Something this magnificent, this everything, can’t be wrong.
“You seem nervous.” He smiles cheekily, eyes filled to the brim with vivacity.
“Just a little,” I reply, worrying my lip.
It’s always my go-to twitch when I’m anxious or excited, and something Callum picked up on quickly. He’s noticed quite a few things about me I didn’t even know about myself. But instead of letting me in on his secrets, he’s kept most of them to himself. When I ask him what they are, he always tells me it’s his ‘trump card’ to better read my actions more honestly.
My eyes drift away from him to stare out the front window. My eyes peer into dusk settling over the main square of Silver Creek, watching as couples meander their way past stores and restaurants. Some are even making their way to Saturday mass. But the feeling of warm fingers tugging my bottom lip from between my teeth causes the breath to stall in my chest, forcing my eyes to snap back to his.
“There’s nothing to be nervous about, little mouse,” he coos softly, and a subtle blush steals across my cheeks by the nickname he gave me the day he asked me out.
I’ve always been the shy type. The person who stays back in the shadows, watching as life leads on all around her. I’m not one for the limelight; for the attention it brings. Give me a good book and nice corner any day of the week and I’m in my element.
That’s also the way Callum found me when he tilted my world for the first time.
When Callum asked me out that first time, I was completely and utterly speechless. My heart catapulted into my throat as I fumbled over words, stammering more than I have my entire life. It seemed too good to be true. The most popular boy in school was asking me out, paying attention to me. A quiet, subdued honor student whose family wasn’t even part of the social hierarchy anymore.
None of this was supposed to happen. Not with Callum being part of the family he is and me being who I am.
Which is why I didn’t want to get my hopes up. For any of it. Because I know how popular kids can be, and if Callum was like them, then it was only a matter of time before he showed his true colors.
If you allow them to, they can be ruthless, merciless, in their ploy to destroy you. They don’t need rhyme or reason. All they need is the want, the visceral need, to see you in pain for it to drive their actions.
Except, I felt none of that exude from Callum on that day, or any other after that. He was always the perfect gentlemen, walking me to and from classes, showing me to my father’s car at the end of the school day, and even sometimes calling and texting over the weekend.
He put in the effort to show me he differed from what other people believed him to be. Still, that didn’t mean I wasn’t waiting for the floor to fall out from underneath me.
“I always am when I’m around you,” I answer honestly, tipping my head.
Through my lashes, I spy him tilting his head to the side. He stares at me for several moments with a blank expression on his face. And then, if life couldn’t be more perfect, a blinding smile overtakes his face—his full, straight, white teeth, and plump lips nearly cause my brain to misfire.
“Is that so?” I can hear the teasing nature in his voice, which has my shoulders relaxing.
“Yes,” I whisper, making full eye contact with him.
The words are there right on the tip of my tongue. I want to split myself open and bleed in front of him, knowing he’ll see the depth of my feelings. I fell hard and fast for this one, and I don’t regret a single moment. I’m not scared anymore. Not how I used to be. I know Callum is it for me.
It would appall most people from this small town at the way my young heart fell so fast and hard. In their eyes, you must court, then grow into a mutual friendship, before finally falling in love.
That’s not how it is for me. Not by a long shot. It seemed too outdated, too unrealistic. There was no time, and I don’t want anyone to save me from the destination I’m speeding toward. That would be akin to ripping the brightest, most colorful, future away from someone.
“I, uh,” I stumble over my words, embarrassed. “I …”
“You what, little mouse?”
He reaches across the table, taking both my hands in his. I don’t know why, but my eyes break away from his beguiling gaze, scouring the surrounding room.
The ice cream shop is bustling with activity, but I can still feel laser beams drilling into the back of my skull. It’s been like that for most of our date. They’re almost feral in their intensity, raising the hair along the back of my neck in warning. Is that what’s making me antsy?
Twisting in my seat, I catch spiteful eyes spitting fire at me from across the expansive shop. They’re like two dark beacons of hatred. Alessandra Lennox, queen bee number one, is staring. Hard.
Callum must follow my line of sight, because a light tug on my hand has my eyes going back to his. “Forget about her, Jess.”
“How can I do that if she looks like she wants to kill me every time she sees us together?”
If anyone could ruin what Callum and I have with one another, it’d be her. She’s conniving, spiteful. She’s the worst of the worst and does not care if people know it. In fact, I’d say she enjoys making people uncomfortable.
“She’s just jealous I have the most beautiful girl in the world on my arm,” he replies, a light twitch of his lips causes them to tug up at the corner.
Rolling my eyes, I can’t keep the smile off my face even if I tried. “You have to say that because you’re my boyfriend.”
He shakes his head. “No, I don’t. I’m saying that because it’s the truth.” His eyes flick back over my head for a split second, a range of emotions dancing in his eyes, before they claim mine once more. “Jess … I love you,” he blurts without preamble, and loud enough for the whole shop to hear him.
My heart practically bursts inside my chest, a lightness encircling me. I never … I always thought I would be the first one to express the way I feel about him. And even then, I never expected him to reciprocate. I know how high school boys are, my father telling me many stories whenever Callum and I started dating.
Most of them only care about one thing, and that is something I haven’t come close to giving him yet.
Still, there is something about his declaration that strikes a chord inside me. It makes my body sing with pleasure, and my heart to thump, thump, thump rapidly inside my chest.
Callum loves me? I smile, almost choking on the happiness that gets stuck in my throat. He loves me!
I don’t care why he just blurted it out there. I, honestly, couldn’t care less about anything else surrounding me right now. All I see is him, and a deep part of me believes that all he sees is me, too.
“I love you, too, Callum.”
Only, I didn’t know the love he claimed to have would be so fleeting and transparent. Nor did I know it would shrivel up completely. Almost to the point it reminds you of a juicy, ripe grape transforming into a raisin.
It didn’t happen in a month, two, three, or even four down the road. But it happened, and it did completely break me.
He never showed his true colors until that party; the same night he took my love and tossed it on the ground at my feet. There are some things you can come back from; some things you can forgive. If there weren’t, then most relationships wouldn’t last. But being in love—a full, rich, soul-crushing love—then losing it, is by far the worst pain I’ve ever felt in my entire life. Even compared to all the heartaches I went through.
It broke me, left me bleeding and ruined in his absence. A hollowness flared up inside of me, rendering me useless, changed. I turned into a shadow of my former self, trekking my way through life with half my heart beating, while the other half laid dormant.
There is nothing that can make me become even half the person I used to be. No amount of therapy—and I attended quite a few sessions in the neighboring town—that can save me.
Callum destroyed me, whole-heartedly and completely. A
nd now, when his eyes rise to mine over a spoonful of stolen sundae, I can’t help the tug on my soul that screams he’s here to do that and so much more once again.
Only, this time, he won’t succeed. He can’t.
Because you can’t break something if all the pieces aren’t there to begin with.
CHAPTER 6
In a mindless fog, Karma and I leave the ice cream shop and start back toward my home. Neither one of us speaking, allowing what just transpired to digest. I find it hard to come to terms with Callum being here. Specifically, since it feels like forever since I last saw his face.
He’s changed, that much is clear. The way he moves. The way he carries himself with the ease of a predator. It’s clear he isn’t the same boy that left at the end of our freshman year. The world kept turning, kept evolving, and along with that Callum Lockridge grew up into the person he is today.
With him being gone, no one in Silver Creek knows how much he’s changed. How much he still holds a grudge, a deep-seated hatred, for what he believes happened.
Stupid, chauvinistic asshole. God, he really knows how to get under my skin.
I guess, when you get to the meat and grit of it, that’s what pisses me off the most. He didn’t give us any chance. Didn’t allow me to explain as best as I could. He merely took what he saw at face value and ran with it.
Oh, how he’d been so wrong.
My only saving grace was Karma. Since the moment she transferred, Karma has always been there for me. There hasn’t been a second she’s turned her back on me or chose a much easier route—which she could have.
Being my friend isn’t easy. There’re still people that bully me to this day, queen bee squad aside. They joke, taunt, and even escalate to physical damage, even though those incidents are few and far between.
About mid-way through sophomore year, I heard a rumor that all the bullying was Callum’s doing. That he, even being as far away as he was, still had a magnetic pull over the students at Silver Creek. At first, I didn’t believe it. Because, I mean, how can someone who’s not even here have any clout over the people that still are? How can any individual in this town still consider the teenager who ghosted them to be their prime Golden-Boy?
That’s right; it’s not possible.
So, I laughed it off. And every time after that when I heard whispers through the grapevine, I pushed them down, disregarding them out of existence. No one, regardless of money or influence, had that power. Especially not some fifteen-year-old boy.
It wasn’t until the day before Thanksgiving break that it all dawned on me. When all the queen bees and jocks at the school, taped me to the basketball goal and played target practice with basketballs, baseballs—pretty much any ball you can think of. I had so many bruises that day, so many cuts, scrapes, and abrasions, that they finally beat the truth into me.
It didn’t matter if Callum left, never did. His orders remained the same: make Jessalyn Savoy’s life a living hell.
To be honest, I figured after a few months of his absence, it would all go away. The pain in my heart and the influence he held over people. But it seemed to run at a steady pace, until the moment I decided enough was enough. Someone can only take so much before they finally blow. You can hit, punch, kick, call them names, but once they hit that boiling point that’s when it’s all over.
All the whispers of “whore” and “slut” and “trash” nearly tore me down. It wasn’t the names, per se, that got to me. But the mere insinuation.
Now, that, transformed me.
I did something that none of the students at Silver Creek thought I would do. Rather than balking, I embraced it. Instead of listening to them any longer with their false accusations and bullying persona’s, I reveled in it.
Since they called me a whore—I became one.
Since they called me a slut, working girl, and nearly every name in the book—I gave them exactly what they wanted.
Now, even though their taunts and jokes still rub me the wrong way, and piss me off beyond all compare, at least they’re not spouting bullshit.
If it’s one thing I loathe most in this world, it’s a damn liar. A fake; a phony. Someone who claims they are something, then you finally see them for who they really are and it’s nothing like you expect. It’s a backlash. Almost like a slap to the face, and I would not stand for it anymore.
Coming to a stop at the corner of Syracuse and Broadway, I push the button and wait. Every few seconds, I spy Karma from the corner of my eye, shooting me questioning glances. I know it’s practically eating her up inside, desperately wanting to know what that was all about. But I can’t do this right now. It’s still raw; my open wound gushing all over the sidewalk.
I need silence. An amicable understanding that I will not talk about what happened until I’m ready. Mostly, Karma is good about reading my body language, and there is no way she can misread this. With my stiff posture and don’t-fuck-with-me glare firmly in place, I need just a few more minutes to acquaint myself.
Callum is back, and from the looks of things, he didn’t come alone. Those other guys sitting with him all looked at me with the same amount of hatred he did. Knowing him, he probably told them his version of what happened that night. Even though his version is wrong—so wrong on so many accounts—that didn’t seem to penetrate their minds.
He painted a target on my back.
For absolutely no reason.
Why the hell is he back here?
“Are we—”
“Not now, Karm,” I whisper, fresh tears stinging the back of my eyes. I’d rather not do this at all, but I know I owe her an explanation. There is no way I can keep this bottled up inside and expect Karma to help fight my battles. She deserves an explanation; all of it.
“Okay,” she relents softly. I feel myself teetering on the ledge, and it pushes me over when I feel her hand slip into mine.
A startling sob rips from my throat, taking me completely off guard. The tears I’ve been holding back make their way down my face. Karma quickly jerks me to a stop and throws her arms around me, her faint scent of cherry blossom teasing my senses.
Even though I have to bend down, I grasp her to me as if she’s my last lifeline, and in a way, she is.
I have no one to lean on. Debra is all about her and how she can make my life a living hell. My father left—just left without a backwards glance. It doesn’t matter how many times I try to get in touch with him, it’s like he fell off the face of the Earth.
I have no friends besides Karma.
No family.
I’m alone. So alone the pressure of it almost cripples me sometimes.
Seeing Callum after so long threw me for a loop. It turned me inside out, and the thing about it is, that familiar warmth from being close to him is still there. Those feelings I suppressed all these years threaten to break free and rise to the forefront. After all the shit he caused, my body still responds to his. It’s like a tether between the both of us that’s too stubborn to break.
Oh, how I wish it would annihilate itself. If I could set fire to the connection myself, I’d happily watch it burn with glee.
Familiar pain encompasses me, rendering me speechless, as sob after sob wreaks havoc on my body. There’s an agony in my chest that nearly takes my breath away.
I hate being in pain, which is why I learned to numb myself over the years. But with all things you suck down inside you it always finds a way to free itself, unleashing onto your body with a vengeance. That’s what it is doing to me. It is taking me prisoner, and I’m deathly afraid it won’t allow me out of its clutches.
“I can’t … Oh, God, why?” I cry out, pressing my face into her hair.
I can stand the taunts, jokes, and bullying from all those other people. But if that’s what Callum and his band of merry men will do now he’s back, I don’t think I’m strong enough.
There’s something about strangers tormenting you that doesn’t cut you as deep as it does when someone you love is
the one with the vicious tongue.
And, yes, after all this time, I do still love Callum. I may hate him, but that doesn’t mean my head and heart are on the same wavelength. At this moment, I wish they were. It probably wouldn’t bother me as much as it is right now if that were the case.
“Jess, sweetie,” Karma coos softly, “is that who the rumors are about?”
I nod, grasping onto her tighter. Her soft curse echoes through the night air. I know I’m probably crushing her, but she says nothing about it. Instead, she walks me over to a spot hidden between two shrubs and sits me down. Taking the seat beside me, my body jerks from an onslaught of emotions I haven’t allowed myself to feel in quite some time.
“I know you want to wait, but we can’t,” she says. “I need to know what happened. The truth; not what everyone at school feeds on.”
No, she really doesn’t. She need not know what really went down that night. The torturous agony I went through.
Instead of protecting me, he allowed the wolves to circle and feast on my shredded innocence.
Then … the worst part of all.
He blamed me for everything, and from the way he acted earlier, still does to this day.
It didn’t matter to him I could prove my innocence. Didn’t matter there were people standing around in the hallway, hearing me grunt and scream bloody murder as my lifeless body lay on the cooling tile.
None of it mattered.
Callum wouldn’t listen to me; didn’t even wait around long enough to give me the chance. Instead, it’s like a light switch flipped inside him. He went from the caring, mischievous boy I fell in love with, to the man that has more ember and brimstone in his soul than the devil himself.
Still, what he doesn’t know, nor did he try to figure out, is that I met a monster that night in the bathroom. I saw the desire for torture swirling within his onyx depths as he did his deed. Heard him murmur a few disgusting words into my ear, then slip out of the window inside the shower.
Break Me, Baby: A Reverse Harem High School Bully Romance (Silver Creek High Book 1) Page 5
