Devious Little Liars: A High School Bully Romance (Saint View High Book 1)

by Elle Thorpe

  Gillian’s face was so red she might explode. “I tried being nice to you.”

  I interrupted her to laugh. Then I stopped. “Oh. You’re serious? You think that was being nice? Sweetie. Wow. No wonder you only have these two as friends.” I was being catty, I knew it. And probably not helping the situation, but what else was I supposed to do? Stand here and cower to the self-proclaimed queen? Please. That wasn’t my style.

  “He doesn’t want you. You know that, right? I saw you, just now, practically preening because he whispered a few words in your ear. You molded like a piece of freaking Play Doh. So if you have any self-respect, do yourself a favor and stay away from him. He’s been mine since we were freshmen. We’ve got plans, and a life. We’re getting out of here. Together. So you can try to get your claws in him. And hell, maybe he’ll let you think you have. Maybe he’ll let you think you’ve won. But just remember who he’ll be with at the end of the day. And which of us he’ll use, chew up, and spit out.” She looked me up and down, hate and jealousy practically streaming out of her pores. “Watch your back, bitch.”

  I watched them go, standing there, against a grimy high school bathroom wall. And wondered how this had all gotten so messed up, so fast.

  22

  Lacey

  I should have known something was wrong from the way heads turned the minute I walked into school on Thursday morning. But people whispering about me in the halls of Saint View High wasn’t all that unusual. I foolishly determined that Colt and Gillian had put up something about me on Instagram, but when I pulled my phone from my pocket and brought up their account, there was nothing new. The last thing they’d posted was a loved up black-and-white of the two of them in bed.

  It was puke-worthy.

  I tucked my phone away, grateful at least that I seemed to have dropped off their radar after my moment with Colt in the cafeteria and subsequent showdown with Gillian. All had been quiet on the home front, which was almost worse. I’d spent the entire week walking around in a permanent state of semi-anxiety, wondering if Gillian was going to jump out and throw a punch at me. Or worse, if Colt was going to turn my insides to melted lava with just a single look. Goddamn him.

  Instead, it was Jagger who popped out of the doors, tucking her arm into mine. Her hair was a magnificent shade of blue today, and I flicked a strand of it playfully.

  “I like this. Suits you.”

  “Thanks!” she chirped too loudly. She gave me an overenthusiastic smile.

  “What’s up with you? How many coffees have you had?”

  She waved her hand around in the air. “Oh, who knows. What’s your first class? I’ll walk you there.”

  “Ugh, math. I need to stop at my locker first, though.”

  But Jagger tugged me toward the corridor that led to the math rooms. “Nah, you don’t. Carrying all those books is good for upper body strength. You don’t go to the gym, do you? So that’s even more important for you.”

  I frowned, pulling my arm from hers. “Maybe so, but my math book is in my locker.”

  Jagger’s smile fell. “Oh. Maybe Mrs. Wiley won’t mind if you don’t have your book? You could share Rafe’s?”

  I shoved my hands on my hips. “Or, we could just go to my locker and get it right now. But obviously you don’t want me to do that, so how about you tell me why?”

  My heart flickered in my chest. Maybe Banjo was decorating it? Guys did that for girls they liked, didn’t they? I didn’t really know since I’d gone to an all-girls’ school before this. My eyes widened when I considered that it might be Rafe doing the decorating. But surely not. I’d kind of been avoiding both of them all week. Which had been easy to do because they were so tied up with football stuff that they’d barely been around. I’d missed them, though. Especially Banjo.

  I picked up speed, with Jagger trailing me, biting at her nails. “Lacey, no. Stop.”

  But it was too late. The crowd seemed to part as I reached my locker.

  I sucked in a breath.

  It wasn’t Banjo. It wasn’t some heart-filled cheesy sentiment or decorations on my locker door. It wasn’t Rafe either.

  It was huge red letters that spelled out a single word.

  Murderer.

  Red spray paint dripped down the face of the locker while I stared at it in shock.

  “What the fuck?” Banjo’s angry voice came from behind me.

  My fingers trembled.

  Rafe’s voice joined Banjo’s, but it all faded into the crowd.

  Murderer.

  In a daze, I moved toward the locker and spun the combination. Sticky red paint coated my fingers, and I glanced at it absently, realizing it was the same color and consistency as blood.

  The lock popped, and the door sprang open, only to let out an avalanche of papers. Jagger rushed to my side and then dropped to the floor to gather them. She gasped, then looked up at me, her eyes wide.

  “What are they?” I asked numbly. They certainly hadn’t been there when I’d put my things away yesterday. I closed my eyes. I almost didn’t want to know. More threats? Because this had to be Gillian and Colt. Had they stooped to cut out letters from magazines, ransom note style?

  She handed me the pile she’d made. “Who is that, Lacey?”

  I choked when I focused on the top photo. Of all the things I could have imagined, this wasn’t one of them. I leafed through each one, my eyes blurring with tears. “My uncle,” I whispered. “They’re photos of my uncle.”

  His headshot from the Providence School for Girls website. I recognized it instantly. But what clogged my throat was the words scrawled across his face in red sharpie.

  Liar.

  Cheat.

  Rapist.

  Breath stalled in my lungs. My legs buckled, and Jagger yelped as the floor came up to meet me. Strong arms caught me before I hit the floor, but it felt like crashing down onto cement anyway. Shouts and yells echoed through my ears. It was all I could do to hold on tight and bury my face in the chest of the boy carrying me away from the lies.

  “Sssh,” he murmured into my hair. “Hold on, Lacey.”

  I jerked in his arms.

  It was the same words someone had said to me when they’d pulled me from the fire.

  I stared up into Banjo’s green eyes, filled with concern.

  It’s not him.

  And that was all it took for me to erase Banjo from my list of suspects. A gut instinct that roared this wasn’t the same. I looked past his shoulder, to Rafe and Jagger, following us. Jagger had her teeth biting so hard into her bottom lip I was surprised she wasn’t bleeding. And Rafe’s expression held nothing but barely concealed rage. He picked up speed, moving ahead of us to hold open a door, and then we were outside. Fresh air slapped me in the face. I sucked in deep lungfuls, letting it clear my brain and strengthen my frozen muscles.

  “Beat it!” Banjo snapped at a handful of spectators in the little courtyard.

  Their eyes widened, and they took off, leaving me, Jagger, Rafe, and Banjo alone in the courtyard.

  I pushed against his chest. “Put me down.”

  For a moment, I thought he wasn’t going to listen. A fierce protectiveness exuded from him. He seemed ready to argue that he should hold me from now until eternity.

  I reached up and cupped the side of his face with one hand. “Banjo, I’m okay. Put me down.”

  His jaw was locked tight, but ever so slowly, he lowered my feet to the ground until I was standing. The four of us stood in a circle, the three of them staring at me.

  “Really, I’m fine. That just…” A lump rose in my throat, and I shook my head when Jagger took a step toward me.

  “Who would do that?” Jagger asked quietly.

  I scoffed. “You really don’t know who? Colt has had it out for me since the day I got here.”

  Banjo and Rafe both frowned at that.

  “I don’t know,” Rafe said slowly. “It doesn’t seem like his style. Gillian, though…”

  “Why wou
ld they write that on your locker?” Jagger asked. “I thought your uncle died in the fire at Providence.”

  I shook my head, then looked each one in the eye. I hadn’t trusted anyone but Meredith with the real details of my uncle’s death. But facing these three now, I knew I could share my secrets with them. “The police haven’t released all the details of my uncle’s death to the public. He was stabbed first and left for dead. The fire at Providence wasn’t an accident, like the media has been reporting. It was deliberately lit to cover up my uncle’s murder.”

  Jagger clapped one hand over her mouth, her eyes going wide. Both boys swore low under their breaths.

  “But they don’t think you…?” Jagger gasped.

  I shrugged. “I’m the only one they’ve been able to place at the scene of the crime. They’ve been asking a lot of questions.”

  Rafe paced the length of the courtyard, his hand running through his hair. “How the fuck did Gillian and Colt know about this?”

  I shrugged. “I’m more concerned in knowing why they wrote those things on the photo of my uncle.”

  “I can’t believe them,” Jagger muttered furiously. Her fingers balled into fists. “You should go to the police. This is slander.”

  “I know. And I will. I just…I just need a minute.” My fingers still shook, and a rolling nausea in my gut refused to subside.

  “I’ll drive you home,” Banjo said, linking his fingers through mine. His hands were warm. Comforting.

  “Thank you, but I have my car. I’ll be fine.”

  He shook his head. “You’re trembling like a leaf. I’m not letting you drive yourself anywhere.”

  Rafe quit pacing. “Banjo can drive your car, and I’ll follow in mine to bring him back. Okay?”

  “No, no, you guys don’t need to do that. You’ve got class and football stuff.”

  But Rafe was determined. “I hate feeling helpless. Let us do this.”

  Jagger stepped in and hugged me hard. “Let them help you, Lacey. They won’t take no for an answer anyway. I’ll take care of your locker. And when you come to school tomorrow, it will be like none of this even happened, okay?”

  I sniffed into her shoulder and held her tight for a moment. “Thank you,” I whispered. I glanced around at each of them. I hadn’t expected to come here and make friends. But I realized in that moment, that aside from Meredith, I’d become closer with these three in a few short weeks than I had with any of the people I’d gone to school with for years.

  And I wondered how, once all this was over, I’d leave them to go back to my real life. In that moment, I wasn’t sure I wanted to.

  23

  Colt

  I found Gillian laughing with a group of her friends outside the gym. She tossed her long dark hair off her shoulders, and ran her tongue over her lips. She was always doing stuff like that. Dropping her gaze and looking up at me through half-lidded eyes. Trailing her fingers up her side, gathering her skirt so it showed just more leg. Skipping up the stairs ahead of me so I’d get a flash of her panties.

  Normally, I lapped it up. Last time she’d flashed her panties at me like that, I’d pulled her behind one of the buildings and taken them off her. After I’d fucked her, I’d pocketed them and let her walk around for the rest of the day in a short skirt with no underwear. Fuck, that had been hot.

  But right now, after that scene in the hallway? Gillian’s little pink tongue gliding over her gloss coated lips did absolutely nothing but fill me with annoyance.

  “Hey, baby,” she purred.

  Her friends all turned, their eyes wide when they saw it was me. Gillian got off on that shit. That people got nervous around the two of us. Hell, maybe I did, too. I don’t know. But it was the last thing on my mind right now. I grabbed Gillian’s arm and towed her away without a word to her friends.

  “Down boy!” she joked.

  Her friends giggled, but as soon as I pulled her into the empty gym, and the door closed behind us, she dropped the act, wrenching her arm from my hand. “What the hell, Colt?”

  I let her go, rounding on her instead. “What the fuck was that?” I spat out.

  “What?” she asked, all big-eyed, fake innocence.

  “Don’t give me your bullshit acting. What the hell did you do to Lacey?”

  A frown creased the space between her perfect dark eyebrows. “What I did? Don’t you mean what we did?”

  I gaped at her. “We? I just turned up to school. The first fucking thing I see is murderer painted across her locker and the girl hitting the floor in a dead faint.”

  Gillian rolled her eyes. “Right? So dramatic. And you think I’m an actress. Someone should hand the princess an Oscar for that performance.”

  I just stared at her. Her mouth was pressed into a hard line. It wasn’t attractive. It morphed her features into something cruel. Something ugly. When had that happened? I’d fallen for her the first day of our freshman year. She’d been a fucking goddess, sunshine bouncing off her hair, those perfect legs eating up the quad and moving around the school with a confidence I sure didn’t have as a gangly fourteen-year-old. And then she’d smiled at me, and it was like all my Christmases had come at once. I couldn’t get enough of her. I’d chased her for months, and when she’d finally caved in, it was everything. Getting to hold her hand. Kiss her. Fuck her. Being with Gillian had catapulted me to the top of the food chain at Saint View High. And I’d loved it. I’d been a nobody in middle school. Always too tall. Too gangly. Musical instead of athletic. But all of that had changed in high school. And Gillian had played a huge part in it.

  She cocked her head to one side. “Are you actually upset about this? It went according to plan. There’s no way she’ll be coming back to school now. Job done. Things can go back to normal.”

  “Plan? What plan are you even talking about?”

  Gillian’s eyes narrowed. “You’re the one who keeps threatening to run her out of school!”

  “Not like this. This isn’t what I wanted.”

  Gillian’s expression turned nasty. “You’ve got to be joking? Now you lose your balls? Why did you even put those photos in my bag if you didn’t want me to use them?”

  “What?” I snapped. “I didn’t put any photos in your bag.”

  She shoved her hands on her hips. “Then who did? They didn’t just magically appear there.”

  I thought that over for a second and then swore under my breath. The frown on Gillian’s face smoothed over, and she pressed herself against me, peering up at me with those big blue eyes. “What does it even matter, anyway? She’s gone. We both got what we wanted.”

  “And hurt someone in the process.”

  Gillian lifted one shoulder. “So? Why do you even care? It’s just one dumb girl who thinks she rules the world because she has money.”

  I grabbed her chin. “I have a reason for not wanting her here. What’s yours?”

  Gillian’s smile widened, but there was something distinctly snake-like about it. “You, of course. You don’t think I see how she looks at you?”

  That stopped me in my tracks. My grip on her chin loosened.

  Gillian’s laugh echoed around the silent gym. “Oh my God, you don’t even see the way she stares at you, barely concealed lust in her eyes. Like she doesn’t secretly hope you’re going to throw her down on some cafeteria table and take her virginity right there in front of everyone.”

  I shook my head. “You’re way off base there.”

  “Am I?” She pushed up onto her toes and brushed her lips across mine. “I don’t think I am. And that bitch needs to know her place. This is my senior year. I’m not letting anyone ruin what I’ve built.”

  Her fingers found the button on my jeans and popped it open. Her gaze glued to mine, she dropped to her knees. “We’re good together, baby. Nobody is going to ruin that. Especially not some uptight princess. You think she’d blow you in the school gym, in the middle of the day?”

  Her lips wrapped around my dick, and I s
ank into her warm wet heat. Fuck. She was right. What did it matter how we got rid of Lacey? All I knew was that I couldn’t be around her.

  Not then. Not now. Not ever.

  24

  Lacey

  Rafe parked at the end of my driveway, engine idling, while Banjo drove my car into the garage. We both got out, and he walked to my side, pulling me into his arms in a tight hug. I held him close, pressing my face into his chest.

  “Thank you for driving me home,” I mumbled, but he seemed to understand.

  He smoothed my hair back from my face and tilted it up to his.

  “I hate that your sad eyes are back,” he said softly. “I just want to make them go away again.”

  I smiled, but I knew it didn’t reach my eyes. “Just kiss me,” I whispered. “That helps.”

  His mouth brushed over mine, soft and sweet, and I had to fight back a sob and the urge to ask him to stay. Rafe was waiting, and I probably needed some time alone to work out my next move.

  Banjo pulled away. “I’ll see you tomorrow. But if you need to talk, I’m here. Call me. Night or day.”

  I kissed his cheek, waved to Rafe at the end of the drive, and then let myself into the house. From outside, the roar of Rafe’s engine came, and I was completely alone again, with just my thoughts for company.

  Liar.

  Cheat.

  Rapist.

  I gripped the banister to keep from falling back down the stairs. Anger burned through me, hot and feral. Gillian and Colt could say what they wanted about me. They could shun me. Turn the rest of the students against me. Make me a social outcast. It didn’t matter. I had the friendship of the only three people in that school I cared about anyway, so that had backfired right in Colt’s and Gillian’s faces.

  But they’d upped their game today.

  It wasn’t a game at all anymore.

  I refused to let them slander my uncle just to get at me. He was a good man. The best man I’d known. Those things they’d written on his photos were bald-faced lies.