Quit Bein' Ugly

by Vale, Lani Lynn

  All the while, I kept my eyes away from Karen and Croft.

  Because if I didn’t, things were going to go south. Really fucking fast.

  By the time the workout was over, I knew that I was wrong.

  Things hadn’t been nearly as ‘bad’ as I’d thought before.

  Now? They were truly bad.

  Every other word out of Karen’s mouth was how hot or sexy he was, and Croft laughed it off to the point where I realized that he must not fucking care that I was there listening to it all.

  In the end, after the workout was finished, I decided that the next workout that Flint taught, I was going to go lift in the fucking corner.

  Fuck my date.

  Fuck Croft.

  And really fuck Karen.

  Because I hated her, and I hoped that she strained her ass muscles today and couldn’t walk for the next couple of days.

  And the bitch was right.

  She didn’t sweat.

  Though, I hadn’t seen her put much of an effort into the workout. She’d spent more time hanging on Croft and stroking his ego than she had working out.

  Hell, she’d never even put up her hair.

  Croft was so focused on Karen and helping her ‘stretch out’ after that ‘hard workout’ that he never even noticed me slipping out the side door and heading to my favorite place in the gym.

  The kids’ room where all the little kids worked out. And where I worked out when the kids’ gym sessions weren’t taking place.

  When I arrived into the room, it was to find Schultz standing there with his nieces.

  “How’d you do?” Schultz asked his seven-year-old niece, Petra.

  Petra held up her arm and flexed it, making Schultz gasp in feigned surprise. “Oh, wow! That’s one hell of a gun you got there! You better put it away before you get arrested.”

  Schultz’s niece, Ashlie, bounded up to his side and showed him her muscles, too.

  At almost six-years-old, she was the cutest little thing that I’d ever seen.

  “Look at mine, Wuncle Will!”

  Schultz’s first name was actually Wilhelm.

  “I’m hungry. Where are we eating?” Peter asked as he launched himself at Schultz.

  Schultz sighed. “Chick-fil-A, I guess. Since that’s all that Lie-Lie will eat.”

  Chick-fil-A actually sounded pretty darn good right now.

  I’d started to seriously lower my intake of food as I tried in vain to get rid of my stubborn belly fat. However, all that the dieting seemed to do was make me pissy enough that I ate like a horse by the time three days of eating well had passed.

  Honestly, it was probably a good thing that I’d decided that Croft and I weren’t going to happen.

  He was likely used to the way that Karen ate. I wasn’t a dainty eater. Even when I ate ‘healthy’ I still ate. I couldn’t survive on no food.

  Karen probably ate a small, leafy green salad with vinaigrette dressing and said she was ‘full.’ The lying twat waffle.

  “Thanks for everything, Carmichael. Have a good day!” Schultz called as he shuffled his kids out the door.

  I waved and then walked to the back of the room to start loading everything up that I would need.

  Five minutes later, I was well into my workout when my phone buzzed.

  I ignored it for a whole two minutes before I had to stop and see who it was.

  The sad thing was, it was my credit card company saying that there was a suspicious charge to my account, and was it approved.

  Since it was for a cheesecake in New York and all.

  Clicking ‘yes’ I went back to my workout.

  And not freakin’ once did he come and look for me, text, or call.

  The sad thing was, Croft didn’t even notice that I wasn’t around, and hadn’t actually come to the date at his house, until well past ten that evening.

  Croft: Hey, are you still coming over?

  Not on your life, asshole. Not on your life.

  That thought rolled through my head as I shoved a massive waffle fry into my face.

  CHAPTER 1

  So my neighbor with big titties is outside gardening topless today. I just wish his wife would do the same thing.

  -Text between siblings

  CARMICHAEL

  “Listen up, Sprinkle Tits.” I crossed my arms and glared at my brother. “This is my job. You can’t be coming in here, swinging your tiny dick around, acting like you’re the supreme being. In here, I’m the supreme being.”

  There was a snicker at the door, but I didn’t bother to look over my shoulder at whoever made the sound.

  Most likely, it was my brother’s wife, Camryn.

  That, or Raleigh. Or Ezra. Both Ezra and Raleigh also worked at the school, along with Camryn, me, and my annoying brother.

  Also, Raleigh was married to Ezra, the head football coach for Gun Barrel High School.

  “I’m sorry for coming in here and breaking up a fight,” Flint, my brother who also happened to be the school resource officer, said. “But I got wind of it going down, and I’m really fuckin’ sorry, but I didn’t want you hurt.”

  I sighed. “I had it handled.”

  And I did.

  Kind of.

  “You didn’t have shit handled,” came a voice from behind me. A voice that most certainly didn’t work at this school.

  I turned woodenly and blinked when I saw Croft, my long-time crush, standing there staring at me as if I was a weak little woman instead of the strong, confident woman that I actually was.

  “I had it handled,” I disagreed. “And now, you may all leave.”

  My brother growled in frustration.

  “You can’t handle this class, Carmichael,” Flint told me bluntly. “They’re going to kill you.”

  “They’re not going to kill me,” I argued. Maim me, maybe. But not kill me. “I had it handled.”

  “That kid had your computer and he was swinging it at your face,” Croft butted in. “If your brother and I hadn’t walked in when it happened, he would’ve taken you to the ground with it.”

  That might’ve been true.

  If I hadn’t been paying attention.

  But I had been paying attention.

  It’d only been my brother barreling into the room with his big ass self that had momentarily made me lose concentration on what was happening in front of me.

  “I beg to differ,” I hissed. “I had it handled. And I would’ve handled Bryan Abrams.”

  Bryan Abrams, along with about eight more high school-aged kids from several of my other classes, were beginning to be a rather large pain in my ass.

  At this point, I was fairly sure that if I continued to work here much longer, either I was going to be shoved out because I couldn’t handle the class, or I was going to finally get a handle on this teaching thing and kick ass.

  See, what I didn’t know when I accepted the teaching position in theater class was that I was accepting a class that was full of a bunch of assholes and fuck-ups.

  The teacher before me, Mrs. Robbins, was what you could call a ‘bad’ teacher.

  She wasn’t a bad person, per se, but she was a bad teacher that didn’t really give a shit what her students did.

  That was why there was a waiting list for the theater class, because they knew that they were going to get into it and it’d be an easy A for them.

  The bad thing was, half the students rarely even showed up for class.

  That was until Mrs. Robbins took a leave of absence due to a car accident hurting her hand and having to have surgery. Once I replaced Mrs. Robbins, I started to actually take roll instead of assuming that everyone was there. And when they started to get truancy charges directed at them, the problem children started to come to class.

  Only, they resented the hell out of it, and that was where I was at right now.

  It’d been a little over six months since I’d taken this class over, and I was no closer to conquering the students now than I was when
I took the job.

  Luckily, I only had about a month and a half left before this set of kids graduated.

  Then, maybe, I could find a different class to teach since I knew absolutely freakin’ nothing about theater.

  “You would’ve gotten beaten by your computer, and who the hell knows what the hell would’ve happened after that,” Croft countered, sounding pissed as hell.

  That was when I turned to face him fully.

  “What’s it even matter to you?” I countered. “Last I checked, you weren’t my brother or my boyfriend. Whatever happens to me should matter little to you.”

  Croft’s jaw tightened and he narrowed his eyes.

  “It doesn’t matter to me,” he growled. “Except I don’t want my friend to have his sister hurt.”

  Asshole.

  About six months ago, I’d thought that Croft was going to be my one and only.

  Only, just as I was thinking that and getting my hopes up, he was thinking other things.

  Things that had nothing to do with me.

  There I was, thinking that we had something that could be happening between us, and he was bringing dates to the gym to work out with him.

  It was more than obvious after the third time that he’d brought that particular woman that Croft and I weren’t ever going to be a ‘thing.’

  The only thing we had going for us was being work colleagues.

  He worked at the CrossFit gym that my brother and I co-owned together. Croft taught classes on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at six in the morning.

  While I taught classes at seven thirty in the morning those same days.

  There was a lot of running into each other and him running into me here was the very last thing that I ever wanted to happen.

  Yet… there he freakin’ was.

  And better yet, he’d experienced my humiliation.

  I turned my back on Croft and spotted my likely useless computer on the ground.

  I walked over to it and picked it up, opening it up while also biting my lip hoping that it wouldn’t be broken like I knew it probably was.

  But, no such luck.

  It was broken as fuck, and there would likely be no saving this one.

  Luckily, I had a great friend that dealt with computers on a daily basis, and he also happened to work at this school teaching computer technology classes. I could take the computer to him after school and see if he could salvage it.

  “Well, rest assured that I’m fine. You both may leave,” I snapped, trying not to allow my eyes to roam over Croft’s sexy as sin body.

  Croft wasn’t super in-your-face sexy. Well, not totally anyway.

  In fact, if I had to rate him right now, I would say that he was an eight on his usual eleven scale.

  When was he an eleven, you ask?

  Well, surprisingly, it wasn’t when he was sweaty, in knit shorts and tennis shoes, working out at the gym.

  Nope, it was when he came into the gym in his suit and ties, dressed to the nines when he was just getting off of work. Or going to work.

  Or anywhere in between.

  The man could fill out a pair of jeans. He could rock a polo shirt. He could also hold his own when it came to working out and having his abs on display.

  But when he was in that suit? It was as if I lost my ability to think.

  Luckily, right now he was only in a pair of jeans and a t-shirt.

  So, still sexy, but also allowing me to retain the ability to produce coherent sentences.

  “You need to report Abrams,” Croft murmured. “That was downright ridiculous. Even if it wasn’t you, a teacher should never, ever have to deal with that.”

  I agreed.

  A teacher should never fear for her own life like I did today.

  But, saying that, I knew that Bryan Abrams was a troubled kid.

  Out of all the students that I had in the class with me, I’d never have expected that of him.

  “I’ll talk to him first,” I disagreed. “There’s something more going on there. Abrams doesn’t normally act like the other ones.”

  At least, when I’d met him originally, he didn’t.

  Now? Now he was different. I wasn’t quite sure what to think of him and his actions lately.

  I knew that there was something more going on, but again, I didn’t know what. He wouldn’t open up to me, and it was beginning to make me frustrated.

  Today could’ve been so bad. What was worse was it could’ve not only hurt me, but it would have ruined him.

  And I wasn’t ready to give up on the kid just yet.

  “You’re not talking to him,” both my brother and Croft said at the same time.

  I tucked my computer under my arm, grabbed up the stack of papers that were on the corner of my desk, followed by my keys that were in my top drawer, and then started out the door.

  “I’ll do whatever I want to do,” I said as I shouldered past Croft who hadn’t bothered to move out of my way. “Because you’re not the boss of me.” I paused when he caught my hand. Looking over my shoulder, I said, “You lost the right to touch me. Now let go.”

  He must’ve seen just how serious I was because he dropped his hand and stared at me as if he didn’t know me.

  Without another word, I left the room, heading straight for my friend, Alfie’s, room.

  Maybe they wouldn’t follow me.

  Sadly, I wasn’t that lucky.

  CHAPTER 2

  I don’t get why I’m not losing weight.

  -Raleigh to Croft as she’s double fisting two donuts

  CROFT

  “What the fuck?” Flint growled as he stood there watching the empty room his sister had once occupied.

  “My sentiments exactly,” I grumbled.

  Flint looked at me as if I was the one to cause her outburst.

  “You know, she used to be sweet.” He paused. “Until you fucked-up.”

  He pointed his finger at me accusingly.

  “I didn’t fuck up,” I argued. “I did nothing wrong! One day, we were supposed to go out on a date, and the next she’s looking at me like I’m the anti-Christ, and I’d eaten her last cookie.”

  Flint shook his head. “I don’t know what you did, but you need to fix it. I miss my sister.”

  I did, too.

  I wasn’t sure what the hell that I’d done to cause her to be so angry with me, but he was right.

  I needed to figure it out.

  I’d just finished a big case that I’d been working on with Karen, a woman that worked with us that was looking to make it a little more official, and it was time that I focused on what I’d screwed up. I.e., my relationship with Carmichael.

  “What are you doing here, anyway?” Flint asked as he flipped the lights off to the large room that we’d literally walked into and broken up the fight of all fights.

  “I’m here because I’m making my yearly donation to the baseball team,” I answered. “The Heartguard shirts.”

  Flint was nodding at me with understanding.

  My brother, Gavin, had actually died on the baseball field just a few short yards away.

  When he was playing baseball, he’d gotten hit in the chest with the ball by a fly pitch. The pitch had hit his chest at just the right time to stop his heart, and he’d died there on the field while we waited for the paramedics to arrive.

  Ever since, I’d donated Heartguard shirts to every single baseball player on the team of Gun Barrel Senior and Junior High in addition to other teams in the area.

  That’d just so happened to be why I’d shown up here today and had caught up with Flint as he was heading inside. Only, he’d gotten a call from a couple of teachers that’d said there was a fight that’d broken out in the theater department. Which had then spurred both of us on to get there as fast as we could.

  We’d arrived just in time to see that kid, Bryan Abrams, about to take a huge swing at Carmichael’s head with a fucking computer.

  Flint had gotten there just in time
to stick his large hand out and stop the computer before it could make contact with his sister.

  He’d then sent every last fucking one of the little assholes to the principal’s office. But only after he’d put the Abrams kid in handcuffs and walked him out to his police cruiser.

  I’d followed behind, pissed as hell, wondering how in the hell one lost control that bad to want to harm a teacher.

  When I’d followed Flint back, it was to walk into the room to hear Carmichael rip Flint a new one for intervening.

  Which led us to now.

  “Was she serious about being pissed at you?” I couldn’t stop myself from asking. “Because what the hell would she have done if you hadn’t arrived? I’m fairly sure she would’ve taken that hit to the face.”

  The idea was sickening to me.

  Anything happening to Carmichael, even a fucking hangnail, was abhorrent.

  Just the idea of her up here, in this hellhole, having to deal with asshole children who didn’t care about her in the least, was giving me hives.

  I’d been neglecting to think about her since our “almost” date, since she was so effectively freezing me out.

  I’d heard my sister, Raleigh, Camryn, and Flint talking about it over the last couple of months, but I’d been too damn busy to really give it much thought.

  But seeing it with my own eyes?

  I was now going to deal with this if the school wasn’t.

  “She’s mad because she has no control over this class,” he answered as he gestured to the back door where that kid was still in the back of his cruiser. “She’s a little fucking sprite of a person, and the kids walk all over her. She tries to gain control, and they just push back even harder. I’m honestly not sure this teaching thing is something she’s cut out for. At least not at this level.”

  I semi-agreed with him.

  Sure, she was small.

  And by small, I meant only five foot one, if that. She was beautiful and curvy, but the teenagers were all taller than her.

  Like everyone else, they thought that she resembled a doll—which she did.

  She had that porcelain white skin, black curly hair, and bottomless pit lavender eyes—and yes, I do mean lavender—that she almost looked unreal.

  She looked like she’d shatter at a sharp-pitched noise.