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

by Savannah Rose

  I checked Macy’s reaction and she had none. It occurred to me that Julianne had kept me orbiting at the outskirts of her schemes for years.

  I suddenly understood why Kitty May hadn’t bothered to tell anybody where she was going or why. Before me, Kitty May was the newest member of Julianne’s group. She’d been Julianne’s friend for three years before she moved.

  If Julianne had drawn her in slowly the same way she had me, then Kitty May would have only had to confront the true depths of Julianne’s nastiness in the last year or so. At that point she would have been so insidiously involved—like I was—without really knowing it, that going the next step to outright bullying would have felt like a tiny step.

  “Hm, good point,” Julianne was saying. “Does he wear headphones while he runs?”

  “Sometimes,” I said.

  “What does he use, his phone, an iPod, what?”

  It was an android smartphone, a three-year-old model with a chip on the upper right corner but otherwise perfectly cared for. I’d seen it when I put my number in it in the janitor’s closet between classes.

  I shrugged. “How would I know?”

  She huffed. “You should pay attention to things like this, Kennedy! If it’s an iPhone, we could airdrop him some porn set to auto-play. That would be distracting enough to slow him down, don’t you think? But if it’s an android or something, we’d have to figure something else out.”

  “Bonus points for airdropped porn,” Macy said in a sing-song voice. “Automatic expulsion if he’s caught. Which, let’s be honest—we would definitely make sure he was caught.”

  I cocked my head to one side. “Seems like a rough punishment for daring to be as fast as I am,” I said thoughtfully.

  Julianne snorted. “It’s not about that. He’s a Seymore! He should be going to the delinquent’s academy just for that.”

  ICBAA—I Can Be Anything Academy—was a charter school at the edge of town which offered “alternative instruction” for kids who couldn’t cut it in public school for whatever reason. They had all kinds of different programs of which I was only vaguely aware, but the one that caught the most attention in the public schools was the Drills Academy. It was essentially a military prep program, complete with optional barracks (which wealthier parents took advantage of for dubious reasons) and was where most of the kids who were expelled for violence or unruly destruction ended up. Most kids of fed-up parents had been threatened with the program at least once. My own parents kept a brochure in the key basket by the front door. I’d never looked at it, specifically because I knew they expected me to.

  “But,” Julianne said with a shrug. “That doesn’t matter if we don’t know what kind of phone he has.”

  “The porn’s still a good idea, though,” Macy said, relishing the thought of him being forced to go to the academy. “We could stuff a bunch of magazines in his locker and tip off the office.”

  Julianne wrinkled her nose. “We’d have to actually buy it, though.”

  “Have Thomas do it,” Macy said. “Or just steal his.”

  “Would he even have any?” I asked, racking my brain to try and find a way to discourage them without actually contradicting them. “I don’t think guys actually buy or keep porn magazines. Everything they could ever want is all online, so why waste money?”

  “Good point,” Julianne said with a frown. “And because it’s all online, having a locker full of porn playing laptops would just scream ‘prank.’ He wouldn’t be punished for it, I don’t think. They might even open an investigation and since everybody knows it’s us against them, we would be the ones shipped off to the academy.”

  The thought of Julianne doing push-ups in drab fatigues made me snort. She shot me a sharp look and I shook my head. “You really think they’d do that to you?” I asked.

  She tossed her hair. “Maybe not. But the whole point of doing things the way I do is to stay on the right side of the letter of the law. That lets porn out completely. Could you just, you know—accidentally trip him?”

  “I could try,” I said, putting more doubt in my voice than I felt.

  I knew I could trip him, or take him down by the shoulder, but I wouldn’t want to stop there. I’d want to pounce him. Bury my face into his neck, kiss him there and higher and lower.

  I shook my head, those were not the images that needed to be hanging out in my mind right now. Plus, the whole tripping thing needed to be off the table. I didn’t want Julianne watching the track too closely to see if I’d done it. Besides, if he comes up dusty and still crosses the finish line before me—like he did today—she’d have questions that I wouldn’t want to answer.

  There was a knock at the locker room door, then a man’s tentative voice echoed over the tiles. “Anybody in here? Shutting it down.”

  “We’re coming,” I answered before Julianne could say something snotty. I picked up my bag and nodded toward the door. “Walk and talk?”

  “Okay, let’s forget about track for a minute,” Julianne said as we passed by the sheepish janitor. I sighed gratefully on the inside. “What about music?”

  “Oh that’s easy,” Macy said breezily. “We just mess up his guitar. Without getting caught, so—water damage? Wrap it in a wet towel or something in the morning, then get rid of it right before y’all go to class. Won’t look like much at first, but after a few days it’ll be ruined.”

  I winced. “I won’t destroy an instrument,” I said firmly. “I don’t care who it belongs to.”

  Besides, that would hurt me—and the world at large—as much as, if not more, than it would hurt Rudy. Ruining his guitar would deprive us of his music, and might discourage him from continuing to play. It would be an absolute tragedy.

  Julianne scowled at me as we stepped through the doors into the afternoon sun. It was later than I thought, and I glanced at the time on my phone. Talking to the girls had eaten up too much time. I only had half an hour now before I had to meet Rudy. I’d wanted to change my clothes and maybe freshen up my look a little bit, but there wasn’t time for that now.

  “You’re being a real downer about all of this, Kennedy,” Julianne said accusingly. “Don’t you want to beat him?”

  “Yes, I do,” I said, completely honestly. “I’d love to be consistently faster than him. I’d love to be the best guitar player in the whole damn school, or at least as good as him. These are things I take pride in.”

  “So make it happen,” Macy said. “Duh.”

  I shook my head. “Not like that. Me winning on the track doesn’t mean shit if he can just come back when I’m not there and beat my time. Being the best player in class doesn’t count if it’s only because his guitar is broken. I want to win because I’m good at doing those things, not because I’m good at sabotage.”

  “Oh grow up, Kennedy,” Julianne said. “There’s no difference in the real world, you know. It doesn’t matter if you’re really the best or if people just think you are, they’ll treat you and pay you the same for either. You should know this already. Your dad’s the best at it.”

  A shock shot straight through my chest. “What?” I asked, my voice low and dangerous.

  She blinked at me innocently. “You didn’t know? Oh, you poor thing. Honey, your dad doesn’t really have any skills. He barely has an education. You know what he does have? Charisma and a damn good manager. That’s it. I’ve listened to the recordings of his talks, Kennedy. He doesn’t say anything that isn’t either common sense or common nonsense—he just says it in a way that makes his audience feel enlightened and euphoric. Like a TV preacher.”

  I swallowed hard and grit my teeth. “Oh, like Grandma Bird,” I said, mimicking her innocent tone and expression.

  She paled slightly and narrowed her eyes at me. Macy clapped a hand over her mouth, feigning shock, but I could see the laughter in her eyes.

  “Grandma Bird is the real deal,” Julianne said tersely. “Don’t you ever dare forget it.”

  “Couldn’t, even if I wan
ted to,” I sighed.

  We walked in tense silence for a little over a minute. When we reached the point where we would have to split off to reach our cars, Julianne turned to me with a dark fire in her eyes.

  “I shouldn’t tell you this. It’s personal and it’s not exactly any of your business anyway, but just so you know? Grandma Bird spoke to Sabrina Fisher’s spirit after she died. Did you know that? Yeah, didn’t think so. Sabrina told Grandma Bird that the Seymores were the ones responsible for her death. All of them. That’s why I’m sure, even more than the obvious facts, that they killed her. So before you go around casting doubt on my family name, you better think long and hard about who you’re talking about.”

  “The most powerful psychic in Texas,” I said, pushing sincerity in my eyes. “Of course.”

  “Good,” Julianne said, suddenly brightening. “Now let’s go grab some ice cream and figure out how to trip Rudy up so you can humiliate him in front of the whole school.”

  I glanced at the time. Fifteen minutes. I’d have to interpret the speed limit as a loose suggestion in order to get there in time. I shook my head.

  “Sorry. I have somewhere to be.”

  Julianne raised an imperial eyebrow at me. She wanted to argue, but unfortunately for her, I was already unlocking my car.

  “Okay, if you want to be that way,” she said, pouting. “Where do you have to go in such a hurry? Your parents aren’t even in this state!”

  I closed my door and started the engine, rolling down the window as I did so.

  “Video calls,” I said with a shrug. Then I peeled out, taking off in the direction of my house. It wasn’t the most direct route to the old bridge, but I knew Julianne would be watching me leave. She was suspicious by nature and paranoid by design. I didn’t think she legitimately thought the whole world was out to get her, but it was a convenient neurosis for getting her friends and boyfriends to jump through hoops, always on the defensive, trying to keep ahead of the impending storm clouds always lingering at the corners of her eyes.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  I didn’t see Rudy’s Mustang when I pulled up to the bridge and my heart sank.

  I was five minutes late, but I’d been hoping that he would wait for me anyway. I was sure he’d gotten there, saw I wasn’t there yet, and decided to just go home. I almost did the same damn thing before I noticed my own hypocrisy.

  I parked my car under a big tree with wide, shady branches. The shade didn’t do much against the muggy September heat, but it kept my paint from blistering under the unforgiving sun.

  Restless, I left my car where it was and started wandering around in the scrub beside the river. I hadn’t explored this far with Kitty May and after I thought she was dead I didn’t have the heart to explore alone; but now that my life was a mess and I knew she was alive, I took a simple pleasure in the fast-running water and the sunbaked grasses.

  The bank sloped gently down to meet the concrete under the bridge. I inched my way down, watching for snakes and loose earth, until I reached the four-foot-wide concrete shelf.

  It had been a long, dry summer and the water reached a foot below where I stood, but the watermarks on the wall above me told stories of hurricanes and floods which would have left this bridge completely impassible.

  The “no swimming” signs made a lot more sense. Anybody caught down here during a flash flood wouldn’t stand a chance.

  Plenty of people had risked it, though. The walls were covered in graffiti, some of it faded where the water had beaten mercilessly against the walls, and some of it fresh enough that it still shimmered in the light bouncing off the water below. Forgetting my disappointment, I started reading the history of Starline, as told by local delinquents.

  “M13” tags were all over, along with more than a few “1488s” and “ACABs”. Most of these had been half-covered by wild, colorful artwork which hinted at true artistic talent.

  “Jenny loves Bruce” was scrawled along one wall in a round, loopy hand. It had been crossed out with red spray paint, which went on to proclaim that Bruce loved Melinda.

  “Bruce is a player,” I said to myself out loud.

  “Biggest baller at Starline Middle,” Rudy answered, his voice coming from just behind me.

  I jumped and screamed, turning around so fast I almost tripped and fell into the river. Rudy was quick though, and he caught my arm, keeping me from tumbling over. The motion caused the firm wiry muscles on his arm bulge. I clung to him, crushing myself against his body without a thought or hesitation, but immediately feeling the impact of having him so close. I looked away from his eyes and stared down at the swift, dark water.

  “Sorry,” he said sheepishly, smiling down at me. “Didn’t think you would try and die of fright.”

  “I didn’t die,” I said haughtily. “And I wasn’t scared.”

  “Mm-hm,” he said incredulously, pursing his lips.

  “Well what are you doing sneaking up on me like that, anyway?” I demanded, annoyed that he’d seen me all shaken up over nothing.

  He looked around as if trying to figure out who I was talking to, then put his hands to his chest. “Well perdona me, but I thought I was supposed to meet someone here at four.”

  “Which was twenty minutes ago,” I pointed out, narrowing my eyes at him.

  He grinned. “Better late than never, right? Car decided it was done driving for the day. Threw a belt from somewhere, gonna have to figure out what and where and put it back together later.”

  “Make Chris do it,” I said. “He needs all the practice he can get.”

  He threw back his head and laughed. “You know he bitches about you all the time? Says you’re only better than he is because you’re cheating.”

  “Me, cheat?” I asked, fluttering my eyes at him. “Never. I’m better than Chris out of sheer spite. He told me it wasn’t women’s work, and that I didn’t belong in the class. I had to set him straight.”

  “You had no choice,” Rudy said, nodding solemnly. “He forced your hand.”

  “He did! What’s his problem with women anyway?”

  I didn’t know how we’d gotten stuck on the topic of Rudy’s most annoying sibling, but I was enjoying the back and forth and didn’t really care what the topic was. But then Rudy’s face closed, the shutters came down in his eyes, and his mouth was set at that unreadable angle.

  After an uncomfortable moment, he pointed at the wall behind me.

  “Mermaids are real and her name is Jasmine,” he read off the wall. “Think she drowned here, or made it across the stream and commemorated the occasion?”

  “Probably the former, but I’m hoping for the latter,” I said, watching his face warily.

  He wandered farther under the bridge and I followed. We read things off the wall and pointed out various artworks, including a lot of very rudimentary pornography.

  “What’s Julianne’s problem with foster kids?” he asked after a while.

  I opened my mouth to explain that she didn’t have a problem with foster kids in general, but with the Seymores specifically, but I stopped myself. First, I wasn’t entirely sure that was true. I knew she hated the Seymores specifically and why, but she’d made enough anti-foster-kid comments in front of me for me to wonder if that had more to do with her hatred than Sabrina’s long-ago murder. It would make more sense that way—after all, none of the guys currently living in the rambling old house had been around when Sabrina went missing.

  “I’ve never seen glitter graffiti before,” I said, pointing up at a perfectly symmetrical pink heart.

  “The glitter doesn’t stick around for as long as the color does,” he said with casual authority. I glanced at him and he grinned. “I told you, Kennedy, I’m one of the bad ones.”

  “Oh yeah, so bad, tagging the world up with glitter,” I said sarcastically.

  He laughed and reached for me, pulling me into a warm embrace. His body was hot and hard against mine, his lips soft and searching.

 
I drank him in, trembling when his hand filled the hollow in the small of my back, fighting to keep my knees from turning to Jell-O when he cupped the back of my neck and dipped me slightly like the hero in one of those old romantic movie. I clung to him, feeling like I would drown if I ever let him go, like I was already drowning in his touch.

  When he let me go, his eyes were bright and dark, his face flushed. He caught his breath.

  “That was for making me run with a boner,” he huffed.

  I giggled and he winked at me, then swaggered back along the concrete shelf. “Same time, same place tomorrow,” he said. It wasn’t a question and he didn’t wait for an answer.

  Rudy took off running down the street, and was already half a mile away when I managed to climb shakily back up to street level.

  The ache between my hips deepened to a painful pulse when he stripped his shirt off, letting his glistening, golden skin shine in the late afternoon sun.

  “Same time, same place,” I said.

  I sat in the car for several minutes before I could concentrate enough to drive home.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  For the next two weeks, we were invincible. When the girls or his brothers were around, we ignored each other as we always had before.

  Between classes or in the chaos of lunch, we would meet for heart-pounding stolen moments in the janitor’s closet.

  The track was still my favorite, and we had that down to a science. We’d even managed to get our speed back up without missing a single chance to touch one another.

  As often as possible, we would meet under the bridge. Hot kisses quickly became heavy make out sessions against the slanted concrete wall until we were both sweating and aching and desperate for more. But there was always something—a rancher in the next field over, a boat upstream, young kids on their huckleberry adventures—that stopped us from going any farther.

  We’d avoided any more conversations about our respective clans. In fact, we hadn’t had many conversations at all—it just didn’t seem safe. Even though he didn’t say so right out, I was sure his brothers wouldn’t be any happier about us seeing each other than Julianne would be about me seeing Rudy. And they would probably have noticed if he was suddenly texting all the time.