was toxic, but I couldn’t do much about it. My whole body was aware of him whenever we were in the same room.

  Julianne frowned at me when I walked into music class. My first thought was that Joan must have told her about my semi-accidental mistranslation, but her scowling gaze was fixed on my head. I patted my hair to see what was wrong—and found a glob of sticky gum.

  “Amateurs,” Julianne said, clicking her tongue. “Looks like Rudy got to you in Spanish.”

  I didn’t remember him getting close enough to me to do that, and I definitely would have remembered. I thought it was more likely that Bradley had dropped it in my hair in the hallway, but I wasn’t going to say so. She would have taken it as me defending Rudy, which would go over like a lead balloon.

  “Guess so,” I said instead. She handed me a wipe from a ridiculously tiny pocket on her little bag.

  “Don’t worry,” she said, her eyes glittering. “I got him back for you.”

  I frowned, confused. “How? You didn’t even know until I got here.”

  “Deductive reasoning, Watson,” she said and smiled. “He was bound to do something to you after you trapped him and Bradley in the bathroom with that stink bomb.”

  I stared at her. Did she really believe her own lies, or was she just performing for anyone who might have been listening in?

  She was watching Rudy, so I watched him too. He was pulling his guitar case out of the locker, looking like a fucking masterpiece in the making.

&
nbsp; “Come on,” Julianne said, grabbing my arm.

  She tugged me toward him and my heart sank. If she’d done something irreparable to his guitar, I wouldn’t speak to her ever again.

  Rudy opened the case when we were a foot or two away, and cocked his head at the instrument inside. Baffled, he pulled it out. There was a single dollar bill tucked between the strings.

  “Just a little something to get you started on your panhandling career,” Julianne said with a nasty smirk.

  “Thanks,” he said flatly. All expression fled from his face as he plucked the bill out. He tore it into teeny tiny pieces without ever breaking eye contact with Julianne. “Look, confetti. Now we can throw a party when you get nominated for ‘most likely to die a sugar baby.’”

  Julianne flushed red and her eyes glittered, but she just tossed her hair back and stuck her nose up in the air, then flounced over to her locker to get her violin.

  I had to hurry to my locker, too, if only to bury my head inside of it until the urge to howl with laughter had passed. Rudy was hilarious, and that was a problem. Laughter and approval are my greatest weaknesses, and today he had unknowingly given me both.

  I was in a whole lot of trouble. Problem was, I couldn’t seem to find the self-preservation to give a damn.

  Chapter Nineteen

  When Julianne called me that night, I expected her to be calling to yell at me for not standing up for her in music class or something, but that’s not how the cookie crumbled at all.

  At first, there was silence. I said ‘hello’ and no one answered. I said it again and heard the weakest bits of sound. A part of me was sure this was some kind of prank she was pulling, though I couldn’t quite figure out the end game.

  I pulled the phone from my ear and looked at it to make sure that I had actually seen her number. Seeing that I was right, I pressed the phone to my ear once again.

  “Julianne,” I said, making sure she knew that I knew it was her. And that’s when I heard it. She was sniffling. Once and then twice until her sniffles turned into full-blown sobs. “Julianne? What’s wrong?”

  “Thomas…” she wailed. “Thomas is a fucking asshole!”

  I mean, duh. Everyone with two eyes and a few braincells to click together knew that much. Of course, I kept my true feelings to myself.

  “What happened?” I asked sympathetically.

  “It was awful,” she said in a tone so hurt that I started to get angry for her in response. “I told him not to, I told him over and over again to not even go there and he—he just-!” She burst into tears again and my stomach twisted sickly as my mind scrambled to fill in the blanks.

  I took a deep breath to keep my fury out of my tone. “Tell me what happened,” I said gently.

  “Okay,” she breathed. “Okay. So we were at the mall, right? He was going to buy me a promise ring because we’re basically engaged to be engaged—or we were, until he did this—and I was looking at the jewelry and he was arguing with me about prices, of all things. You know, like how much the stupid ring costs should even matter. I mean, he has more money than I do! So yeah, it pissed me off. I told him I’d be in the food court when he felt like being a grown up about it, and he—he!”

  I swallowed hard. “Julianne,” I said slowly, “did he hit you?”

  “What? No. He left me there! I waited for him for two hours, Kennedy. Two fucking hours I waited, looking a damn fool the whole time! He left me there for so long that I had to go look for him! And do you know where I found him? Do you know where he fucking was?”

  “Kissing another girl?” I asked hesitantly, trying to make her outrage fit into any reasonable scenario.

  “Why would he do that when he could kiss me? No! He was at the goddamn arcade!”

  I opened my mouth, then shut it again. There was nothing I could say to that—nothing that wouldn’t piss her off more, anyway. If I had to choose three places where a disgruntled eighteen-year-old man would go in the mall, the arcade would be at the very top of the list.

  Julianne huffed an irritated sigh. “He was playing some stupid game and Rudy Seymore was giving him pointers. When he beat the level or whatever, they fucking fist bumped! They were having fun together! Thomas and a Seymore were fucking bonding over some stupid kiddie game while I was waiting all by myself in the food court for two freaking hours!”

  Her voice had reached a shrill shriek and I had to pull my phone away from my ear. “Okay,” I said calmly. “Did you talk to him about it?”

  She scoffed. “Talk to him? Are you kidding me? I told him I would get a ride home with some other guy so he could spend more time with his boyfriend, and I stormed out of there. And you won’t believe the worst part, Kennedy. I swear, I’m going to die of humiliation.”

  “What’s the worst part?”

  “He didn’t. Even. Follow me. I heard him and Rudy laughing as I walked away. I waited outside and he never even tried to come out after me! That was two hours ago and he hasn’t called or anything. What am I going to do?”

  “Uh—you could call him?” I winced as I said it, knowing it would only set her off again. But what the hell else was I supposed to say?

  “Call him? After what he did? No fucking way. He needs to come back to me on his hands and knees, groveling. That’s why I called you, Kennedy. I need your help. You know the dress code rules better than anybody I know. I need you to come over and help me find the sexiest, hottest, most seductive outfit I own that won’t earn me a detention. I want him drooling when I show up at school tomorrow. Drooling, do you hear me?”

  I glanced at the pile of homework on the kitchen table. I’d finished everything but the extra credit, which I could have used to boost my average grades into something halfway impressive. If I only spent an hour helping her, I could still finish some of it—I sighed silently, rolling my eyes.

  “I’ll be there in a few minutes,” I said.

  “Thank you so much, Kennedy, you’re the best!” She hung up without saying goodbye, leaving me to shake my head at myself.

  Chapter Twenty

  The drive to Julianne’s house was the most eventful drive I’ve ever had listening to the thoughts inside my head. There were so many tiny things going on. So many of them bad, but quite a few fringing on the edges of ‘okay’. I mostly focused on the positives.

  Rudy…there was something in his eyes that told me he didn’t exactly hate me as much as the others did. And then there was the realization that Julianne’s wrath wasn’t as deadly as I’d often feared it could be.

  If anything, she was trying to pull me as close to her as I could get. Trying to prove to me that we were friends, that she needed me. Trying to win me over with love rather than fear. There were so many ways I could spin that. And, who knew, maybe I could even get her to come to her senses.

  So yeah, I was going to help Julianne to pick out a dress that would have Thomas drooling like a fucking puppy. But I wasn’t doing it because I thought Thomas had done anything wrong - well, nothing to warrant the way Julianne was moaning like she’d just lost her left foot. I was doing it because I wasn’t particularly fond of Thomas. Even though, by being friendly with the Seymores, he might have managed to earn himself at least a spattering of my respect.

  I pulled into her driveway and kicked the car into park, jumped out and headed to the front door. Before I could even touch a finger to the buzzer, Julianne pulled it open.

  Her eyes were red and puffy and her cheeks wore the mascara that her lashes once did.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  She pulled me into her arms and hiccupped while thanking me for coming over so quickly and for caring and for helping her. The whole thing was done with all the dramatics Julianne was known for.

  Seeing as I wasn’t here to start a fight, I put my best foot forward, said all the right thing and then went to work, sorting through her closet and drawers and smashing outfits together like nobody’s business.

  Stripping to her bra and panties, she tried on
outfit after outfit, giving a little twirl before arching her eyebrow in a question of approval.

  Most of the outfits were a no-go. If the top wasn’t too low, it wasn’t sexy enough. If it wasn’t too loose, it was taut in all the wrong places.

  She sidled her way into another and spun in front of me like she’d done for the twentieth time.

  I shook my head.

  “Too short,” I told her when she came out in her latest outfit. It was a skintight white thing that dipped down below her sternum on top and came right up to the edge of her ass underneath. “But if you paired it with a cami and some leggings you could get away with it.”

  She shook her head. “He likes my shape fine, but my skin is what really drives him crazy.”

  “Then you should wear something dark,” I told her. “Something that’ll contrast.” I made another trip to her closet and went to work.

  This last outfit turned out to be a winner – thank god!

  It was a short, dark skirt which barely fell within the dress code standard but was full and twirly enough for her to accidentally-on-purpose flash her panties if she wanted to.

  She wore a blood-red shirt over that which didn’t show a lot of cleavage, but exposed her entire clavicle with its boat-wide collar. She slipped her feet into a pair of heels that made her legs look even longer, and admired the effect in the mirror.

  “Perfect,” she said. “You should be a stylist, Kennedy, you’re so damn good at it.”

  “Only when there’s a purpose in mind,” I said with a shrug.

  “There’s always a purpose,” she said, tossing her hair. “Clothes tell the world how much they should respect you.” She gave me a meaningful look in the mirror. “Which is why you should get rid of those orange atrocities, like, yesterday.”

  “Not a chance,” I said stubbornly. “I like them. They say, look at me, I’m—”

  “A traffic cone,” she interrupted.

  I stuck my tongue out at her and she laughed. Then she pursed her lips thoughtfully and tilted her head, striking a model pose.