Boys And Their Toys: A Dark High School Bully Romance (Troubled Playthings Book 1)

by Tiffany Sala

  “No, I—” I could just see the side of his face as he concentrated on not driving particularly carefully, and I felt like I hardly recognised what I saw. At any other time when we’d clashed, when he’d seemed annoyed at me, there had been that hint of playfulness in his face still. It was a part of him, it seemed—but right now it was completely absent.

  Had I said things so clumsily I had convinced him I was far more worked up about the whole situation than was actually the case?

  “Like you said,” I tried again, “it was years ago. So obviously I haven’t been just sitting around going over it all this time. But when you suddenly started paying attention to me again, of course I was going to wonder again. And now you’re telling me you don’t even remember the months you spent coming up to me and acting like you liked me… yeah, that’s all in the past, but of course it’s going to make me question whether this is just something you do to girls all the time. If none of it is at all meaningful to you.”

  “Of course none of it is meaningful to me,” said Lucas. “I thought we went over that already. I’m not looking to have some relationship, I just want… well, it’s none of your business.” He was slowing the car, which was an unexpected relief. I’d thought I was starting to get past the fear of vehicles all my recent accidents had stirred up, but it was no surprise that Lucas could throw me right back in that place. “So is that what all of this is about to you, then? You think that just because I paid you some attention years ago—apparently—that we might be meant to belong together? Like we’re some destined lovers?”

  “I don’t think anything like that,” I insisted, my voice shaking in part because of that existing fear, and partly because of a new fear that Tamara’s suggestion, Lucas’s accusation, might have something in it. “I was just wondering if maybe…”

  Lucas pulled the car over so hard the tyres scraped against the edge of the sidewalk. “Get out,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I’m sick of your shit. Get out of my car.”

  “Lucas, I’m barely properly dressed, I don’t have my keys or my phone…”

  “Do you want to know why girls like you don’t ‘get the guy’, Calista?” He was looking at me now, but his eyes were dark in a way that wasn’t just the usual colour of them. I wasn’t sure he was even really seeing me like normal at all. “I bet that’s what you all talk about, in your little groups when you’re there staring out at the rest of us like we have some secret you just can’t crack. Like we’re just a bunch of meanies who won’t tell you the profound truths of life. And that’s not what it fucking is at all. You’re all just so fucking complicated. Won’t let a thing be what it is, there’s always got to be all this other shit going on under the surface. That’s why those other girls win out over you. They don’t turn something simple into a big fucking deal.”

  I felt like the venom in his voice was pinning me to my seat. It didn’t make any sense to me that he was being so vicious about something we both agreed was stupid.

  “I’m waiting, Calista,” Lucas said. “Get the fuck out. Don’t make me drag you out.”

  “You can’t mean it, it’s dark out there, I don’t even know where we are, I—”

  “Of course I fucking mean it, Callie. I don’t just say shit for no reason.”

  His shift back to my shortened name gave me a bit of hope. This was just more of Lucas being Lucas. He’d already promised to help me get back into my house, hadn’t he? The bastard just wanted to make some point, and then he’d let me back in, a bit shaken but wiser for the experience from his perspective.

  Well, I knew better than to think I could avoid playing along with his game. I opened the door and slid out, shivering more from the humiliation of it than the actual cold. I couldn’t even believe I’d started out this night thinking maybe I would be willing to sleep with Lucas, if he wanted to take things in that direction. I couldn’t even see what I’d been attracted to on the surface any more.

  Lucas reached over to slam the door in my face, and before I could process what was happening before my eyes, he had driven off into the darkness. His taillights turned a corner, and I could no longer see him.

  And now there I was, standing by the side of the road in what seemed to be an industrial part of town. It felt like the sort of place where my dad would warn me not to wait around too long at the lights. But I had no idea how to get out of it, and I doubted there would be anyone hanging around in the darkened concrete structures all around me this late at night, not that I felt good about just walking up to some random business.

  There was no way Lucas really meant to leave me out here. If I waited long enough, he would come back. He was just going to do a lap or two around the area to fuck with me. He wasn’t…

  What exactly did I think he wasn’t? This guy had driven his car into mine when I wouldn’t give him the attention he wanted. He couldn’t have known for sure I wouldn’t be seriously injured as part of that escapade. He was the one who kept going on about how inadequate my old car was, but he’d pulled that stunt anyway… because ultimately I didn’t matter to him, and he knew he would be fine in his tank of a vehicle.

  He was the one who kept showing up and playing with my job, my reputation, my dignity, excusing it by exploiting the fact that I enjoyed some of the things he did to me. And then when I needed him to show up and be there for me, he was nowhere to be found. He’d already forgotten the promise he made to me at the start of our night, and I’d never asked him to make it in the first place.

  These thoughts went around and around in my head, cold hard facts taunting me like the cold hard buildings I was now staring at instead of the walls of my own bedroom, where I should have been. At first, they were unwelcome, just something my brain was doing while I waited for him to come back and get me out of this mess. By the time I’d been waiting there long enough to accept it had been far too long for him to have just taken a few laps around the suburb, however much I was trying to convince myself I didn’t know for sure without a proper way of telling the time on hand, my thoughts had gotten a lot of experience in the best way to tell me what I didn’t want to hear.

  Okay, so Lucas was not the way he was for no reason. He’d had hardships in his life, he had suffered, and I now understood some of the ways in which it had all twisted him. But I couldn’t let that excuse what he was doing to me. I couldn’t just keep playing along with him, hoping to eventually hit the right combination of buttons that would make everything okay, maybe even make him start treating me like another human with needs and rights. There was no excuse for him not realising I was entitled to that already.

  He was just—he was taking advantage of the fact that I was lower in status than him in every possible way, using me as some sort of punching bag to make himself feel better. And I was enabling him, because I really believed he was better than me. I always had. That was why I’d agreed at the age of ten to go to that stupid dance with him even though I was no more enthusiastic about the idea than he’d apparently been, why I’d let him set the scene for every one of our intimate encounters… why I hadn’t told anyone how he was manipulating me even though there were plenty of people willing to listen. It would have been terrible if I ruined his life over this… my life didn’t factor into the equation.

  I had to stop enabling him. I especially had to stop enabling him at my own expense.

  And having made that decision, I was really damn proud of myself… but it didn’t do anything to help me get out of the mess I was presently in.

  Well, the best thing to do would be to get to a main road. As a driver myself, I might recognise a street name that would help me navigate back to territory I knew.

  It was a bit of a weak hope. Until now I hadn’t owned a car that seemed likely to stand up to a lot of battering, and petrol was expensive, so I’d only ever driven to the same few places I needed to regularly. School and back. Work and back. All of Dane’s jobs took place on new housing developments, so once I knew how to
find the neighbourhood I at least made no worse of a fool of myself than anyone else would on streets that hadn’t been there a year before. I’d taken my mother through all sorts of unfamiliar places to the dentist once when she’d needed some work done, but I’d had to plan out the route the night before on a printed-out map of the area, or we would have made it there about a month late. I wasn’t good at navigating at the best of times, and on foot even locations that were familiar were bound to disorient me.

  But I wasn’t just going to stand there by the side of the road until someone happened to drive past who recognised me, so I picked a direction and started walking. The world around me was quiet, except for the odd squealing groan or crash I couldn’t guess at the source of, that made me move a little quicker for a few steps until my tired, shaking legs brought me back to my former pace. Every shadow was menacing. There was only sporadic artificial light from poorly-maintained streetlamps, and very few cars.

  There was one vehicle that moved up behind me so quietly I didn’t notice until a black shape at my elbow made me jump back from the road, and its occupant leaned out the window, his face a mystery behind sunglasses, and said, “How about it, sweetheart?”

  “Oh, no,” I said, my mouth and tongue at odds with one another as I tried to correct him, “I’m not a prostitute.” I took a few more steps back. “I’m sorry.”

  “Nah, sweetheart,” he said, “I’m the one who owes you an apology.” And he drifted off, content to hunt the woman who would meet his needs.

  After that, I ran and hid behind a fence or a parked car every time someone else drove up a road I was walking alongside. Until one car stopped me dead three steps into my headlong flight, because it was not the sort of car I would have expected to be cruising around a bunch of warehouses late at night… and then, because it was exactly the same as the car that was supposed to be mine.

  It crossed to my side of the road and pulled in between some garbage bins left clustered on the footpath, and my eyes were drawn to a scrape next to the headlight on the nearest side to me. I’d seen a car just like this with exactly the same damage. I’d ridden in it.

  The driver’s side window rolled down to reveal dark eyes and eyebrows, framed by very straight, bright blonde hair. I took a step back, but just because the fuzzy memory that face had given me was completely out of order with what I was seeing now.

  Lucy Starling had not looked like that the last time I saw her.

  “Calista,” she said, “right?”

  “Um… yes?” Even though I knew who she was, I still wanted to run. I had a feeling I was about to hear something I wouldn’t like.

  “Get in quick please,” Lucy said, “I’m on the wrong side of the road and my fucking idiot of a brother is in hospital.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “It wasn’t much of an accident,” Lucy said. “He was tooling around like he always does, swerved to avoid a cat of all things, and plowed himself into a pole. Really messed up someone’s front yard, but he didn’t kill anyone, so I guess that’s all right, huh?”

  She glanced at me, and I wanted to shrivel up and disintegrate, sitting there in a mismatched jacket and pants, about as bogan as I could possibly be. Just needed some ugg boots and a ciggie to complete the picture. “Sorry, I’m completely frazzled, please be kind enough to ignore everything I have to say about him. Although he probably doesn’t deserve it.”

  Lucy might well be frazzled, but aside from her jittery speech there wasn’t anything about her to show it. Her tracksuit was obnoxiously glamorous, her hair brushed, her hoop earrings—I mean, unless she had already been at a party at two in the morning, she’d been able to take the second to put those things in. She was truly on a whole other level to me.

  “How did you know where to find me?” I asked.

  “I didn’t really,” Lucy said, “but when we got in to see Lucas he kept babbling about you, and I know him a bit better than the parents so I managed to put the pieces together just enough. Came up with an excuse to sneak out, something I needed to take care of for uni. They were so distraught I don’t think it sank in that I wasn’t likely to have classes to prepare for at three in the morning on a Saturday anyway.” Her smile was clearly not something she had inherited from the same place as Lucas. I was glad of that, right now. My head was in a weird place as it was, without any obvious reminders of just who I was in a car with. I couldn’t let myself think about how badly Lucas might be injured or what the accident meant in terms of him leaving me behind, or what I was even doing in Lucy’s car going to the hospital with her. I just had to let everything happen for the moment.

  Then one startling detail sank in. “Three in the morning?”

  “Well, it’s past five now,” Lucy said. “I’m sorry, it did take me a while to find you, but I can only do so much on the word of an idiot hyped up on pain medication. You weren’t anywhere near where he ended up smashing himself up.”

  I turned to stare out at the lightening sky around us. It was nearly morning—I’d been walking for hours, and I hadn’t realised. Time certainly flies when you’re out of your goddamn mind with fear.

  Lucy shot me a perfect raised eyebrow. “I will say, it must have been some fight. What a place to leave someone in the early hours of the morning.”

  “We’re not, um…” I was filled with dread at the sudden thought of Lucy having the wrong idea, and hauling me in there introducing me to Lucas’s parents as his girlfriend.

  “Oh, you don’t have to explain it to me,” Lucy said. “I live with him, remember? I know what he’s like. I just thought you might need to see how he is once you found out… and he might even like to see that you’re all right.”

  The way she said that left me convinced she really did know the situation as it stood pretty well, so I didn’t try to give her any more information she clearly didn’t want.

  It was strange sitting there alongside her, already very familiar with her car—down to that stupid fairy air freshener—but awkward about its present driver. Its proper driver.

  Then I started shaking again as we pulled into the parking at the front of the hospital. Lucy looked over me with a strange mixture of sympathy and exasperation.

  “Look, he’s fine, and you’re fine. It’s going to be all right.” She smirked. “The real question is how we explain to my parents that I somehow picked up a friend of Lucas’s on the way to and from our house.”

  Strangely enough, that really did put a stop to my worrying about being at the hospital again. After the way Lucas had behaved that night, at his most intimidating that I’d ever seen, it was no surprise I was freaked out by the thought of meeting more members of his family. Even Lucy was a confronting presence, in her way. I hadn’t done anything wrong, and I could still picture Lucas’s parents blaming me for this crash, just because I happened to be in the area when something went down.

  But when Lucy led the way into a room that brought all those claustrophobic hospital feelings rushing right back, the good-looking woman and man perched on the edges of the chairs along the far wall didn’t have any questions to ask about my presence. They hardly even looked at me. I didn’t know if Lucy was aware of it and just trying to protect her brother by acting like it was no big deal, but they clearly knew a bit about how he conducted himself too.

  Freed of the need to worry about the elder Starlings, I turned my attention to Lucas.

  Half of his face was heavily bandaged, but it didn’t quite succeed in covering up the outer extents of the bruising and swelling on his right side. His right arm was in a cast. And yet, somehow with even all that, sitting cross-legged on his bed in a hospital gown, he had almost all of his usual poise.

  His bandages kept me from reading his eyes as he looked me over.

  “Nice to see you, Callie,” he said, each word slow and careful. I guessed talking must hurt a bit. “Could you guys leave the two of us alone for a moment?”

  Lucas’s dad got out of his seat so fast he banged his head
on the edge of a cupboard behind him, but none of the Starlings acknowledged this incident, so I kept quiet too, though I felt my face burning with the need to say something.

  “I suppose we’ll see if we can find a twenty-four hour McDonalds in the vicinity,” his mother suggested, taking the father’s hand.

  I stared after the three of them incredulously as they filed out. I couldn’t imagine people that fit having junk food, ever. I felt like I was the heroine in one of those vampire movies, where she’s just met the ridiculously beautiful family and is never going to feel the same about her own stumpy human body again.

  The night I’d had—thanks to him—on top of my now heightened awareness of how hideous I must look to his family, made me mean.

  “Well, Lucas, I guess you’re not going to be quite so pretty as you once were when this is all done.” I sat down hard on the end of his bed.

  “Callie,” said Lucas, talking fast, “I was going to come back for you. I never planned to leave you out there. I just…” He gestured to himself with his good hand, breathing hard.

  It had been painful for him to say those words, but he’d pushed them out anyway. Even for someone as apparently careless of his own personal safety as Lucas, that said a lot.

  “Knock it off, please, Lucas,” I said, and I could see from the way his eyebrows twitched before a wince that I’d surprised him. “I’m not sure I believe you, and I’m not sure there’s anything you could say that would change my mind, so perhaps you should keep quiet for your own sake.”

  He tried a laugh, but pain and something else—something I would never have believed could be a part of the Lucas I knew—made the sound rather unconvincing. “This is some way to handle a man who’s just been in a terrible accident, Calista.”