Like You Care: A Dark High School Bully Romance (Devilbend Dynasty Book 1)

by Kaydence Snow

  “You have a crush,” Mom sing-songed.

  “Mom.” I laughed, then after a pause, added, “It’s more than a crush.”

  What the hell had just possessed me to imply to my mother I was seeing a boy? Maybe I was just desperate to tell someone, bursting with the excitement Turner made me feel.

  “Holy shit, my Sweet Chilly Philly has a boyfriend!” My mother squealed like a preteen and backed out of the reach of my makeup brush.

  “Mother.” I shot her a withering look.

  “OK, OK, I’ll try to have more chill,” she said while bouncing in her chair.

  I rolled my eyes. “I can’t finish your makeup if you’re bouncing around like that.”

  She stopped and closed her eyes again, tipping her face up. I sighed and got back to work.

  After a few minutes she asked, “What’s his name?”

  “Uh . . . I . . .”

  “Don’t tell me you don’t know his name.” She chuckled.

  “Of course I know his name.” He just doesn’t know mine. “I’m just . . . it’s kind of new.”

  “OK, I respect your privacy. I just have to ask, Philomena, do we need to have the safe-sex talk?”

  “Mom!” Now it was my turn to screech. “No. I am well across safe sex, and we do not need to discuss this.”

  “Fine.” Her expression grew suddenly serious. “Just promise you’ll come to me if you need to, OK? I’ll never judge you or be mad if you need help.”

  The urge to tell her about how miserable high school was nearly overwhelmed me again. “I know. Thanks, Mom.”

  She smiled and nodded. “And for the love of god, don’t get pregnant.”

  “Jesus fuc . . .” I put the brush away, done with her eyes. “Look down so I can do your mascara.”

  She obeyed, and I changed the topic immediately. “So, what exactly is this thing you’re going to? Chelsea from work has mentioned going to the same thing, and it sounds a little new-agey to me.”

  “Oh, yes, I think I met Chelsea at the first info session I went to a few weeks ago. She’s lovely. And Boyd Burrows runs the sessions. He’s Jayden’s dad—you two go to school together, right?”

  “Ugh. Unfortunately.”

  “Oh, you’re not friends?”

  “Not exactly. How’s that?” I held a mirror in front of her, blocking my own scowl at the mention of Jayden. I wanted to ask if Chelsea and Boyd seemed close at the last session—I was curious if that was the reason behind Chelsea’s sudden enthusiasm for these seminars—but Mom would only lecture me about not gossiping, so I kept my mouth shut.

  “I look ten years younger! This is amazing! Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” I gave her a genuine smile. I really hadn’t done much—covered up the dark circles, accentuated her eyes. “You didn’t answer my question about this event,” I said as I started to pack up, separating the brushes that needed to be cleaned.

  “Oh, it’s nothing ‘new-agey,’ as you put it. BestLyf is a large, successful professional-development company. They have offices all over the country and run workshops and courses. That kind of thing. It’s all about improving yourself while improving your skills. It’s hard to explain unless you come along and experience it for yourself. It’s very motivating.”

  “I can see that. There’s not much that will get you out of the house on a school night.”

  “It’s worth it. But I’m not sure it’s going to keep happening. I’ve got another two events that they offer free of charge, then the next level up is paid workshops and retreats, and I just don’t think we can afford it.” She sighed.

  There wasn’t much I could say to that. Whether it was my mother wanting to improve her skills, my father wanting to spend time with his friends on a fishing trip, or me wanting to get away from my abusers—we couldn’t afford it.

  “I hope you and Dad find the money for it, Mom. I like seeing you happy and motivated.”

  “Thanks, sweetheart, but you don’t need to worry about that.” She waved her hand dismissively as she walked off toward the kitchen. “How about a snack?”

  “Sure.”

  We spent the next half hour munching on celery sticks slathered in peanut butter. Mom managed to bring the conversation back to boys and started reminiscing about all the “shenanigans” she and Auntie Em had gotten up to when they were my age and running amok all over Devilbend.

  Thankfully, Dad came home and saved me from hearing anything that would have scarred me for life, and Mom left for her meeting.

  Turner wasn’t home that evening, but whatever he was up to with his dad, he had time to text me occasionally.

  T: I can’t believe you managed to slip away without me seeing you! I’m once again convinced you work for the CIA.

  M: How many times do I have to tell you—it’s the FBI.

  T: Maybe it’s the KGB. They use beautiful women to lure men with their wiles.

  M: Wiles? LOL!

  T: Yes. You have incredible wiles. I’m still hard just thinking about your wiles.

  I looked over my shoulder to make sure my dad was nowhere around. He was glued to the TV on the other side of the balcony door, but I still dropped my hands low in my lap before replying.

  M: We definitely have some unfinished business. I can’t stop thinking about it either.

  T: If my dad wasn’t sitting right next to me, I’d be describing all the things I want to do to you next time.

  M: Change of topic then! Did you get into trouble?

  T: Nah. Luckily the kid who came into the room as you ran away was someone I know—he’s on the football team. He gave me shit about having a girl in there and tried to get me to say who it was, but he covered for me with the coach, and I slipped out the back door.

  M: Good. I was worried you might get caught.

  T: But not worried enough to hang around.

  M: I’m sorry! I panicked!

  T: It’s OK. I’m teasing!

  I went to bed with a smile on my face.

  But life’s a bitch, so anything good that happened to me naturally had to be balanced out by something shitty.

  Madison must’ve been in a bad mood, because she seemed to have made it her mission to make my life hell all day.

  She bumped into me from behind on my way to first period, making me drop my books, then declared, “You dropped something” in a monotone before walking away, as if I were gum on the bottom of her shoe.

  Between second and third period, I was at my locker when the whole group walked past. Bonnie slammed my locker door on my arm, and when I wrenched back, wincing, Kelsey slammed the door shut.

  “How careless, leaving a locker wide open like that.” Madison was already walking away, the other girls snickering.

  I rubbed my arm and flexed my fingers. That was going to leave a bruise.

  At lunch, I made the mistake of walking past the cafeteria on my way to hide out in the library.

  Jayden rounded the corner just as I passed the doors, his arm slung over Madison’s shoulders, their friends trailing behind them. Turner was with them.

  My heart skipped a beat—I wasn’t sure if it was from seeing him or from fear. I hunched my shoulders and tried to slip past, hugging the wall, but it was too late.

  “What is that smell?” Jayden waved his hand in front of his face exaggeratedly.

  Madison gave me a satisfied, cruel smirk as the others blocked my path. Turner paused halfway through the cafeteria doors and turned around with a frown.

  “I hope that’s not coming from the cafeteria. I swear, the standards at this school are slipping.” Steph tutted. Everyone laughed.

  I wanted the floor to open up and swallow me, anything to keep Turner from seeing this. Hopefully they’d get bored or hungry quickly.

  “I mean, everything looks clean, but . . .” Steph looked around, making it obvious I was invisible in this scenario—like a bad smell.

  “What’s that stuff? That gas that comes off volcanoes?” Jayden snapp
ed his fingers. “Smells like rotten eggs. It’s in fertilizer and shit.”

  “Sulphur,” Turner supplied, his voice flat, emotionless.

  It wasn’t until that moment that I realized I’d been hoping he would say something, do something, to stop them. No, he didn’t know I was Mena—the girl he’d been talking to all this time. But I hadn’t thought he was the kind of person to be OK with assholes being assholes for no reason.

  My heart cracked in my chest; I couldn’t make myself look at him. I couldn’t make myself look at any of them as they continued to pretend I didn’t exist while cracking jokes about how bad I smelled.

  I blocked out the rest of their words, keeping my head down as my eyes searched for a way out.

  “We gonna stand out here all lunch? I’m fucking starving.” Turner’s deep voice was the only thing that could’ve made me tune back in. My head unconsciously turned in his direction, but years of habit kept my eyes low.

  His right hand was in a fist by his side; his other arm lifted and flopped back down in a frustrated gesture. A small blue band circled his wrist—a hair tie. My hair tie.

  As shitty as it felt to be standing there copping their shit, a tiny flare of warmth erupted in my chest.

  They all followed Turner into the cafeteria without another glance at me, and I rushed away, gulping air, suddenly realizing how hard it had been to breathe just moments before.

  After that, I was extra vigilant to avoid them and made it to my last class without another incident.

  Moments after I arrived, Turner wandered in and sat in the seat directly in front of me—the seat he’d occupied since school started. It had gotten increasingly more difficult not to reach out and touch him, brush a bit of lint off his collar, run my hands through his soft, messy hair. But I restrained myself, not even looking at him too much.

  Jayden sat next to him, and I tried just as hard to ignore him too, albeit for vastly different reasons.

  The first half of the class was spent discussing The Crucible, the second half working on an upcoming assignment. Most of the students fell into silence, hunched over their books, as Mr. Chen buried his face in his laptop and typed away furiously.

  It wasn’t long before people lost focus, and several surreptitiously pulled out their phones. After a long and stressful day, my concentration was lacking too. The words on the page kept blurring; I’d read the same sentence three times, and it still wouldn’t register in my brain. I kept finding myself glancing around the room, forcing my gaze away from Turner’s broad shoulders hunched over his desk, the short hair at the nape of his neck, the way his knee was bouncing lightly. I knew how hard those shoulders were, what that hair felt like under my palm, what a thrill it had been when that knee pushed its way between my legs.

  I bit my lip to keep from smiling and shifted in my seat, pointing my eyes back down at my book. After a few moments, I looked around the room again. No one was paying me a lick of attention, so I chanced another ogling of my boyfriend (I couldn’t believe I had a secret boyfriend!).

  Turner shifted, extending the leg that had been bouncing a moment earlier. He leaned his head on his left hand, totally slouched in the desk that looked tiny supporting his big frame. His right hand hung off the edge of the desk, and his fingers were fiddling with something.

  Those fingers . . . the things those fingers had made me feel, the places on my body they had touched, the places I still wanted them to explore . . .

  My inappropriate fantasizing evaporated when I noticed he had my hair tie in his nimble fingers, twisting it around his pointer finger, stretching it out, scrunching it up. I’d tried not to read too much into the fact that he’d kept it, but I couldn’t help wondering.

  I glanced around the class again. At least half of them had their phones out now, and several people were chatting at their desks, abandoning any semblance of doing work. I ached to take my own phone out and text my boyfriend, but that was dangerous. What if someone read over my shoulder? What if someone took it or broke it or both? What if they started teasing me about why I even had a phone when I had no one to message?

  The anxiety almost overwhelmed me, but it also pissed me off. I didn’t want my life to be dictated by bullies. It wasn’t fucking fair.

  I didn’t want to be Phil—the sad, friendless loser everyone picked on. I wanted to be Mena—the normal teenage girl who had a boyfriend she could secretly text in class. So, I pulled my phone out, hiding it behind the bulk of my textbook, and surreptitiously did just that.

  M: You have something of mine.

  I kept my head down, pretending to read, as I watched him in my periphery. He pulled his phone out and read the text under the desk, sitting up a little straighter.

  Would he deny it? Would he be confused? Maybe he didn’t put as much meaning into it as I had.

  My phone flashed with his reply.

  T: You left it when you ran away from me. I’m holding on to it, as per the finders-keepers rules. You can’t have it!

  M: LOL! OK. Why so intense about a little hair tie?

  He chuckled, glancing at the teacher before lifting his phone onto his desk. He tapped away at the screen, but my phone didn’t go off. I frowned. Maybe he was texting someone else.

  He shook his head lightly and tapped some more. Then he grunted and ran his hand through his messy hair before tapping at the phone a third time.

  I was wondering who was making him frustrated when my phone finally went off again.

  T: I like having something of yours with me since you already have something of mine.

  I racked my brain but couldn’t think of a single item of his I’d even held, so I replied with several question marks.

  His reply was instant.

  T: My heart.

  My breath hitched. My eyes stayed glued to my little screen, my body frozen. He felt it as deeply as I did—this connection between us. I could hardly believe it.

  In front of me, Turner shifted in his seat and blew out a big breath. He wiped both hands down the fronts of his thighs, his head bent over his screen.

  I tried to think of the perfect response. Something simple and heartfelt that wouldn’t come off gushy but would show him how hard I was falling for him.

  Before I could find the words, another text came in.

  T: Too much?

  I smiled and suddenly found it easier to reply. His nervousness was putting me at ease.

  M: Not too much. You have mine too.

  I added a heart emoji and sent it.

  He leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers behind his head, giving me a good view of his defined arms, as he sighed—the relief palpable.

  “You good, man?” Jayden asked next to him, breaking my happy bubble. The soft murmurings of the class came back into focus, and I remembered where I was—shark-infested water. I couldn’t show any of these people the gaping hole in my chest where my heart thudded for the boy sitting in front of me. They could smell blood in the water, and my heart was overflowing.

  I tucked my phone back into my bag.

  “Yeah. I’m fucking perfect.” I could hear the smile in Turner’s voice, and apparently, Jayden could see it.

  “That is the most goofy-ass smile I’ve ever seen, bro. You got a chick on the hook?” Jayden nudged Turner’s shoulder, and my boyfriend laughed, neither denying nor confirming Jayden’s suspicion.

  “Holy shit, you do!” Jayden announced a little too loudly, his exclamation masked by the bell. “Who is it? Is it Kelsey? She’s been all up in your crotch since the first day of school. Is it Bonnie? She gives it up to everyone though, man. Be careful of her. Oh, wait! Is it Steph?”

  We all packed up and got to our feet, eager to get home.

  I waited until Turner and Jayden were making their way out, carefully staying out of their line of sight. Not even Jayden could completely ruin the buzz of Turner’s adorable semi-declaration of love.

  Even so, it still stung that by the time we’d made it out into the hal
l, Jayden had named almost every single girl in our year and even a few juniors, and my name wasn’t even mentioned as a joke.

  For two glorious weeks, Turner and I flirted unashamedly via text, sending each other messages I would have been horrified for anyone else to read. We met up in the storage area off the gym a few more times, but we had to be careful not to get caught. And I had to be careful not to let him see me.

  Friday after school, it was pouring down rain but still kind of warm, in a humid way. Naturally, I didn’t have an umbrella with me, so I got drenched on my walk home. After a shower, I planted myself on the balcony, resigned to the fact that my hair was going to frizz up.

  Rain continued to pelt down, the afternoon sky prematurely dark due to the heavy clouds.

  I thought about doing a makeup look, but that just made me feel guilty; I had a World History assignment, Statistics homework, and the assignment on The Crucible to work on. Plus, the weather was too humid, and the light outside was too crap. I was hoping Turner might come out to his balcony later.

  I slumped in the chair, propped my feet up on the little table, and pulled my phone out. I should’ve been dragging my books out and starting on my homework if I was going to be tragically pining for my boyfriend on the balcony. Oh god! I was basically Juliet. Did that mean this love story was doomed to end in tragedy?

  Apparently, I was a massive procrastinator as well as a Juliet, because I pushed all thoughts of homework out of my mind and started scrolling Instagram. I did my best to get lost in the makeup pics and cute dog videos, but ignoring the DNHS Confessions posts was almost impossible. Every time the distinctive burgundy (our school color) background popped up, a jolt of anxiety shot up my spine. I scrolled past as fast as possible, but when I started seeing Turner’s name crop up, I couldn’t help myself. I went onto the page and looked.