Raven: The Young Adult World of Genetically Modified Teens and the Elite (Swann Book 6)

by Ryan Schow

  “No we’re not.”

  “I am with you,” he said.

  “What about our jealous step-sister?” Julie asked. “Or our responsible parents?”

  From the food line, Brayden saw her looking at him. She looked away, embarrassed. When she looked back, he was still looking at her. He raised his eyebrows at her and smiled. She gave a half nod, but refused to smile because Cameron was now out of her seat, walking toward her.

  “What the shit, Julie?”

  “Hold on,” she told Emery. She then covered the microphone and said, “This is a private conversation, Cam. I only need a minute. Seriously.” Hovering over Julie’s food tray, Cameron took her second piece of bread as a challenge, and returned to her table where Julie could see her trying to explain her private conversation to everyone else.

  “Sorry,” she said into the phone.

  “When you get back for winter break, I want to go to the doctor with you. I want to see the sex of our child with you for the first time. Together.”

  “No,” she said. “I may not even come home.”

  “Bullshit,” he spat.

  Brayden was looking at her again and now he was walking over to her. Or near her. What’s he doing? He broke off from the girls and now he was—

  “Don’t be rude and not say hi,” Brayden said, “we’re friends now.”

  She covered the phone’s mic fast and said, “No, we’re not.”

  In her ear, Emery said, “Who’s that?”

  “Be quiet,” she said into the phone, then covered the mic again. “I’m on the phone.”

  Brayden wore a look she didn’t understand. She couldn’t decide if he was worth talking to. She would never be able to explain him to her friends, and he wasn’t nearly as good looking as her step-brother, but she might be with him. If no one knew, if they didn’t to go out on dates or do PDA’s (public displays of affection) at school functions or in the quad, she would probably do him, if anything to prove she could sleep with more than just family.

  “We’re not friends now,” she said, “and we won’t ever be so leave me alone.” He merely stood there, grinning. Okay, he was definitely hot. Not the way you expect a male model to be hot. More like how you expect a convict to be hot, the way he orders you around and just takes you when he wants.

  “Yes,” he said, “we are friends.”

  “No,” she said, stronger, “we’re not.”

  “You’re not that girl anymore,” he said, starting to walk away. “Don’t be that girl.”

  What?!

  She hung up on her step-brother and said, “Wait, wait!”

  He stopped, turned around. He wasn’t smiling.

  “You’re annoying,” he said playfully. “All this push and pull shit, what gives?”

  “Come here, stop making a scene,” she said.

  He walked back to her table, scooted her over physically and sat down. He plopped his tray on the table and said, “The girl from last semester and all the semesters before that, the one no one likes, I’d hoped she was gone. I see you changed, otherwise you’d be back at that table with all those other…cockroaches.”

  “People like me just fine,” she snapped. “And don’t sit so damn close.”

  “You know what I did all summer?” he said, not at all phased by her profanity.

  “No,” she said, scooting away, irritated, “and I don’t care.”

  “I spent the summer with girls like you. A lot of girls. The truths they shared, the things I learned, it gave me perspective. Then I spent some time with some women, not girls, and what I gleaned from them blew my mind.”

  “And I care about this, why?” she said, even though she was finding herself interested, albeit against her will.

  “Because I see things different. People aren’t who they always appear to be. Like you, for example, you don’t fit in with anyone so you force yourself to be different, to be part of the Bitch Brigade, or the head mean girl, whatever. You’re not like that, though. You’re different now. This girl you’re becoming, this woman, it’s lost on all these boys who will judge you for your hair, your tits, the way you dress, how tight your ass looks in those jeans. Boys are dumb, Julie. But you’re not. You’re tired of guys like that.”

  She was speechless.

  “Your ass looks amazing in those jeans, by the way.”

  She smiled. “I know.”

  Just then her phone rang. She was tired of guys like Brayden described, guys like her step-brother. Whom she still wanted and hated and maybe loved at the same time.

  It was Emery. She pressed END, ignored it.

  “Just because you banged a few broads over the summer doesn’t mean you understand women.”

  “Drop the act, Julie. Just be yourself with me. It’s okay.”

  “Go away, Brayden,” she said. She was thinking of the baby in her belly, the third with Emery. What she had with him, it was worse than dysfunctional. It was criminal. Just then her phone beeped. She couldn’t help herself. She knew it was from Emery, but still…she had to do it. She had to look.

  It was a text. She slid her finger over the message icon, opened it up. Her world came to a sudden, crashing halt. How her stomach dropped into her shoe and rushed up into her throat at the same time she didn’t know. All she knew was her face was ashen. We’re talking total blood loss.

  Emery said he found their first child. That motherfu—the last thing she needed was for her parents to find out what she was doing. What she had done. What was his obsession? She started punching in a nasty text message, her fingers flying over the mini-keypad, then erased it. Shut the phone off completely. Why did Emery want to find their adopted-out child so badly? So he could use it against her? Use it to make her his?

  “Oh, God,” she muttered, her world spinning.

  “What?” Brayden asked.

  She forgot he was still sitting there. She stood and left the table, the cafeteria and her last three classes. By the time she reached her dorm room she was bawling, vehemently cursing the world. Wondering what she was going to do with the baby inside her. Or the one Emery said he had found. In her bathroom, she sunk to her knees, threw up. The vomit surged endless. Tears, snot and stomach bile drained from her face into the toilet. Around the eighth soul-ending purge, she felt her organs starting to shift. It was wrong. This was all wrong! She prayed for an end to her sickness, but what she ached for more than anything was to wretch up their little kidney bean bastard of a child. Just be done with it.

  Sitting up on her knees, sweat pouring down her face, her hands on the toilet seat and her hair hanging limp and damp, she lowered a hand to her stomach and muttered to the baby inside of her.

  “I hate you,” she said. “I hate you.”

  Paris is Lovely This Time of Year

  1

  Orianna woke up in her own home, drove over to the country club where she flat out owned the circuit weights with her new muscles, swam twenty laps in the pool, then showered and dressed and powered her ultra sexy S550 coupe right to the Whole Foods on Emerson Street for organic coffee. The lightness she felt inside, the freedom from so many physical and emotional burdens of late, had her smiling and feeling great. She was budding with a happiness and an ease about herself she’d never known before. More than anything, she wanted the paparazzi to photograph her just so everyone could see her shine. Her smile waned, however, at the thought of being no one important.

  This new her, she was a ghost. A blank slate.

  She’d only just gotten her ID and credit cards. And though she was genetically flawless, she felt gorgeous for an audience of none. Unless you count strangers. Then she was eye candy to about half a dozen men she might’ve given the time of day to when she was Margaret, but not Orianna. This fresh version of herself was respectable. She wasn’t a publicity whore, or a coke addict. And she certainly wasn’t hooked on pain killers or serotonin reuptake inhibitors or, God forbid, cosmetic surgery. She was simply Orianna, the much cleaner version of her form
er self. Orianna who only had eyes for one…

  She was finally able to admit that.

  He occupied her mind constantly. Christian. Not because he was that thing she couldn’t have, and not because he was the father of her child or her former husband. What made her so in love with him was that he was not only super evolved, he was charming and so beautiful it made her new heart beat a blistering pace.

  So why did she make him wait for her? Because of Abby, of course. But did she blow it with him by doing this? By denying him? And keeping him at bay, emotionally and sexually?

  When they first met, he always used to tell her how beautiful she was, that he had to have her the minute he saw her. For her, there was something in him that drew her in, even though he hadn’t been good looking back then. Perhaps it was his tenacity. His persistence.

  Where was that persistence now?

  If they got back together, their second start would not be so easy, or so carefree. It would not be about infinite possibilities as much as it would be about forgiveness and the art of working through obstacles, both personal and familial.

  She had done so much damage, yet he still wanted her back, didn’t he?

  He did. So why was she putting him off? She decided right then, waiting for her coffee, that she needed to tell him she would be with him, but that they needed to be smart about it with Abby. She could do that. She would do that.

  Breathing a much needed sigh of relief, she felt the tension easing inside her. Her coffee came, she thanked the woman who made it, then fixed it up with a bit of milk and sweetener.

  And then, right there at the Whole Foods, she saw him: Christian. A full blown man-God spawned from a computer nerd…enjoying his own cup of coffee…with another woman.

  All the walls she’d taken down around her heart came charging back up again. And that tension that just left her chest only moments earlier—it was back.

  “Unbelievable,” she muttered to herself. For some reason, she couldn’t take her eyes off the girl.

  She was this thirty-something brunette with trendy rectangular framed glasses with real looking boobs and a killer smile and the kind of dimples that made her cute but sexy in a really annoying, really competitive way. Even worse, she fully nailed the smoking-hot-librarian-out-exercising look. We’re talking black yoga pants, black workout top, black Nike running shoes with the white soles. Jealousy tore through Orianna, leaving in its wake hostility, and a ton of resentment.

  Was he sleeping with her? Were they on a day date? Was her tan real?

  With the crush of jealously came her desire to react. To pry the woman from him. But she couldn’t. She wouldn’t. That was Margaret, and Margaret with her outrageous fits and her need to be the center of everyone’s attention was now a glob of disintegrated flesh at the bottom of some New York drain. Orianna refused to make a scene. She wouldn’t embarrass herself or Christian.

  But she couldn’t just walk away…

  You’re not married to him, she reminded herself as she stood there with her coffee. She turned her eyes to Christian as she fought to calm the storm inside her. There was that moment in time, that fork in the road where she would either be Margaret, or Orianna.

  Do the right thing, she told herself.

  Christian hadn’t seen her yet. He’d have to look over his shoulder to see her, and there was no reason for him to do that. And the young woman he was with? That little hussy? She was practically doing him with her eyes.

  Instead of leaving, or making a scene, she sat down behind the pair. Christian couldn’t see her, but Orianna, she could look the girl in the eye. In fact, she was in spitting distance.

  Orianna couldn’t help it, she listened to their conversation. Every word of it. She had her cell phone out and was pretend texting, but inside the black waters of jealousy rose. Any minute and she was going to blow up and maybe toss hot coffee on Christian, but instead she found herself captivated by the things he was saying.

  With this girl, he was talking about the psychology of a bikini wax and damn if he wasn’t funny. The girl—a girl Orianna was now certain was not in her thirties, but in her twenties—she was giggling a lot, and it was an airy, carefree, not-annoying sound.

  If she let herself admit it, she saw why Christian might like her.

  She put away her phone and her eye caught the eye of Christian’s date. The girl smiled at Orianna, and Orianna smiled back. How could she hate this girl she didn’t know? Simple, she couldn’t. Grabbing her things, she stood and left, certain she was losing Christian. Certain she’d already lost him.

  She was halfway through the parking lot when she saw the familiar Aston Martin pull up beside her S550. Inside she groaned. Okay, maybe she groaned out loud, too. Either way, she was having a massive pity party right now and it was such the wrong time for this.

  Out of the Aston Martin rose the novelist. Her affair. Was this God’s way of reminding her that she was a selfish bitch in her former life? Perhaps. Probably. With one of his patented sexy expressions, one he was directing at her, she saw the look she first fell for out at the pool at the country club. He slowed his walk when he saw her walking to her Mercedes.

  “This yours?” he asked. He was handsome, and young, but he was no longer enchanting. There was no mystery to him. After he hit on Abby, everything wondrous and delightful about him soured. She was over him and it took no effort at all.

  When he was close enough, Orianna took a final sip of her coffee, then peeled off the lid and slung the rest of it at him. He hopped out of the way, but not fast enough. Fortunately, some of it still got the front of his white button up shirt. Startled, horrified, his mouth hanging open in a sort of reverse “O” face, he was speechless.

  “Guys who drive Aston Martin’s make me sick,” she snarled. She must look crazy, but it didn’t matter. Gone was her old face, her fillers, implants and invisible scars; the anger on tap at the drop of a hat, however, still remained. And it reminded her of how Christian had behaved on their last date with the pesky photographer, and how Abby was with the French lady at lunch the other day.

  “You threw it at me because…I drive an Aston Martin?” the novelist exclaimed, looking at his ruined clothes.

  “No,” she said, unlocking her door, “I threw it at you because you’re ugly, your novels suck and you look exactly like someone I absolutely hate.” Gracefully, proudly, she got in the car, but before closing the door, she said, “If you don’t move, I swear to Jesus I’ll run your ass over.”

  He moved; she left.

  So much for the good day she started out having.

  2

  Orianna was halfway home when she spun the wheel, flipped a U-Turn and headed straight over to Christian’s home. If he showed up with that girl, Orianna would be there and he’d have some serious explaining to do. As pissed off as she was, that would be a confrontation she now had to have. A confrontation the old Margaret would have craved. As for Orianna, however, warning bells were crashing around in her head right then, telling her to step away from the ledge.

  No, the old voice said. She couldn’t let him get away with it.

  At Christian’s house, she used the key he gave her and walked inside. When she entered the kitchen, Rebecca screamed and dropped her bowl of cereal. The porcelain dish shattered on the tile floor. The whole ordeal set both their nerves on edge.

  “You scared me,” Rebecca said.

  “Oh my gosh, I’m sorry!” What am I doing? Orianna thought. This is reckless, careless and inconsiderate! Wait a sec. “Aren’t you supposed to be with your tutor?” she asked.

  “At eleven.”

  “Eleven? Is that what time you start?”

  “I like to sleep in,” she said. “Christian understands.”

  “Mr. Swann,” Orianna corrected. She could hardly believe her ex-husband had taken in this beautiful twenty year old girl. What was he thinking? Did she have a crush on him? Good God, how could she not? Everyone did. Wasn’t that the point?

 
“I prefer to call him Mr. Swann,” Rebecca said, “but he insists I call him Christian.”

  Orianna studied the girl’s eyes when she said it and decided she saw no signs of attraction at the mention of him. Rebecca had the mental equivalent of a pre-teen, for now. This wouldn’t last forever. The girl knelt over the broken bowl, the spilled milk and the Cheerios, then went to work picking up the mess.

  “How long are you going to live here?” Orianna asked. Rebecca shrugged her shoulders the same as a child. It was cute. “Don’t you have parents who will be missing you?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She stopped what she was doing, moved her long, red hair out of her face then looked up at Orianna. “My father stabbed my mother to death with a knife, then he tried to kill me. So yes, I’m sure.”

  Orianna startled. The way the beautiful redhead said this with perfectly parched eyes and minimal expression spoke volumes about her life and state of mind. She went back to picking up the largest shards of broken porcelain. Whatever tenderness Rebecca possessed as a young girl was most assuredly cleaved from her that day. No longer was she an innocent. She was now a victim. A survivor.

  “I’m so sorry,” Orianna said. She didn’t know whether to hug her or say more or change the subject altogether.

  “What are you doing here?” Rebecca finally asked.

  “Waiting for Christian.”

  “He’s out.”

  “I know. I saw him at Whole Foods.”

  “Why didn’t you talk to him there?”

  Orianna thought about this for a second, then said, “He was with a girl. They looked like they were enjoying each other’s company.”

  “Bethany,” Rebecca said.

  “You know her?” Orianna said.

  “She’s my tutor.”

  “Jesus Christ,” she mumbled. Torrents of jealousy battered the shores of her heart. She had a hard time catching her breath.

  Rebecca dumped the broken bowl’s pieces in the garbage, stood and fetched a dish cloth to wipe the floor clean. To Orianna she said, “Jesus Christ what?”