Tormented Part 2: A Dark High School Bully Romance (Elginvale High)

by Esme Devlin

“Of course I’ve not forgotten about that,” she spits. “But I won’t have him going to prison for a crime he didn’t commit.”

  I open my car door, staring down at her while she stares up at me. “The way I see it, selling your daughter should be a crime.”

  Then I get in my car without a backwards glance at her.

  She’ll see it was the right thing to do, the only thing to do.

  Her dad needs to be taught a lesson, firstly as punishment for what he did to her, and secondly because if he ever hopes to be a part of her life then he needs to see it’s not him who’s in charge anymore.

  We already have his defense set up, he won’t be convicted. From what Tony’s dad tells me, neither of them will do any time, but McGuiness will go into administration and the tax debts will be so high he’ll be selling everything except his own son.

  I would have told her that daddy dearest will come out smelling of roses if her attitude hadn’t pissed me off so much — and I will tell her, as soon as she calms the fuck down a bit.

  I’ve not even clipped my seatbelt when the passenger door swings open and she hops up, slamming it shut behind her.

  “I won’t fucking have it, Shaun.”

  I laugh and shake my head. She’s seriously lucky she’s my wife and not some ride off the street because I wouldn’t stand for this shit otherwise.

  “You’ll have what I say you have.”

  She shakes her head. “No. Not anymore. You’ll take back whatever you did, or I swear you will regret it.”

  I turn to face her. What the fuck is she going to do? Stomp her feet? Go in a mood? Refuse to spread her legs for me? She’s been doing that all week and while it hasn’t been my favorite and my balls are bursting, it’s hardly got me shaking in my boots either.

  “Make me.”

  Her face breaks into a smile, no, a smirk, and the bitch cocks her head at me. “You think you’re so fucking smart, don’t you?”

  I smile right back at her. “Would you have fallen for me if I was stupid?”

  She chuckles, a throaty sound like velvet and I feel my cock twitching between my legs.

  “Maybe you’re too smart, maybe that will be your downfall. You make sure my dad is released, or I toddle off to Liam McGuiness and inform him exactly why your dad wants his land.”

  I stiffen at her words, staring at her and trying to figure out from her expression if she’s bluffing. What does she know? And more importantly, how the fuck does she know?

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I watch her intently and her eyes practically fucking sparkle.

  “Oh really?” She flicks her eyebrow. “So you have no idea about the little piece of land south-west of the town? The one that’s split right down the middle between you and Liam?”

  I swallow, not sure what to say next. How the fuck does she know about the mine?

  If she knows about that then maybe she knows about everything. But my thoughts about what she does and doesn’t know are quickly wiped to the side when something else hits me. Whatever she knows, she’s willing to use it against me to get what she wants.

  I feel like she’s just stabbed me right in the gut.

  Not the gut, the back.

  After everything I’ve fucking done for her.

  I turn the engine on, shoving the car into gear and reversing out of the space twice as quick as I should be.

  “Shaun?”

  “Put your fucking seatbelt on.”

  “What about my car? Let me out!”

  My hand jams down on the button at the side of my seat, the one that locks all the doors — not that she would dare to jump out anyway, I’m flooring it.

  She slides back into her seat and I hear the clicking of her seatbelt a few seconds later.

  Good fucking girl.

  I don’t even know where I’m going, I just know I need to drive. I need to think.

  She doesn’t know what she’s done.

  This is bigger than her just betraying me.

  They would kill her. They wouldn’t hesitate for a second, and there would be absolutely nothing I could do. Even just the fact that she knows, and she isn’t one of us, that’s a problem in itself.

  “Who else knows?”

  She pauses for a second before she answers. “No one.”

  Lies.

  Lies, lies, lies.

  “Stevie?”

  “She has nothing to do with it!”

  “Bullshit.”

  I whip my phone out and text Calvin.

  They’re about to learn what happens to snitches in this town.

  Chapter 19

  LACEY

  I’ve betrayed Shaun before.

  Well, I let him think that I was betraying him before, when I told him I intended to marry Liam. That time he walked away, he couldn’t stand the sight of me, but ultimately he fixed the problem.

  Okay, so his fixing the problem was actually abducting me, but he fixed it in his mind, nonetheless.

  I thought he would do the same this time.

  I knew I could only play this card once, and since I didn’t even know for sure if that little scrap of land was significant, the whole thing was a gamble.

  But, judging by his reaction, we did find something important that night at the warehouse.

  Something that could destroy the whole lot of them.

  I wouldn’t really have ran away and told Liam, because I reckon that would be the straw that broke my own back. I just wanted him and his family to stop playing God with me and my family.

  But apparently gods don’t like being threatened.

  My fingers clutch on to the door handle so tight that my knuckles turn white. He’s flying down the road, clearly not giving two shits that it’s the middle of the afternoon and there are people everywhere.

  “You’re driving like a lunatic.”

  He doesn’t even turn around, but his face breaks into a smile that makes him look every bit as insane as the way he’s driving. “Don’t you fucking act all concerned-wife on me now, darlin’. You had your chance at that.”

  “Where are you taking me?”

  He sits back in his seat, relaxed as fuck and sticks his elbow up on the side of the door, his fingers playing with his bottom lip.

  “Shaun, where are we going?”

  When he chuckles, as if there is a private joke only he’s in on, it feels like there’s a brick lodged in the pit of my stomach.

  “We’re going to the place where secrets go to die.”

  We drive for well over an hour in silence. I’m disorientated and have absolutely no idea where we are, but I swear it feels like we’re going around in circles. Maybe that’s his intention.

  I tried saying his name a few times, to see if he would speak to me, to see if there was any way of explaining, but he didn’t even acknowledge it.

  The sun is setting, it’s evening now, and he’s barely changed position in his seat. He’s causal and tense, all at the same time. My stomach starts growling and I shift around in my seat, trying to disguise the noise.

  The mix of hunger and nerves is almost nauseating.

  The place where secrets go to die.

  What does that even mean?

  I’m caught halfway between thinking it’s a place where the truth comes out, or, what he said was actually exactly what he meant. It’s the place they kill people who discover their secret.

  He won’t kill me though. I refuse to believe it. He almost killed that guy, the one he punched, and he couldn’t deal with it, he admitted to me that it ate him up inside.

  He won’t kill me.

  I think the words inside my head again and again, like a prayer, and try to remain calm.

  He pulls off the B-road we’re on, and then the track turns into grass. The car bumps over the rough terrain, and I grip onto the side tighter, trying desperately to keep my bum in the seat.

  Some distance ahead there’s a wooded area, and that sinking feeling in my stomach heightens to unbear
able levels when I realize this is our destination.

  There are no people here.

  No one will hear me scream.

  If the worst did happen, no one is coming to save me.

  Panic rises in my chest until it’s almost painful, the pressure of it shortening my breath and making me feel like my lungs are being constrained.

  “Shaun, I wasn’t going to tell.”

  I watch him, thinking that this has gone too far. If he wanted to scare me, then it worked. I am scared.

  “You win, okay?”

  He looks over at me. “Your biggest mistake was thinking you were even a player.”

  He slams on the brakes and the car stops a few meters away from the edge of the woods. It’s dark in there, the trees some of the highest I’ve seen, the branches thick with dark green leaves that block out any trace of sunlight.

  I want to tell him that he said I was on his team. I was a player. But that would likely sound ridiculous, considering I just threatened to switch sides.

  I just didn’t want my dad to go to prison. As much as I despise him, he’s still my dad. Surely Shaun, of all people, could understand that?

  He jumps out of the car and walks around, and I wonder if I should run. The road is about a mile back, I could at least make it to the road before it gets dark and then maybe a passing car would take pity on me.

  But I’d have to outrun him.

  Maybe I could for a little while, but a full mile, at least?

  Too late.

  The door swings open. I unclip my seatbelt and scramble over to the drivers side of the car.

  “Does it look like I’m in the mood for a struggle fuck?”

  I swallow, my heart beating in my ears.

  “Shaun, I wasn’t going to tell him!”

  He stands there, arm resting on the door and his eyes dark, piercing me. “Good. Still doesn’t change the fact that you know though, does it? Get out of the car.”

  I shake my head at him. I’m not going anywhere with him, not when he’s acting fucking crazy.

  He sighs and shakes his head back at me, but his is slow, calculated, whereas my shake was desperate and panicked.

  He grabs a hold of my ankle and I kick my free leg at him, but he catches it easily.

  In that second I hate the fact that I was born in such a weak body. If I survive this, I’m going to change that.

  I’ll never be as strong as him but at least I won’t be so fucking helpless.

  He pulls me across the seats and I thrash at him. My legs, my arms, my whole fucking body wriggling like a worm.

  He holds me carefully, as if I’m every ounce the delicate little flower I feel.

  I hit the grass with a thud, and instantly scramble towards him, trying to get him down with me so I can claw his eyes out.

  I may not have strength, but I have nails.

  It works but not in the way I intended it to. He pins me down. The grass is wet, cold, just like his eyes. I stop struggling and the minute I do I feel tears forming in my own.

  Don’t you dare fucking cry.

  “Hey,” he says, his voice gentle. He shushes me, like you would an infant, and I want to spit in his face. “You need to settle.”

  His weight bares down heavy on my chest and I can barely breathe. I squeeze my eyes closed, trying to compose myself.

  He’s never hurt me before, not unless we were having sex and it was… needed. He has looked at me like he wanted to, but he swore he would never hurt a hair on my head.

  I believed him.

  I trusted him.

  “What are you going to do?” My voice starts out strong but breaks at the end.

  He bends down and pecks my lips.

  Bastard.

  When he speaks his voice is gruff. He’s just as breathless as I am. “That, princess, is for you to decide.”

  I search his face, but while I’m looking for some explanation in his eyes, I hear a sound in the distance.

  A car?

  I look around, desperately trying to see where the sound is coming from, but the grass is too long. Shaun doesn’t even glance in the direction — he just smiles.

  He already knew it was coming.

  Whoever it is, they’re not here to save me.

  The car approaches and he keeps me there, pinned under him on the cold, wet grass. The bright lights of an Evoque come into view and I already know who’s going to step out the door before the engine quiets.

  Calvin and Stevie.

  “You said it was a date! What the fuck is this?”

  She runs over and her face comes into vision behind Shaun’s.

  “I’m going to let you up, okay? You run, I catch you. You struggle, I put you over my shoulder. Understand?”

  I don’t nod my head. I won’t give him the satisfaction of that. Instead I stare at him, my eyes narrow and my jaw locked.

  He just laughs and rolls over, dragging me with him until I’m on top, and then he sits up.

  “There’s something about you when you’re angry… it’s like crack for my cock.”

  “Fucking psychopath!”

  He laughs again and reaffirms my diagnosis, and then pulls the both of us up.

  I look at Stevie who’s backing away from Shaun, backing away from Calvin. She looks at me and I can tell by her eyes she’s urging me to run.

  But his grip around my wrist is like a vice.

  “Come on,” Calvin says.

  “Did you bring it?” Shaun asks.

  Calvin nods and throws the bag I only just noticed he was carrying onto his back.

  Shaun tugs my arm and drags us forward in the direction of the woods. I stall, my arm jerking and the muscles in my shoulder straining. I glance back at Stevie and she just stands there, her mouth open in shock.

  “You too, dollface,” Calvin shouts to her, without even looking back over his shoulder.

  “Where are we going?”

  He mustn’t have told her. She won’t know I told Shaun.

  “They know we found out,” I tell her.

  Realization dawns on her face and she swallows, looking between the three of us.

  “What are you going to do?”

  She doesn’t ask Calvin, who has stopped right at the edge of the woods. She asks Shaun.

  “As I said to the wee princess here,” he says, nodding at me. “That’s for you two to decide. Now if you don’t move your arse, I’ll remove the decision.”

  Her mouth drops open, and she shakes her head, as if that’s going to make it all go away. As if this is a dream.

  “Come on,” I urge her.

  I don’t know why I’m urging her. Maybe because I believe his threat. Maybe because I believe his promise, that he’d never hurt me.

  She starts walking, slowly and never taking her eyes off me. Shaun drags me forward again and within moments all four of us are under the canopy of the woods.

  The wind whips the leaves above our heads, and the rustle of the branches is the only sound other than our footsteps and the occasional snap of a branch. The place smells earthy and damp, like it never gets enough sunlight to properly dry out.

  We can’t walk more than five paces without changing direction to avoid a tree, and the further in we go, the less light there is.

  He must have a torch in his bag. Surely?

  On and on we keep walking. The boys say nothing to each other, and Shaun doesn’t let go of my wrist. I glance up at him, his features shrouded in the dying light but his expression hard.

  We’re going down a hill and have been for some time now. The steeper it gets, the more my school shoes slip on the loose forest floor, but Shaun catches me, hauling my arm up each time and balancing for the both of us.

  Calvin stalls and takes Stevie’s hand.

  At the foot of the hill there’s a huge pile of boulders, with a rocky cliff the height of two houses behind it. We shift direction, and I can just barely make out in the dim light that the pile of boulders surround a hole.

&nbs
p; Like a door.

  Like the entrance to a cave, or a mine.

  We approach the hole and I feel my heartbeat start to rise. I’d been trying so fucking hard to keep it under control, not to lose my shit, but I don’t want to go in there.

  It’s one of those moments where you don’t realize you’re scared of something until it’s staring you right in the face.

  I don’t like spiders — there will be spiders. Maybe even rats too. And dark. And thousands of tonnes of rock above my head, ready to crash down at any minute.

  Calvin dives into the entrance and within seconds his figure is engulfed by darkness. He vanishes in it. He’s consumed by it.

  “Shaun please, I don’t want to go in there,” I shake my head at him, my eyes pleading. “Please.”

  He bends down and kisses the top of my head, sending a shiver right through me.

  “You know what’s in there?”

  “No. We don’t know, we just guessed. Honestly we don’t know anything.”

  He looks like he’s deep in thought, and then he cocks his head at me.

  “You know enough that you can’t be trusted anymore.”

  I shake my head at him slowly and then in the corner of my eye I catch Calvin emerging from the hole.

  He’s carrying two lamps that look almost antique. I’ve seen similar before, maybe in films. I can’t be sure of the name but they have a handle, and wire mesh surrounds the place where flame would be.

  He hits the side of one with the palm of his hand and the thing sparks, a flame lighting in the center. Then he lights the other one the same way before handing it over to Shaun.

  “Stevie,” he calls, gesturing his head for her to come over.

  She takes a last look at me, her face worried, and goes to stand beside Calvin.

  Shaun tugs me, and we follow them into the cave.

  The light barely does anything to combat the darkness, in fact, it only serves to highlight just how dark it is.

  I pull in close to Shaun, gripping on to his hand like it’s the only thing that can save me. I don’t want to touch the walls, the cobwebs. I know this is ridiculous, I should be more scared of Shaun than I am of any spider… but most phobias are ridiculous.

  We go further in and the air turns colder, damper, staler. I try my hardest not to think about the rocks above my head but that’s like someone telling you not to look.