Tormented Part 2: A Dark High School Bully Romance (Elginvale High)
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Tormented Part 2
Esme Devlin
Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
AUTHOR NOTE
Introduction
Okay… a little recap for those of you who read the first book a while ago. I know how the cliffs are ruining us all and I’m a victim just as much as you guys.. haha!
So:
Shaun is a dick, but we love him. A lovable dick. Or prick, as we mostly say in Scotland.
Lacey has just found out her father has arranged for her to marry Liam McGuiness. She’s not happy (who would be?) but at the end of the last book we saw her breaking things off with Shaun (because as much as we love him, he’s a dick).
Shaun takes this news about as well as a child takes cough medicine, and storms off in a huffy huff to speak to his dad, and tell him what he plans to do.
And that is where the story continues…
I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Esme x
Chapter 1
LACEY
Well, that went about as well as I could have expected it to.
He didn’t manhandle me out of the school or push me up against a wall. I didn’t see his jaw tick or his hands clench into fists. What he did, though… maybe that was worse.
Your own father would sell you to the highest bidder.
I can’t deny his words stung, because they’re completely true. I only have one parent. You’re supposed to depend on a parent to fight your corner.
Unconditional love.
When you’re a parent, you do what’s best for your children. You put their needs before yours.
My father claims that’s what he’s doing, but deep down I don’t believe him.
We have enough money. We have a nice house and we have nice cars. He has offshore companies in tax havens, and I have more in my college fund than most folks do in their pension pot.
It’s not a case of doing what’s best for me… it’s a case of doing what he wants.
To hell with what I want.
I don’t want to marry Liam, but a small part of me enjoyed telling Shaun I was going to.
He started this little game we’ve been playing. He’s had the upper hand from the start, while I’ve just been fumbling around in the darkness.
I’m exhausted.
Mentally exhausted.
I don’t know how to fight him because I don’t know what he wants. But now, whether he actually did like me or whether this was just a plan to break my heart and run me out of town, it’s over.
And I feel like I’ve won.
I feel like I’ve had my justice.
I wanted revenge, but maybe that was an unrealistic expectation. Just knowing that he didn’t get what he wanted in the end is enough for me.
I can move on.
The bell rings to signal the end of the day and I head out to the car park to meet Liam. I tie my hair back in a ponytail and put on my game-face. If I can crush Shaun Keagan’s expectations without flinching, then Liam McGuiness should be a walk in the park.
“You’ve decided?” he asks, his face expectant. He looks like a puppy who’s been waiting patiently for a treat. I haven’t even made it to the car park yet, and he’s still a good few meters away.
I roll my eyes at him and keep walking while he syncs into step beside me.
“I’ve decided,” I tell him, keeping my eyes fixed straight ahead.
“And?” He puts his arm out to stop me walking any further and spins me around to face him.
“And I’ve told Shaun that I’m going to marry you—”
He cuts me off before I can finish my sentence.
“Oh, Lacey! You have no idea how happy I am to hear that. I promise, I’ll be the best husband you could ever imagine. I’ll—”
“Liam, you need to calm down.” I put my hand on his chest to stop him. “I told Shaun I was going to marry you, and you can tell your father and my father if it makes you feel better. We’re not doing it for real though. We’ll pretend like we just couldn’t wait so we eloped, or something. No one will know any different.”
He looks at me like I’ve physically stabbed him.
I can see a thousand questions crossing over his face, but he finally calms down and straightens it up. He swallows. “Can I ask why?”
“Are you actually mental? Do you know what year this is? What planet you’re on?” I can’t even fully comprehend the mindset of a person who thinks marrying someone for any reason other than love and commitment is acceptable. Not business arrangements, not company shares, not gentleman’s agreements, and certainly not to escape a may-or-may-not be real secret cult.
“Lace, I know it’s soon and perhaps unexpected. But this makes sense. We would be great together — we’re so well matched. We can grow up together, learn to love together.” He looks at me with such conviction in his eyes that I almost pity him.
I would pity him if it wasn’t so fucking ridiculous.
I turn on my heels and head towards the car. “I thought you said this was about keeping me safe?” I call back, not even bothering to look over my shoulder.
So this wasn’t really about keeping me safe. He just wants me for himself. Fucking idiots, all of them. But especially my dad for agreeing to this madness.
I arrive home and surprise-surprise, he’s working away. Again.
Alice is here though, she’s out in the back garden clipping back a rose bush. I go outside to see her since it’s a warm afternoon and after the day I’ve had, I’m thankful for some company.
“I don’t know what time you technically finish,” I say, “but would you like to stay for dinner?”
She turns around and smiles, putting her snips down on the grass. “I would have loved to, dear, it’s just I have a husband at home who doesn’t know the way to the kitchen in his own feckin house. The old arse would probably keel over if I wasn’t home to make his dinner for him,” she tells me, winking.
I chuckle and sit myself down on the patio chair. “I didn’t know you were married?”
“Oh aye, married at 16, and every bit of it a life sentence… I’d have got less in the jail if I’d just followed my head and murdered the bastard the day I met him,” she says with a smile. Her words are prickly but her eyes are dancing.
I laugh at her. “It can’t have been that bad, surely?”
“Oh Christ! The stories I could tell you. He didn’t make it easy, put it that way. We still fight like cat and dog to this day,” she says, standing up and dusting off the dirt from her apron. “Cup of tea?”
I nod. “Yes please, I can make it though?”
She swats her arm as if to say, don’t be ridiculous and I smile and follow her into the kitchen.
Her words remind me of the conversation I had with Shaun, where he was talking about his gran and grandad and
tried to claim that kind of relationship was a good thing.
“You don’t get tired of it? I mean, still fighting after all these years?” I ask her. I fetch the milk from the fridge and set it down on the counter next to her.
“Maybe I would if I didn’t always win,” she says with a shrug, then she grins at me. “The thing with my Jim is,” she continues, filling up the kettle at the sink. “He likes to think he’s in charge and he knows best. He likes to think he’s winning whatever it is we’re fighting about. I guess I just learned to let him think that he was.”
Her Jim sounds a little like someone I know.
“Doesn’t that get old fast though?” I quiz her.
She stops what she’s doing and turns to face me. “Do you know what I think would get old fast? Not caring enough to even bother fighting.”
Should I tell her? Should I ask for her advice? I don’t really know how to do this. But Alice seems knowledgeable. Fuck it.
“I think I know a man like your Jim. I’ve known him two weeks and I’m already drained,” I put the remark out like it's nothing, just a casual bit of chit-chat. I want to speak to her about it but I don’t even know where to begin. She fills the cups with tea and I start to think maybe she’s not going to say anything else.
“Do you like him?” she finally asks.
I think about that for a minute. “Sometimes. But I know I shouldn’t. He’s done some fucked up things — not to me,” I add that little lie because I’m ashamed to admit, even to her, that I started out as his victim, “but you’re not supposed to like people who do bad things, are you?”
Alice shrugs while she takes our cups over to the table and sits down. “I don’t know about that, but it seems to me that if no one likes the bad person, then what's to stop the bad person doing bad things?”
Hmm. I see where she’s going with this. Villains need love too, and all that. “You have a point,” I say, taking a sip of my tea while I think about it. “But what if you can’t change the bad person? What if you’re not even sure you want to change them?”
I don’t know if she’ll understand the second part of my question.
Maybe a part of me wants Shaun to be telling the truth and wants him to like me. I definitely want him to stop trying to ruin my life. But do I want him to change completely?
That’s a harder question to answer. There’s another man who wants me, and that one is all sickly sweet and ‘babe’. Liam couldn’t be poured into a fight if you melted him, he’s light in all the places Shaun is dark. On paper, Liam is everything I should want, everything my father wants, everything you’re supposed to want.
And yet he doesn’t make me feel the way Shaun does.
I’m scared that I could live my whole life without anyone ever making me feel the way Shaun does.
And somehow I don’t think I’d feel this way if Shaun was just your regular, average nice guy.
“So, you fall for the bad guy. You won’t be the first — christ knows I wasn’t — and you won’t be the last either. Maybe you get hurt, maybe you don’t. Maybe you end up brokenhearted, but then again, maybe you end up like me, 50 years later, the glint in his eye still gives you butterflies and the grand-bairns keep you awake all night.”
I laugh at the mental image of us ever having grandchildren. I’d have to survive having actual children with him first, God help me.
“You do what you want to do. Either way, who is judging you?” she asks.
“No one… I’m judging myself,” I tell her with a shrug.
“Exactly. And we’re always our own worst critic.”
Chapter 2
SHAUN
Hours later and her words still fucking sting. I’m used to her harsh tongue — hell it’s usually a turn on. But this time is different. This time, her words actually reflect her actions and I can’t deny that it’s ripped me a new one.
If even a tiny part of me thought for a second that this was good for her, I would have let her go. I never thought I’d see the day where I said that, but it’s true. I’m used to taking what is mine. I’m used to fighting. When you fall off, you get back up and you try the fuck again. But I wouldn’t have fought her if I thought she’d be happier without me.
I want her to be happy.
But this just doesn’t feel right.
And the worst part of it all is that she thinks it is. She’s so used to not being cared for that she thinks this is normal. A business agreement. A transaction. A number on a ledger. I’ll take Liam down for what he did to my sister, but I’ll enjoy taking her dad down just as well.
Piece of shit.
There is also a part of me that’s angry with her too, for being so fucking naïve. Why is it she can’t see any wrong in her dad, or in Liam? And yet with me she’s this strong, resilient force that dares to be reckoned with?
She lets everyone else walk all over her while she puts all of her energy into fighting me. It’s both infuriating and frustrating at the same time.
I park the car on her drive. It’s 4.45am, and the sun is about to rise. Too early for anyone to be awake, but not early enough for anyone who might be awake to think twice about seeing the housekeeper’s car parked on Lacey’s driveway.
My gran is an angel and refuses me nothing.
How can I say no to that face when it’s enough to stop traffic?
She said that to me once when I was just a sprog who wanted more chocolate pudding. And she’s been saying it ever since, even when I asked her to come out of retirement for me.
I don’t regret doing that. Lacey will probably go mental when she finds out, but at the time it seemed the easiest way to know her and daddys whereabouts, and more importantly, to understand how much further I needed to push her before she cracked.
I get out of my gran’s Volkswagen Golf and head around to the back garden, where she left the sitting-room window unlocked as usual. As I get closer, I notice she’s clipped that arsehole of a rose bush after me bitching about it on Sunday.
Good girl.
The other times I’ve done this, I’ve not cared about making any noise. In fact, the other times I’ve actively tried to startle her.
This time though, I’m quieter than a mouse. I don’t let a single floorboard creak on the way up the stairs. As much as a struggle that ends in a fucking is right up there on my hot list, this isn’t the time for it.
Plenty of time for that when she’s safe.
She’s sound asleep. I can barely see her, but I can hear her breathing.
I unlock my phone to give me a wee bit of light. The flash light would be too much, but with this at least I can make sure I’m not jabbing the needle right into her eyeball or something.
I take a seat on the edge of her bed, the mattress shifting under my weight. She sighs in her sleep and sticks her arm under her pillow. I watch her for a few minutes, thinking how peaceful she looks now and wondering what her face will be like the next time I see her.
She’s going to hate me, but I told her I didn’t care if she hated me, and I wasn’t lying.
Doing this will prove to her I wasn’t lying.
Eventually.
It’ll all come out in the wash, son.
My wee gran used to say that to me too, usually after I’d fucked something up.
I don’t see this as a fuck up, though.
I see this as a necessary evil.
Chapter 3
LACEY
I wake up and I’m not in my bed.
I don’t think I’m even in my bedroom.
The surface I’m sleeping on feels harder. My body feels slow, groggy, and every muscle aches.
I feel like I’ve been hit by a bus.
Terror trickles down my spine when I wake up enough to realize that this isn’t a dream.
This is real.
Where the fuck am I?
It’s pitch dark, and I scramble up from whatever surface I’m lying on, only to wince in pain as I hear the clanking of metal and my leg jerks.
I’m stuck.
I reach my hand down under the layers of blankets and feel a hard lump of metal, like a clamp, fitted to my ankle.
I shift my body forward, following the thick chain until I feel that it’s attached to the wall by a heavy metal ring and secured with three thick bolts.
This can’t be happening. This doesn’t happen in real life.
I can’t breathe.
I try to back away from the wall but I’m shaking so much I can barely take the weight of my body on my hands. My chest tightens, my heart hammers and I struggle to find enough air.
Oh god.
Oh, fucking god.
Fear washes over me, consuming every part of my body until I feel like I’m sweating all over and I’m struggling to think cohesively.
I think I might pass out.
I don’t want to pass out.
But the walls are closing in on me. The world is going even darker than it is already.
I try to lie down, I try to focus on breathing but it‘s like I’ve forgotten what to do.
I’ve forgotten how to breathe.
I’m going to die right here.
I’m going to die.
“Lacey?”
Someone shakes me awake. A familiar voice.
A woman’s voice.
I’m confused. Was I dreaming? Was it real? Is it over?
I open my eyes and see Alice looking down at me. Her face is familiar, but our surroundings are not. I look behind her at the ceiling. Wooden beams. Loose cables. This isn’t my house.