Cruel Elite: A Dark High School Bully Romance (Princes of Ravenlake Academy Book 3)

by Nicole Fox

  “Wright!” comes a clipped voice from the entrance to my cubicle.

  Oh, boy. Speak of the devil.

  I spin to face Debbie, a Twizzler still hanging out of my mouth. She is a stern-looking Scottish woman with perfectly coiffed blonde hair, black-lined eyes, and lipstick that is never out of place. She has a commendably infinite selection of bold-colored pantsuits. Today’s number is a fuchsia blazer and slacks with a bright white top underneath. She looks about forty-five, but in my two years of working for the paper, I have never heard her discuss her age. I heard a rumor that someone in the office tried to throw her a birthday party once and the person was never heard from again.

  “How’s the story going?” she asks in her thick Glaswegian accent.

  “Good.” I bite off the end of the Twizzler. “I was just—”

  She waves a hand. “Nope, all I need to know. I’m just here to give you your assignment for tomorrow.” She grins. “You’ll like this one.”

  My heart picks up. Debbie’s finally going to give me something meaty to sink my teeth into.

  “It’s a dog show!” she announces.

  “Oh.”

  “Don’t look so disappointed.” She leans against my cubicle wall. “You haven’t heard the best part.”

  I cock a brow, waiting.

  Debbie leans in a little. “All the dogs are celebrity impersonators.”

  “Debbie!” I groan, letting my head fall back in frustration. “That’s just more of the same crap I always get. Why would you get me all excited?”

  She kicks the bottom of my chair, startling me upright, then folds her arms and glowers at me.

  “You and your lack of patience again,” she scolds. “Do you know how lucky you are to even have this job? I’ve got a dozen résumés in the drawer who would love to write a story about a parade of dogs in wee outfits.”

  “Yes,” I sigh. “You’re right. I’m sorry. Thank you.”

  She smiles and leaves.

  I know Debbie’s right, but I can’t help my frustration. As cute as the dog show does actually sound, I want to write stories that make a difference.

  The clock hits five-thirty and I start to pack up. I don’t feel like staying late today. I just want to curl up on the sofa with Grant and a big glass of red wine and watch some mindless TV. In fact, that sounds exactly like what the doctor ordered.

  It takes nearly forty minutes to get from the newspaper offices in Manhattan to our loft in Brooklyn. Grant is lucky—he was just made junior partner at a commercial law firm in downtown Brooklyn and his walk to work is less than ten minutes.

  It’s an unseasonably warm evening for November, but there’s still a bite in the air that makes me draw my coat closer around myself as I walk from the subway to our apartment building. I walk up the front steps and into the waiting elevator, dreaming of a full-bodied pinot noir.

  The apartment door is unlocked, which is surprising. As close as his office is, Manhattan law is no joke, and Grant works tough hours. He’d said he wouldn’t be too late tonight, though, so I wonder where he’s gotten off to. I drop my keys in the bowl and walk into the living room, expecting to find him there, but he is nowhere to be seen.

  “Grant?” I call. The aged floorboards whine under my feet as I walk toward the bedroom, dropping my bag on the sofa on the way.

  Squeak. Squeak.

  I’ve been arguing with Grant since we first moved in together about the mattress in our bedroom. He loves it, but I can’t stand the creaky springs. The thing is, though, that the springs only make noise whenever he and I get down to some adult business. Seeing as how I’m standing out in the hallway, I start to realize with growing horror that that means…

  Oh, Jesus.

  When I push open the bedroom door with fingers that suddenly feel pale and trembly, I’m greeted with something I never, ever wanted to see.

  The first thing I see is Grant’s pale ass, clenching as he thrusts.

  The second thing I see is the horrified face of the woman beneath him, who has just locked eyes with me and realized—way, way too late—that she’s made a big mistake.

  My jaw hits the floor.

  The woman tries to push Grant off of her and cover up with the comforter, but it takes the big oaf a second to realize what’s happening. When he finally does and looks up to see me standing in the doorframe, his face falls.

  “It’s not what it looks like!” he yells. He’s leaping out of bed, pulling on a pair of boxers—the ones I got him for his birthday last year, I notice—and gesticulating wildly.

  Looking at him makes me feel nauseous, so I look at the girl instead. She’s huddled beneath the comforter. Her bottle-blonde hair is in wild disarray and her eyes are wide with shock.

  “It’s not what it looks like!” Grant repeats, like I hadn’t heard him the first time.

  For a second, I want to believe him. It would be so much easier to drink down his lies than to accept that my fiancé, the man I’ve spent every Sunday cuddled on the couch with for the past two years, has betrayed me in the worst way.

  But there’s no denying that it is exactly what it looks like.

  Anger fills my veins like kerosene. All I need now is a match.

  “Then what is it?” I demand, eyes widening. “Were you inspecting each other for lice? Did she lose an earring down your pants?”

  Grant rushes over. His sandy hair is standing up in wild tufts and there is lipstick smudged around his mouth. “Baby, let me explain!”

  The sight of those lips—the lips that I thought were mine alone to kiss—sets fire to my blood, singing my skin from the inside.

  He’s got big, soulful eyes. I remember falling for them, for him. They looked good in the candlelight at the Italian place he took me for our first serious date. Even now, part of me wants to soak up the emotion there and forgive him.

  I put that part of me in a box, lock it, and throw away the key.

  “Get out,” I demand coldly, jabbing a finger toward the front door. “Both of you need to get out right now.”

  My heart is trying to climb up my throat. I feel like I’m going to throw up. How could he do this to me? I am two seconds from completely breaking down, and like hell am I going to let Grant be here to witness that.

  Grant frowns. “But it’s my apartment.”

  “I said get the fuck out before I throw you out!” My raised voice does the trick. With a yelp, the woman runs past me toward the front door.

  Grant turns and reaches for a pair of pants. I must not’ve been clear; maybe he needs me to repeat myself one last time.

  “Did I stutter? I said, Get. The. Fuck. Out!”

  Hearing the venom in my voice, Grant abandons the pants and bolts out the door. Two seconds later, I hear the front door slam closed.

  I collapse in the hallway, like a puppet whose strings have been mercilessly snipped.

  The room seems to ring with the echo of my pounding heart. I am still and silent for a long time, my mind blissfully blank. I just stare at the wall, listening to my ragged pulse.

  I remember picking out the paint for the hallway. The color is called Gray Steel. After I moved in, I wanted to make it feel more like our home, rather than just his, but Grant liked everything the way it was. He wouldn’t let me move furniture around, or redecorate the living room, or reorganize the closet. He eventually relented and allowed me to paint this one hallway, where the walls had been scuffed in a few places already. I was given a few square feet to make my own. At the time, I was grateful for it.

  How could I not see back then that Grant wasn’t willing to make room in his life for me?

  My eyes sting with tears. I throw my head back against the wall. We were supposed to get married. After all the sacrifices I made for him, all the times I put him first, and now I find out that our life together meant fuck-all to him?

  I break out into wretched sobs. Fat tears roll down my cheeks, shoulders shaking, chest heaving as I struggle to breathe. I’m not sure w
hether I’m mourning the loss of my fiancé or the loss of the life I’d planned with him—marriage, babies, a family of my own.

  Whatever it is, I lost something today. And goddamn it, it hurts.

  I have not the faintest desire to get out of bed in the morning, but I know that work is the only thing that will remove the image of Grant’s lipstick-stained grimace from my mind. So I slog my way to the office and finish up the community center piece. Then it’s time to check out the dog show.

  It feels good to do nothing. For a change, I’m actually grateful that Debbie loves handing me the nonsense assignments. I don’t have the brain capacity for legal drama or deep investigative reporting. A dog show of celebrity impersonators is about the most I can process right now.

  As predicted, it is very twee. My favorite is a greyhound dressed like Ziggy Stardust, who howls into a microphone on command. He doesn’t end up winning anything, which is disappointing. The winner of the best costume category is a poodle with a laconic grin who goes by “Pawl Newman.” Second place goes to a weiner dog in a sparkly jumpsuit and a ginger wig who the owner would have us believe is Elton John. I leave thinking that Ziggy was robbed.

  I head back to the office to start writing up the piece, wondering if this is it for me. Am I doomed to spend the rest of my days writing articles that nobody will read until I eventually retire to become a childless, angry cat lady? There has to be more than this.

  During the day, I text my best friend, Clara Fitzgerald, to update her on the latest in my love life. She tries to call me several times during the day, but I don’t answer. When I finish work at five-thirty on the dot, I call her back.

  “Finally!” she groans. “I was beginning to worry about you.”

  “Sorry. It’s just been a busy day.” I fish a chocolate bar out of my purse and start munching on it on my way to the subway.

  “I can’t believe Grant. What an absolute pig.”

  “I know.” I sigh. “Look, I’m going to lose you in the subway soon. Can I call you later?”

  “No need!” Clara says brightly. “I’m on my way over to your place now.”

  “Clara …”

  I really don’t feel like company tonight. It’s Friday, which means there will be a movie on TV and I can be as hungover as I want in the morning. There’s a bottle of wine on the rack that Grant’s boss got us for our engagement that we were supposed to wait until the wedding to drink. That bad boy’s getting cracked. I’ve also got a pint of Ben and Jerry’s in the freezer. My evening is set.

  “Oh—I’m losing you,” Clara hisses into the phone. “Can’t—cutting out.”

  “Clara!”

  “See—soon!”

  She hangs up and I curse under my breath. Clara is very kind, and wise, and unbelievably forgiving, but she’s also the pushiest person I’ve ever met. She seeks to control everything in her environment, which I know is something that has come out of two hard years of sobriety but still frustrates me sometimes.

  Still, I guess it will be nice to spend some quality time with my best friend. I’ll need to move out of Grant’s apartment soon, so it could be fun to do a little damage to it.

  Clara is waiting in front of my building when I get home. She is holding two big shopping bags and bounds up to me, throwing her arms around my shoulders. One of the bags smacks against my spine.

  “Ouch,” I complain. “What is that? A bag of bricks?”

  Clara chuckles. “Just you wait.”

  We head up to the apartment and Clara sets the bags on the kitchen island, then throws herself across the sofa. Her mass of golden curls spills over the armrest and she tilts her head back to look at me.

  “How are you feeling?” she asks.

  I sigh and slump into the armchair opposite. “Weird.”

  “Maybe a little free?”

  “Nope. Just weird.” My head lolls to the side and I meet her gaze. “We had a plan, Clara. Grant and I had a plan. After we got married, we were going to travel, and then we were going to start our family. Grant wanted a girl first, but I wanted a boy, a little fella I could dress up as a sailor and teach to always be polite. He’d be the kind of kid that would call adults ‘ma’am’ and ‘mister,’ and everyone would fawn over how cute he was.”

  “Were you planning to have a child in the 1950s?” she asks skeptically.

  I frown. “Well, it doesn’t really matter now, does it?”

  “You can still have all that,” Clara says. “You’re only twenty-six. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you, and it’s better to start fresh now than spend the rest of your life tied to a man who was never going to put you first.”

  “You’re right.” I look back to the ceiling. “I’m just scared to start over.”

  “If life didn’t scare you, it wouldn’t be worth living.”

  “I’m sure that will be comforting in a couple of weeks, but at the moment, I just …” I look over at her. “I don’t know. I’m hurt.”

  Clara sits up, green eyes twinkling with something I can only describe as mischief. “You know what I hear when you say that?”

  “What?”

  “That you need a distraction,” she says. “Let’s go out tonight.”

  My eyebrow raises skeptically. “Out?”

  “Yeah. Like to a club.” She folds her legs under her, looking every bit the yoga instructor she is. “Yes, let’s go dancing! I’ll tell you the same thing I told my students today: if all else fails, feed your soul with deep stretches and heavy bass.”

  “You did not say that to your class.”

  “I did, too.”

  I chuckle. “Okay, sensei. All the same, I think I’ll nama-stay home.”

  “Please come out with me?” She pouts her pink lips. “It’ll be good for you. Now that you’ve kicked Grant to the curb, you can actually have a little excitement in your life.”

  Clara always thought of Grant as boring, with his long monologues and predictable patterns. He was the sort who adhered to a weekly schedule like his life depended on it—CrossFit three times a week, his favorite cop drama on Tuesday nights, fish for dinner every Friday. It’s ironic that after years of being able to tell the time based on his movements, he would throw me a curveball so unexpected that it would knock me on my ass.

  “Grant was boring, wasn’t he?” I realize out loud.

  Clara nods. “An absolute snoozefest. A pretty face, but very little going on upstairs.”

  “Very little going on downstairs either,” I remark. “I can’t imagine that floozy was with him because of his commendable ability to fall asleep almost immediately after ejaculating.”

  She snickers. “That’s the spirit!”

  “Ugh. Why was I even with him?” I scrub a hand over my face. “I think on some level I always knew I was settling. I’m just annoyed that it took this happening for me to realize it.”

  Admittedly, I was always curious about the concept of having a spark in a relationship. It was something I never felt that Grant and I had. I presumed that what we did have—comfort and security—was better. Stronger. More stable.

  Clearly, Grant didn’t think so. With my blinders off, I realize I shouldn’t have thought so, either.

  “Your dad likes him,” Clara points out. “I think you’ve always been a little blind where your dad is concerned.”

  “Dad only likes him because he’s also a lawyer,” I reply. “He just likes having someone around he can talk torts to.”

  I haven’t even told my dad the news yet. In fact, I’ve hardly spoken to him lately. He’s been busy defending the innocent, and I’ve been busy looking for new ways to describe canine outfits. I always worry that my dad judges me for not living up to my potential. I hate the thought of disappointing him.

  Clara shoots to her feet and goes to the island, grabbing the bags she brought before setting them down on the coffee table. “Let’s do something fun. You remember fun, right?”

  “I just don’t know if I’m in the mood, Clara …�
�� I eye the bags suspiciously. “Plus, don’t you think a club will just be a den of temptation to you?”

  She waves dismissively. “Please. I am so Zen these days that the thought of alcohol doesn’t even faze me. I just want to dance with my best friend and help dig her out of the misery spiral she’s about to sink into.”

  “Who said anything about a misery spiral?”

  “I see you glancing over at the freezer.” She flattens her lips. “If I don’t get you out of here, you’ll end up watching terrible romcoms until you pass out in a puddle of melted ice cream.”

  I am annoyed that she has anticipated my evening plans so astutely.

  “Fine,” I sigh. “Let’s go dance.”

  She squeals and perches on the coffee table, pulling items out of the bags. She has brought her entire makeup kit, as well as enough hair-styling tools to supply a pageant.

  “What’s all this?” I ask suspiciously.

  “This is your future.” She pulls a sparkly dress out of one of the bags with a flourish. “Gaze upon it with glee, for I am going to give you a makeover.”

  I eye the dress. “That’s not going to fit me.”

  Clara is petite, with toned everything and an ass that defies gravity. I run on the curvier side, with a flat stomach but flaring hips, thick thighs, and generous cleavage. I have the kind of body that looks great in pencil skirts and form-hugging jeans, but I’m dubious about the slinky number that Clara has picked out for me.

  “It absolutely will fit,” she replies. “You can trust me. I’m enlightened.”

  “You’re ridiculous.”

  “Ridiculously wise.” She fans out a selection of makeup brushes. “Now... Where to begin?”

  Clara pokes and prods at me for the next hour. By the end of it, my face is so caked with makeup and my hair so full of spray that I question whether I will be able to keep my head upright. Clara announces in a singsong voice that she is finished and somehow goads me into the sparkly dress. Then she guides me to the mirror, and the first thing I see is her hopeful expression.